The attraction of cruising for me has long been the way a ship can take you multiple places without the need to repeatedly pack and unpack—the joy, in effect, of luggageless travel. So I was skeptical when I boarded the Seven Seas Grandeur in Miami last January. This sailing, on Regent Seven Seas’ sixth (and newest) vessel, wouldn’t be taking me anywhere at all. It was a showcase cruise—in this case, a twoday, two-night jaunt from the port of Miami out to sea and back again. Onboard were mostly travel pros, there to assess the experience before recommending it to their clients. I was on a mission of my own: With no terra firma experiences to consider—guides, itineraries, activities—I would zero in on the hothouse onboard world of an “ultraluxury” ship (as the current lingo has it), everything that might help me make sense of an intriguing rumor I’d heard: that some Regent passengers find the onboard pleasures so compelling, they don’t bother disembarking at ports of call at all.
Grandeur has 15 categories of suite, the top being the brand-defining, atmosphere-setting Regent Suite, on the ship’s highest deck: 14, above the bridge. It seemed the right place to start my orientation. “If I were staying in the Regent Suite,” my guide says, “I’d never leave it.” Interesting… I start to take it all in. The vibe in the suite’s 3,151 square feet of indoor space is serene, sexy, comfortably contemporary; the 1,292-square-foot deck is wraparound, with a hot tub and the same views as the bridge; there’s a private spa with a treadmill, a treatment room, a sauna, and heated marble loungers looking out to sea. I can picture myself reposing there. The private bar, built out of a particularly beautiful deep gray, white-flecked Italian marble (which, oddly, I find myself caressing), has a dedicated mixologist (“so you can easily entertain friends you make onboard”). And the mattress in the master bedroom is a Hästens, entirely handmade of horsehair, cotton, and wool, and, with its $200,000 price tag, “the most expensive mattress at sea.” What does this mean, I wonder. I sit down. I stretch out. (No one stops me.) The sensation has me imagining what floating on a cloud while being fully supported might feel like. The pillow menu offers six choices, and you can pick among four brands of linens.
Contemplating this new world of hedonistic possibilities, I spot something familiar on a wall. “It’s a Picasso lithograph,” my guide says. “A copy, you mean.” “No, no copies here. It’s a Picasso.” The private dining room on deck seven has a Miró over the fireplace. It turns out the former CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Frank Del Rio, is a collector, and he handpicked many of the 1,600 objets on Grandeur. (You can take a guided tour of the collection with the help of an app. It includes the ship’s much ballyhooed Fabergé egg, Journey in Jewels. Commissioned from Fabergé, purveyor to the Romanovs, it flaunts its intricate, pearl-and-diamond-studded beauty—hypnotically opening, closing, rotating—in a glass display case in the ship’s central atrium.)
My actual suite on deck eight is in the midrange Concierge category and of course is much less grand than the Regent Suite. The pale, serene interior, however, is not dissimilar; a white orchid blooms on the coffee table in the sitting area; my minibar is customizable (although it hadn’t occurred to me to make my wishes known preboarding); the well-organized walk-in closet Marie Kondo–izes me (when is my stuff ever so perfectly in its place?); and the bed, while not a Hästens, is, well, fabulous. As Franco Semeraro, SVP of Hotel Operations, tells me, brandishing some sketches and charts, “We are constantly analyzing everything. Such as closets—we already know we’ll make some adjustments. And mattresses. In the entire Regent fleet, we are now on mattress generation seven. The goal, in everything, is 100 percent comfort.”
Just a few hours in, and I’m starting to get it: bottomless coddling (if anything is not to your liking, the GM’s door is always open), plus the deep sea soughing just beyond your own veranda. Life ashore cannot easily compete.
Onboard, unlike in real life, you’re never more than a three-minute walk from eight vastly different dining venues, all included—several gastronomic, a handful casual, some indoor, some out, with all wine, champagne, and cocktails likewise included. “Once our guests step onboard, they don’t have to worry about anything,” a crew member tells me. “Everything is here for them.”
