Readers have clamored for photos of the food aboard, so I made a special trip to the Bistro, the fancy “real” restaurant aboard, instead of the bistro, which is smaller, has almost all the same stuff, and has better views. (I almost always eat at the bistro.) So here is the selection from the “Balena” restaurant on Deck 5. I haven’t cropped the photos, so they’re a bit rough—not to mention that I was holding a plate in one hand and my Panasonic Lumix in the other.
First, the two menus you can peruse before you enter (click to enlarge). Note that there are two pages. And yes, they have everything that’s mentioned, and the menu changes with every meal (though breakfast varies little).
Note that burgers and hotdogs are always available, presumably for the Yanks, though we do have 28 nationalities on board if one includes the crew.
One difference between the Balena and the informal bistro is that the former always has a special “exotic food” station. Below is today’s, making shawarma to your taste. I avoid these as the food isn’t as good as the regular stuff, and the lines are long:
The first station is for salads; the bowl of lettuce is out of sight to the right, but you can see all the things you can put on top. There are always three kinds of dressings as well, and you can see trays of cold cuts, which often include lox.
Croque-monsieurs (toasted ham and cheese sandwiches) and chicken picatta. I don’t know what the latter is, but I got both of these, as well as a dollop of mashed potatoes (upper right).
Stuffed peppers. I probably should have gotten one of these instead of the chicken and sandwich, but it was too late; there was no more room on my plate. If you are reading this (especially Alice Dreger), note that I LOVE stuffed peppers. My mom used to make them, as well as stuffed cabbage.
What you’ve been waiting for: the first part of the dessert table, with superfluous fruits flanking the good stuff. There are always three small pastries, and they are always good.
More of the dessert table. There are always three flavors of ice cream in the Balena. The choices today were (l to r) strawberry, mango, and melon vegan ice cream, the latter properly known as “melon sorbet”. Naturally, I got mango, my favorite fruit:
And how could I resist hot cherry cobbler with a custard sauce?
I wasn’t that hungry at lunch (mirabile dictu, I skipped it yesterday), so I had the items noted above as well as salad. I almost never drink when I’m traveling; for some reason I lose all desire for alcohol on trips. I had a diet Coke.
. . . and only two desserts: the mango ice cream, which was great, and the cherry cobbler with custard sauce, also great.
All three daily meals on offer are equally copious, so you have to be careful, especially if you’re landing and hiking after breakfast or lunch. But I have seen people of size with plates loaded to the ceiling.
If you have questions, please put them in the comments.
Wow. Nice lunch! Unlimited ice cream? Ooooh.
Gotta say.. I haven’t read WEIT daily for a decade for anything but the scientific data, the excellent culture war stuff and the celebs of the comments section. But… I do enjoy the travelogues and the posting of fancy meals therein!
PCC(E) has to be one of the best educated and older Instagram style food-porn posters!
Keep at it, PCC(E)… it is nearly lunchtime in Manhattan. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Those peppers look amazing!
I agree! I’d be having one of them, for sure!
I love croque monsieurs but I’m swooning over the cobbler with custard sauce. 🤤😋
And “superfluous fruits.” Heh heh.
Looks great. I would need a lot of will power to behave myself. As a kid and teen, I loved stuffed cabbage and stuffed green peppers at Shabbos dinner at my aunt’s house. She put out a real groaning board which often also included brisket, tsimmis, and schmaltz-infused mashed potatoes. BTW, my father and almost all of my uncles died by their mid-fifties.
Oh Jim you reminded me! I LOVED those stuffed cabbage and green peppers as a kid.
I’d never considered them particularly Jewish or shabbat worthy – I thought everybody ate them – but delicious. There’s a bunch of Jewish foods that are very underrated.
D.A
NYC
A feast every day. And 50% discount. Good deal!
Looking good!
I would’ve been on that hake in an instant.
Assume that VGA means Vegan, but what do some of the other abbreviations denote?
My question exactly
Great to see the animal-free (vegan) menu offerings!
This post prompts a question about your rule #22, which I’ve admired: “Please don’t … advocate human violence or cruelty to any animal species.”
I humbly confess to having my own disconnect, when it comes to animals who are used for food, for much of my life. I didn’t tend to think about the living animal who existed before the meat…and yet, the truth is that meat (including fish) is procured with violence.
My question: What steps can we take, to restore that connection in our minds?
Perhaps a first step is simply to recognize that cultural and economic forces are constantly working to maintain the disconnect. Melanie Joy has written about the maintenance of this disconnect, giving the name “carnism” to the invisible but dominant system. I recommend her book “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows,” as well as her TEDx talk.
P.S. A kosher version of the title could well be “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Chickens and Wear Cows”!
