Mark Bittman discovers cruises

[mme_hardy]

Mark Bittman, the food columnist for the New York Times, has discovered the glories of cruise ships. I'll wait right here while you go get a drink.  

Are you back? The great thing about cruises is that, if you're the food columnist for a major newspaper, you can travel for free! Mr. Bittman recommends the experience wholeheartedly.

Nevertheless, my first journey took some gearing up to, because cruising is so easy to put down. I was like that: too sophisticated to consider it.

If there's one promising start to a New York Times lifestyle article, it's the writer explaining that he is far, far too New York to consider this exotic and foreign -- but not in the sophisticated, world-traveller way -- experience.  Within a few sentences, we know, the finest in upper-middle-class condescension will be on tap.
 

Many of the common complaints about cruise ships ring true: The best of the entertainment is boring. Most of the food is mediocre, and it’s usually about as opposite of “local” as you can find... The excursions are rushed, timid, overpriced. Many of the ports have nothing in them worth seeing. The companionship is limited. (The best cruise joke I know: “This cruise has the oldest passengers I’ve ever seen. And most of them brought their parents.”) There are the risks of illness, although my experience is that the industry has become germophobic and ships seem safer than most workplaces, contagion-wise. Then there’s the issue of safety, although there’s not much to worry about. You might hit rough seas, and even become seasick.

Sign me up, baby.   "I am a professional food writer, but I've decided mediocre food isn't all that bad."
 

Some other things I have found: In general, the prices are not unreasonable, especially since they’re often discounted.

"But so much of it!"

The service is usually excellent, especially compared with hotels and restaurants on land, at least most of the places I frequent.

 

"I, Mark Bittman, need to get out more."

 

The food is as abundant as you’ve heard, generally better than that in most hotels; furthermore, after a few days, you can probably strike a deal with a friendly cook to customize it as you like.

"...if you're the food columnist for the New York Times."

There’s also an odd level of equality: Everyone spends time in the public spaces, and those are shared, although there are no doubt exclusive lounges for the highest-paying passengers. Much of the food, too, is the same for everyone.

"It may be mediocre, but I am comforted by the knowledge that nobody else is getting anything better."

But there are two other factors that make cruising not only unusual but uniquely satisfying, at least to me. ... It is simply that the “floating hotel” means that your vacation is structured like this: You get onboard; you unpack; you never change rooms again; and yet you go different places. Effortlessly. ... it’s an incomparable luxury to put your suitcase under the bed and not think of it for days or, if you’re lucky, weeks. To keep your toothbrush parked in the same place; to not search for your cellphone charger among your belongings; to leave your magazines in a stack; to recover from jet lag once, at most — all while actually traveling — this feels inconceivable.

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of vacationing in a short-term apartment or house.  I bet you could  discover this while reading any travel essay in the New York Times in the history of mankind.   Protip: Search for "Tuscany".  

At the beginning of those seven days, we — I was traveling with my wife — were cautious. Seven days at sea? With these people? And yet, these days were fantastic.  [it. mine]

No comment.

These are hours spent staring at passing islands or shorelines, wildlife, the sky and sea.  
Fair point.  

These are hours spent not doing these things: reading, catching up on long-term projects, binge-watching shows that everyone else watched two years ago.  

What, you didn't bring any books or DVDs?   (Leaving aside the concept that reading is a chore.)

Time slows, warps. One sits inside looking out, the banality of the ship framing the sublime nature of the landscape. Often, the ship’s roll is soothing, as if you were placed in the hand of a walking giant. The sound of the ocean is constant; the salt air breezes through every opening. The “culture” is so middle-America (even on non-American cruise ships, it seems), and demands so little that you can actually think. What a change.  

[it. very very much mine]

And then you go eat dinner.

"Which, as I may have mentioned, is substandard."

I always thought Mark Bittman's cooking column was substandard, but that's just me.  Perhaps it's because I am (although living in California) middle-American.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I've never been on a cruise -- they've never appealed to me, since I'm pretty certain they wouldn't let me drive, which is the main point of boats so far as I'm concerned, and they don't have sails, which is the other -- but pelham123 has been on several, and she tells me that most of the actual travelling tends to happen at night, so the "drifting past passing islands" bit strikes me as somewhat implausible.

