Fancy Chef's Dinner!!!

So tonight I decided to put my big girl pants on - we had signed up earlier in the week for the Chef's Table - which is a 7 course fixed meal with paired wines, run by the head chef and held in Murano.  We needed to meet in the Cellar Masters wine bar on deck 4 at 630pm, where we'd be escorted to the galley to see dinner for the main dining room while in preparation - and then head upstairs to Murano's private dining room

 We got a nice tour of the galley - while the dinner was being prepared for the main dining room - it was super cool experience to see all the stuff going on









Pam - here's some shrimp cocktail for you.  Just in case you need a few.  :)

Here's the hot line - as the meals come out, they put the covers on it and run it out to the dining room, so everything is prepared a la minute - even for the main dining room!!!

More views of the galley - truly amazing on how they manage to serve 2000+ guests in such a short period of time!!!



So while we were walking though, they told us they were preparing the gingerbread houses to go out on the passenger areas- I got a few photos of them sitting in the back and I'll include some finished pictures when they are done.

 lots of gingerbread house - just getting ready to put out for the ship guests

a few more just off to the side - they do these in the spare time they have!

 Anyone need any evergreen trees?  All ready to go !!!

 and the whole line of mini gingerbread houses just waiting for fun

or the big cookies.  I haven't seen these available for eating yet, so I'm guessing they are part of the display!!!

Only a small assortment of the houses we saw- I am pretty sure we will be seeing displayed later in the cruis

 here's a shot of the galley in Murano- we walked through briefly while on our way to the dining room.

Fun fact I found out - they process 500 pounds of onions a day on the ship for the various dishes - so 500 lbs x12 days is 6000 lbs, which is 3 tons.  so we will use 3 TONS of onions on this cruise......that's a lot of friggin onions!!!!

this was the menu for tonight's dinner - it was a prepared menu for the Chef's Table.   Totally had to put the big girl pants on because some of the stuff wasn't what I thought I'd want to eat - so just try it and see what happens

first the amuse bouche - a lobster and escargot vol-au-vent.  So what the hell is that? chopped lobster and escargot in a pastry.  It pretty decent, but no wine to pair with it so really?







Next, a white onion soup with a crispy parmesan coulis.  Very tasty, as was the wine - which was a french chablis - apparently - chablis is determined by the region grown not the grape - so this was a partially oaked french chardonnay in reality.....so I found out I like chablis!!!!





Next was the beef tartare.....so while it looks really pretty, I only ate about half of it - which is pretty good for not being a big fan of beef tartare!   Can't say I'd order it on purpose, but the beef with the cracker was pretty tasty, so not a bad course






And, the scallops.  This is the one course I did NOT care for.....I ate 2 bites (which weren't badly seasoned or cooked, I just didn't care for the texture) so that was a bust.   But if you like scallops - i'm assuming these were pretty good.

and lastly - quail and beetroot salad with goat cheese.    Probably 2nd favorite to the scallops, because I did actually like the quail... (or rabbit, ut that's a whole another story!!!!)







we split the entrees - Chris got the halibut and I got the beef filet.   Not sure which one was better, because both were really good - and neither of us finished our meals before having dessert.









We had some great dessert as well, a chocolate souffle and a grand marnier crepe (the souffle was better) and finished our wine- and holy moley, it was about1045pm at night.  So we headed off to bed and tried to sleep off the great dinner and wine we'd had.....lucky for us tomorrow we weren't planning on getting off the ship!!!