Here’s a link to the TEDx talk, entitled “Toward Rational, Authentic Food Choices.” https://youtu.be/o0VrZPBskpg?
A couple of months ago while at a Cracker Barrel, a family member held forth on restaurants that have lobster aquariums in the entrance foyer. She opined that it might be disturbing for diners, especially children, to see the lobster live in the tank and then later see it on a plate.
It got me to thinking, what if the tank were in a building next door out of sight? Would that make a difference? Or would some additional distance be required? The lobster had to be dispatched somewhere at some time, but close enough to qualify as being “live” as advertised.
Ought a patron be similarly concerned when opening a can of tuna or eating a burger, or buying lobster tails at the grocery store? How about crab cakes or chicken thighs and breasts?
At age 19 or 20 I once delivered some salt to a “packing plant.” I unloaded the bags within sight of the area where the butchers did their work. I must say it was a sight to behold and a shock, and caused me to reflect at length on the sequence of events allowing one to enjoy (out of sight, out of mind) a fine meal at an upscale restaurant.
I had a similar shock prior to that when I was between 7 and 9 years old. I witnessed my grandfather’s method of “dispatching” a chicken. He had about a dozen in a coop. To my young mind he had them there just to have them there, anticipating he would let them loose just to have chickens on his farm. He knew I was outside. Without a word he got a chicken out, holding it by its legs. He walked about 30 feet to a spot, grabbed the chicken by the neck, swung it around in a circle about two times and …. in the course of the operation I saw a couple of chickens running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I was shocked and amazed. Ought my grandfather have given me a “trigger warning”?
People need to know and contemplate (if not directly witness) the reality of how food gets to their table. It doesn’t show up magically at the supermarket. It’s not manna from Heaven. (Although wouldn’t that be nice, in a variety of forms to satisfy the most discriminating foodie.)
I contemplate a middle or high school (or even an Ivy League “studies”) group of students on a field trip to an abattoir, and the resulting Peyton Place ruckus.
A related dramatic experience at a rural day-camp left a lasting memory. The owner had us kids form a large circle surrounding a tree stump. He then used an axe to dispatch a chicken. The energetic circular running, which seemed to go on for a long time, left no possible doubt as to the source of “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”. And there was blood spurting. (The circle needed to be large, both to provide running room and to avoid returning blood-spattered children to their homes.)
I strongly suspect that this experience was part of why I became a vegetarian as a young adult, even though I didn’t connect the two at the time.
Lobsters are killed by the chef plunging them into boiling water to start them cooking, so the live lobsters could be stashed anywhere out of sight as long as they are still alive when they enter the pot. They don’t have to be in water still swimming. They will live a few hours packed in wet ice. The lobster pounds in Halifax pack them for travel in frozen peas. Less leakage into, and down from, the aircraft overhead luggage bins. Cooking a dead lobster is a no-no because it means it died inadvertently some unknown and unrefrigerated length of time ago. (A lobster tail on a surf and turf can be assumed to have come from the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean by way of the freezer, not cooked to order.)
It is a bit of a way off, probably after our time Mr.s Greene, but ultimately tech will rescue us and the animals from this deeply discordant problem.
Beyond Meat etc. have been quite slow starters – and people’s eating habits are WAY harder to change than other habits – say, tech, or acceptance of different sexualities.
But ultimately all our meat will be made in genetic vats. (and not Soylent Green!)
And we’ll have the animals as only our over indulged pets. Like m’boy “Aussie”.
D.A.
NYC
ps – m’boy Aussie: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
He was… very briefly… a WEIT superstar. 🙂
Aw. Thanks for the introduction to your sweet canine companion, Aussie.
Yes, technology is the most likely solution to what I (and many others) see as a pressing moral issue of our time.
In the meantime, why doesn’t the enthusing about consuming croque monsieurs, and chickens, and lobsters, and so on, violate Rule #22?
I note that Doug puts quotation marks around the word violence—as if to deny that the killing of these creatures (creatures who are just as sensitive as Aussie) is actually violence. It’s a reality that is uncomfortable for caring people to acknowledge. I get that. (We don’t want to cause unnecessary harm to animals, and when confronted with reminders that we do cause harm to animals by eating them, we experience cognitive dissonance.)
P.S. to Doug: To be clear, my argument is context-dependent. I’m not talking about times or places where a paucity of plant-sourced food has made eating animals a matter of survival. I feel sure that all of us who are readers of WEIT are not in that situation. And vegan (plant-sourced) food can be as cheap or expensive as a person wants/needs it to be.
Doug and M. Green: I trust tech to solve most problems, mainly because it generally has.
My moral intuition (unpopular) is that we WAY over-emphasize human suffering vs animal suffering – b/c they don’t look like us and CAN’T TALK!
Parents of newborns give me grief about this (I am childless).