[mme_hardy]

One of them was to Antarctica, if I recall, so passing scenery was the point.

There are cruise ships with sails, and I contemplate them now and again. (Windstar Cruises). The "won't let me drive" issue still applies.

[caulkhead]

I rather like the look of the gulets one sees in Greek and Turkish waters, but legionseagle assures me they almost never put their sails up, and I do wonder if the same would be true of Windstar et al.

The thing which gets me with most modern cruiseships (at least the large ones) is they seem to be designed to conceal any sense that you're on a ship at all.

[perennialanna]

I want to do the Hurtigruten, but although that's been prettied up of recent years it's still not exactly a cruise. A few years ago we did Newcastle-Bergen-Newcastle, in what the ferry company optimistically calls a mini-cruise. It was fabulous - the boat called at Haugesund and Stavanger en route, and spent an entire day squeezing through impossible gaps up the Norwegian coast. But a car ferry, however many restaurants it has (and coin-operated freezer lockers for duty free bacon), is still basically a working boat. The food was transport caff adequate, the coffee was great as all Scandinavian coffee is (ie very dark filter, in large mugs, and unpolluted by milk or sugar. Scandinavians believe in caffeine).

[caulkhead]

Somebody asked me last week "I'm piloting a research ship through the North West Passage in September, caulkhead, what about it?" I nearly jumped out of my chair with excitement, before realising I was being offered an article, rather than a berth.

[clanwilliam]

It looks like they're bringing that route back, by the way. According to industry reports, there is definite interest in the proposal.

I want to do Hurtigruten too, and also the Denmark/Iceland ferry via the Faroes. Sadly, they no longer do the Scrabster route, which would have been amazing - Inverness sleeper, train to Ultima Thule, calling at Lerwick and Faroes.

[nineveh_uk]

Ditto both of those. A friend did Iceland - Faeroes - Shetland, and I am very jealous. I suppose I could go on to Denmark instead.

[vom_marlowe]

I've been on Windstar Cruises. They do put their sails up, actually; it depends somewhat on the locale and the captain, but on mine, we travelled by sail power quite a lot of the time.

[sollers]

The only one I'm tempted by (as in, probably next year) is a Rhine cruise which I envisage as a glorified pub crawl with G; I like the selling point of "you only have to unpack once".

[legionseagle]

You've been watching too much Poirot and Miss Marple "sponsored by Viking River Cruises".

[movingfinger]

I liked his honesty. He's a New Yorker. Getting on a cruise ship, especially the big ones, must be weird. Some people find ships claustrophobic, no matter how large they are, because there are limits. The culture thing, well, believe me, he's right there too. Cruises don't challenge you, indeed that's the last thing they want to do, even the educational ones where you go to Classical sites and someone lectures on Diana of Ephesus. You don't have to engage or confront anything. It's a cushioned environment. All encounters are predictable. No subway. No panhandlers. No petition signature gatherers. Everyone's there to have a good time (some, a little too good, but I don't think they do open bar on those big ships), so they're pretty upbeat.

As for the service, it really is better. Even on those big ships, huge staff.

Perhaps you're missing the massive appeal, for a traveler, of not having to open and close the suitcase two or three times a day. It's a huge benefit of ship travel. The "you go different places" part---that's key here. He knows all about short-stay apartments. The cabin on a ship is a moving one. Far better!

[mme_hardy]

I don't like his honesty, because it's based on his displaying his contempt for other people. The dead giveaway is "The “culture” is so middle-America (even on non-American cruise ships, it seems), and demands so little that you can actually think. "

I also don't like his assuming that the advantages open to him, namely becoming besties with the chef, are available to anybody else. I suspect, although I could easily be wrong, that a chef who is focused on mass-cooking for N-hundred people -- and, given the references to pre-frozen components, I suspect strongly that this translates to "microwaving" much of the time -- isn't set up to customize single meals for tens of different passengers.

You are absolutely right (and I was wrong) that the cabin-in-a-moving-vessel experience is different from, and has real advantages over, the fixed apartment. They aren't the same thing. There are bona fide advantages to cruising, and I'd like very much to do some of the Polar cruising you've been doing. The problem isn't cruising itself, it's Bittman.

