maybe another bite will be better

Michael Warshauer would have loved this cruise.

The author of My Mexican Kitchen knew his food. And he loved writing reviews. At times, I thought he found no greater joy than finding a restaurant that cooked some of his favorite foods badly. After all, most food reviewers shine when they are carving up chefs as easily as a slice of French pork loin.

A lot of people come on cruises to wallow in good food. That was once true. In a more elegant (and far more costly) era, the food on cruise ships could be some of the best food most people had tasted. When the ship we are on (the Norwegian Star) was new, it ran almost exclusively in Hawaii. The local newspaper's food critic concluded that when the Star was docked in Honolulu, it was the best steak house in town.

But cruises, just like airlines, have morphed from quality into quantity. To get more people on board, cruise costs have plummeted. And so has the quality of service. Especially, food.

When I began cruising, there were two choices for food: the formal dining room and the cafeteria. The dining room served up meals as good as any large banquet could. The cafeteria served buffet food. Filling, but unremarkable.

It is now difficult to distinguish the dining room food from the buffet. I often think they come out of the same pots.

What saved the food on most cruises in the interim was the advent of specialty restaurants. They started with one on each ship. They now include a wide range of cuisines.

For instance, the Norwegian Star has 6 specialty restaurants: a French bistro, a Brazilian steakhouse, a traditional steakhouse (think Morton's), an Italian trattoria, and two Asian eateries.

Last year, we were on a newer ship, the Norwegian Getaway, crossing from Denmark to Miami. We learned early on to avoid the dining room and most of the specialty restaurants. But the buffet turned out to have a wide variety of edible food -- including some amazing Indian food.

The only specialty restaurant that earned its laurels (and the additional money it costs to eat there) was a sushi place. Very few people ate there. But the food was almost as good as the plates we sampled in the Tokyo Fish Market.

On this cruise, we have only begun sampling the fare. Our one dining room experiment for lunch was a disaster. Slow service. Worse food. Probably the worst I have had on a cruise ship.

The buffet has turned out to be just as disappointing. With my new diet (low carbohydrates, high fat), I have found plenty of selections. But none of them has been prepared with any form of creativity. The Indian food has tured out to be limited and bland.

Tonight, the four of us dined at Le Bistro, Norwegian's stab at French cuisine. I am fond of Le Bistro. It was the sole specialty restaurant on the Norwegian Dawn in the early 2000s. Because I cruised on that ship frequently, the Bistro staff reserved a table for me for the entire cruise, and had my meal ready, specially-cooked for me, when I arrived each night.

This restaurant lacked that personal service. And the food was, at best mediocre.

I started with a French onion soup that was completely devoid of flavor and onions. I sent it back. 

Our waiter tried to get the meal back on track with a mushroom soup centered around sauteed baby portobello mushrooms. And he succeeded. That soup had the funky layering of fungus that makes or breaks the dish.

My main course was not as successful. Roasted duck over a bed of simple vegetables. The carrots and string beans were prepared perfectly. Unfortunately, the duck was tough and overcooked.

My dining companions had rack of lamb and pork tenderloin. All were overcooked and the pork lacked the taste that we who live in Mexico have come to expect.

Desert was an unremarkable plate of randomly chosen bits of cheese, Carr's water crackers, dried fruit, and walnuts. None of the tastes really hung together.

If this had been a restaurant on land, I would say, give it a try, you might like it. I would not go back.

And neither will we on this cruise.

But tomorrow is Cartagena -- and good food beckons. Unfortunately, we need to be back on the ship by 2 PM. I doubt we will have time to sample the local cuisine. And that is too bad because Colombia has an amazingly adventurous cuisine -- as many of you will recall on my visit there.

But we can see some sights.