Veganism is a bit of a luxury belief, Doug. Individual actions like that don’t change the larger game. I was a veg for a few years and realized that maneuver was an impotent one.
I’m sure you’re familiar with my compatriot Peter Singer. hahaha He has a lot to say about this in his latest book. And we’re both from the University of Melbourne!
best to you my friends,
D.A.
NYC
I think what we’re saying is we just don’t accept the tenets of veganism. Can’t speak for the host, but to my mind Rool #22 applies to the gratuitous killing of animals that you’re not going to eat, wear, or use for industrial processes even if you could manage with something else, or killing it in a way that involves unnecessary suffering. I personally support (although the host doesn’t and I respect that) the killing around homes and farms of vermin that spread disease or cause economic losses and yes this includes cute ones like rabbits and chipmunks.
We are going to oppose legislated veganism not because of cognitive dissonance but because we just don’t want to be vegans.
Yes, vegan offerings are the privilege of those who can shell out a lot of cash in such a setting. I wonder how the locals and traditional communities in those northern latitudes would feel about subsisting without “violence” toward animals.
Doug and M. Green: I trust tech to solve most problems, mainly because it generally has.
My moral intuition (unpopular) is that we WAY over-emphasize human suffering vs animal suffering – b/c they don’t look like us and CAN’T TALK!
Parents of newborns give me grief about this (I am childless).
Veganism is a bit of a luxury belief, Doug. Individual actions like that don’t change the larger game. I was a veg for a few years and realized that maneuver was an impotent one.
I’m sure you’re familiar with my compatriot Peter Singer. hahaha He has a lot to say about this in his latest book. And we’re both from the University of Melbourne!
best to you my friends,
D.A.
NYC
I love stuffed peppers and stuffed cabbage, too. In fact, I always used to ask my mother to make me stuffed cabbage for my birthday when I was growing up.
I also love that your ship is so small. When I see the hundreds of people in the dining rooms of those mammoth cruise ships I somehow lose my appetite.
And I REALLY want those pastries. In fact, the pictures have so excited my sweet tooth that I’m going into the kitchen to make some brownies right after I hit post.
I wonder about that Brooke. I’ve never been on a cruise but I wonder about the social dynamics of them. (Carnival had a recent change of policy which is… class related as there was a lot of drunken hijinx on their ships apparently.)
PCC(E) doesn’t mention it so I presume socially they’re pretty cool, and people self select the TYPE of cruise I guess. You won’t find Disney Kids Cruise people on a Viking Line “Anthropology of the Rhur Valley” boutique cruises – like PCC(E) is on now.
D.A.
NYC
Maybe a stranded Disney cruise could end up being called “Anthropology of Lord of the Flies”.
No, my distaste isn’t rooted in snobbery, honest. Yes, it’s true that nature cruises like the one Jerry is on don’t need to do like Basil Fawlty and put “No riff raff” at the bottom of their ads, since ‘riff raff’ tend not to be interested in them in the first place.
But I have been on an ordinary (non-nature) cruise once – on a ship that was much larger than the one Jerry is on, but vastly smaller than the behemoths they’re building today – and I had a ball. If there were any riff raff on that cruise, I didn’t see them.
One thing about the cruise I was on is that there were no buffets. Rather, we had full waiter service for every meal. It was delightful.
But I think table service has made way for buffets on cruises. In addition, the new cruise ships are designed to accommodate thousands more people than were on my cruise. And it’s those two facts that are the source of my discomfort: I just have this gut feeling that when you have literally hundreds of people – many of them happily tipsy or juvenile – massed together in the same area at the same time, all serving themselves from the same containers of food, it’s simply impossible to maintain food hygiene. So, it’s not about class. It’s about germs!
Indeed. I am a snob when it comes to buffets. I consider them a magnet for bacteria. I worked in many restaurants as a youth and you don’t want to know the things I saw. I’m kinda funny, though, because even these super high brow foodie places, in my opinion, are more “hands on” than I can stomach. Keep your paws off my food.
There was a volcanic eruption that started in Iceland, I think yesterday. Possible that you may be able to see it when you arrive there.
And related to arrival, I assume that there will be a group boarding there to go to Spitsbergen and leave for home from there. Are there any round-trip passengers?
Dr. Coyne, is your boat heading back to Iceland? If so, there is a major fissure eruption happening now, not far from Reykjavik. In my experience there is nothing more spectacular in nature than a volcanic eruption, so be sure to check it out if you get the chance.
OK, somewhat surprised you’re not familiar w chicken piccata. A basic staple in our home, even w a foodie wife who loves trying out new things. Butter, lemon, parsley (and definitely capers here)…what’s not to like?
I admit that I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that Jerry wasn’t familiar with piccata!