[movingfinger]

I didn't take that as snobbery, more a description of the way one relaxes into a set of default norms that are so predictable, every situation is known. Your expectations are never challenged, you don't have to worry about not knowing the language, and the food isn't going to distress your tummy. [YOU HOPE. HA HA HA norovirus HA HA HA.]

I confess I shrug past his stuff about being chummy with the chef. He's crew on these things, after all, if he's a paid presenter, and the crew can do favors for one another more easily. (On smaller cruise vessels everyone gets personalized treatment, until you get down to the size vessel where there's only a handful of crew; then the crew is too small to do that, pretty much, easily, although it's possible to have very basic vegetarian foods, and certain specialty items for GF or celiac diets can be prepped ahead of time---with notice!---and frozen, or cooked separately.) I know no more than that about the giant ships, the Carnivals and Princesses. Could be they do make the effort to customize.

Someone (was it you?) sent me a link to a cruise-with-Paula-Deen piece recently... possibly that's where Bittman's editor got the idea of having him write this up.


The young, beginning cooks I know like his cookbooks and the only complaint I hear about him consistently is that he assumes one owns a food processor, and in a very small apartment, that is a luxury...

[sollers]

Surely that depends on the food processor and precisely what one does with it? Mine is a Bamix, which is a sort of wand that hangs on the wall, and deals with everything except dough. When my daughters were very little, it was used every day for pureeing our meals so that they could have the same.

[adrian_turtle]

I suspect Bittmann would call that a "stick blender," and reserve the term "food processor" for things more like this
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/big-mouth-duo-plus-2-speed-food-processor/3726288.p?id=1218429233878&skuId=3726288&st=categoryid$abcat0912016&cp=1&lp=4
that sit on the counter and have the option of slicing or grating, as well as blending.

I use my stick blender to puree soups, because it's so much faster and easier than cooling the soup, transferring it, transferring it BACK, and taking the food processor apart to clean it. The main uses for my food processor are cranberry orange relish (which is basically grinding raw fruit), and grating carrots or zucchini for quickbreads.

[telophase]

Toby and I have been on a few cruises. Friends of our convinced us that while we had the impression that they were floating malls and casinos, and that was not entirely inaccurate, there were lots of ways you could find secluded areas of the ship to just hang out in, if you didn't mind not running out to see new stuff every day. Which we found to be true. (And it was the best thing after the whirlwind leading up to our wedding: a week in which we didn't have to do anything, during which nobody was demanding our attention!)

As for the food: our first cruise was in 2006 on Carnival, and we were pleasantly surprised. Our second Carnival cruise, in 2012, was a disappointment, because the food quality had declined, probably because of the economy. They also had section on the menu title "Did You Ever...?" with "exotic" choices like ... sushi. I didn't think, in this day and age, that sushi counted as exotic any more, but I guess they were aiming at a different clientele.

Our third cruise, last year, was on Princess, and the food was much better. I expect the NYTimes Food Critic would not consider it excellent, but it was better than your standard Chili-type's fare, and given the total cost of the vacation, we were happy with it.

I do confess that I periodically have the impulse to tell other people on the ship that I'm only cruising ironically, but that's my inner snob and I beat it down. :D

[redbird]

I'm a New Yorker too (well, I was until a year ago), and that doesn't excuse the ageism. Then again, I don't go on vacation with the expectation of striking up friendships with people I didn't already know. I can enjoy those conversations, yes: and one of my fond memories is of a halting bilingual conversation with a stranger who was probably in the age group Bittman is sniping at. Though I suppose being snarky about the presence of old people is one way for a man in his sixties to try to feel young.

[starlady]

Ahhahaha Mark Bittman, omg. Skewer him harder next time, I say!

I actually like his food a lot of the time--How to Cook Everything is quite useful if your skills have odd gaps, like mine--but he needs to just shut his piehole about EVERYTHING else.

[mme_hardy]

Bittman is also the guy who introduced Jim Lahey's (paywalled) No-knead bread(not paywalled) to the world, so hurray for him.

[oyceter]

I've only been on one cruise ever (two years ago, Carnival), and FWIW we didn't get customized food from the chef for the sit-down dinners, but our assigned waiter was super nice and would do things like get us fruit bowls sans cantaloupe or switch the sides on the main course and etc. Not sure if that counts as Mark Bittman's idea of customizing food though!