Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cruises
82
Regent Food Cruises
What's Cooking?
Regent Seven Seas
Luxury is the name of the game for Regent
Seven Seas, which operates an upscale
trio of all-suite cruise ships circling the
globe. And when you're going for the lux-
ury market, it's not enough just to leave
chocolate on the pillow. That's why Regent
offers food-and-wine-themed cruises with
guest chefs and tailors certain cruises for
aspiring chefs and chocoholics.
Regent's on-board cooking classes are
serious—three intensive 2-hour work-
shops during the course of a cruise, lim-
ited to only 10 participants, and taught by
visiting chefs from no less an institution
than Paris's Le Cordon Bleu cooking
school. You may not be able to snag a
sous-chef job at The French Laundry after
this, but you'll certainly hone your skills,
learn some new tricks, and gain insight
into haute cuisine. The partnership with
Cordon Bleu is a natural outgrowth of Cor-
don Bleu's involvement in developing
menus for the ships' Signatures restau-
rants (reserve a table for dinner to sample
the classic French menu—you may be
cooking the same dishes in class). Regent
offers these Cordon Bleu classes on sev-
eral cruises throughout the year, which
run anywhere from 8 to 20 nights, visiting
ports as far flung as Buenos Aires, Istan-
bul, Osaka, Sydney, or Reykjavik. (Regent's
home base is in Fort Lauderdale, but not
all cruises begin or end there.) Participants
pay an extra program fee for the course.
Mastering complicated French cooking
techniques requires hard work and disci-
pline, of course; cruisers who are less
Type A may want instead to book Regent's
lively Spotlight on Chocolate cruises. Visit-
ing pastry chefs or chocolate experts lec-
ture and do cooking demonstrations on
board, while the ship wends it way from
port to port through the Caribbean.
Regent is known for good dining. Its
two large 700-passenger ships, the
Regent
Mariner
and the
Regent Voyager,
have
four restaurants: a main dining room serv-
ing Continental cuisine; the Cordon Bleu
Signatures restaurants where the Cordon
Bleu classes take place; a smaller restau-
rant serving Indochinese specialties; and a
casual bistro-style restaurant. The smaller
490-passenger
Regent Navigator
has the
main dining room and an Italian specialty
restaurant. On the food-and-wine-themed
cruises, Regent also sets up some fasci-
nating shore excursions, such as vineyard
visits, cooking classes, sessions at local
food markets, and meals at the finest local
restaurants, often hosted personally by
their chefs.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises,
1000
Corporate Dr., Suite 500, Fort Lauderdale,
Florida 33334 (
&
800/477-7500;
www.rssc.
com).