Bernhard Klotz, VP of Food and Beverage for Regent, is another man obsessed, in his case with “flow”—how seamlessly dishes are delivered to tables (the new kitchens on Grandeur are all designed with that in mind)— and with the “authenticity” of the ingredients, a perpetual challenge of ship cooking. “Long-lasting items we stock up on. Perishable ones are delivered to us in containers throughout the journey—so long as there are reliable ports to fly them into. If there aren’t, we may request a change of itinerary.” And there’s always the search for the local. “If our ships are sailing the west coast of Africa, it’s super-challenging to find things like arugula or fine herbs. But in South Africa and South America, the vegetables are incredible.”
Each evening, an hour before dinner service starts, tastings are held in the kitchens— not for passengers but for the chefs. “We’re looking for the consistency of quality of certain dishes,” Klotz says. “Then the chefs have 45 minutes to adjust things.”
I take part in three such tastings: at Compass Rose, the main and largest restaurant; at Pacific Rim (pan-Asian); and at Sette Mari (Italian). The chefs, up to two dozen of them, gather around a long, gleaming aluminum counter, and dozens of small plates start arriving in rapid succession, the process presided over by Senior Executive Chef Michael Meyepa, who is Mauritian. We sample everything from caviar and foie gras appetizers to desserts. (Speaking of which, one Regent creation, the 14-layer chocolate cake from Prime 7, was featured in the April 2023 issue of Bon Appétit.)
“This is laksa. You know it?” Meyepa asks me. “It’s a curry-based Singaporean seafood dish with tofu, sweet potato to add volume, basil, cilantro, scallion, fried shallots for crunchiness and flavor, then shrimp, squid, and scallop, and a sauce of ginger, garlic, and lemongrass.” (Whatever supply challenges exist are clearly conquerable.) Meyepa shouts instructions to his team. “Gentlemen, this duck nee...
Grandeur has 15 categories of suite, the top being the brand-defining, atmosphere-setting Regent Suite, on the ship’s highest deck: 14, above the bridge. It seemed the right place to start my orientation. “If I were staying in the Regent Suite,” my guide says, “I’d never leave it.” Interesting… I start to take it all in. The vibe in the suite’s 3,151 square feet of indoor space is serene, sexy, comfortably contemporary; the 1,292-square-foot deck is wraparound, with a hot tub and the same views as the bridge; there’s a private spa with a treadmill, a treatment room, a sauna, and heated marble loungers looking out to sea. I can picture myself reposing there. The private bar, built out of a particularly beautiful deep gray, white-flecked Italian marble (which, oddly, I find myself caressing), has a dedicated mixologist (“so you can easily entertain friends you make onboard”). And the mattress in the master bedroom is a Hästens, entirely handmade of horsehair, cotton, and wool, and, with its $200,000 price tag, “the most expensive mattress at sea.” What does this mean, I wonder. I sit down. I stretch out. (No one stops me.) The sensation has me imagining what floating on a cloud while being fully supported might feel like. The pillow menu offers six choices, and you can pick among four brands of linens.
Contemplating this new world of hedonistic possibilities, I spot something familiar on a wall. “It’s a Picasso lithograph,” my guide says. “A copy, you mean.” “No, no copies here. It’s a Picasso.” The private dining room on deck seven has a Miró over the fireplace. It turns out the former CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Frank Del Rio, is a collector, and he handpicked many of the 1,600 objets on Grandeur. (You can take a guided tour of the collection with the help of an app. It includes the ship’s much ballyhooed Fabergé egg, Journey in Jewels. Commissioned from Fabergé, purveyor to the Romanovs, it flaunts its intricate, pearl-and-diamond-studded beauty—hypnotically opening, closing, rotating—in a glass display case in the ship’s central atrium.)
My actual suite on deck eight is in the midrange Concierge category and of course is much less grand than the Regent Suite. The pale, serene interior, however, is not dissimilar; a white orchid blooms on the coffee table in the sitting area; my minibar is customizable (although it hadn’t occurred to me to make my wishes known preboarding); the well-organized walk-in closet Marie Kondo–izes me (when is my stuff ever so perfectly in its place?); and the bed, while not a Hästens, is, well, fabulous. As Franco Semeraro, SVP of Hotel Operations, tells me, brandishing some sketches and charts, “We are constantly analyzing everything. Such as closets—we already know we’ll make some adjustments. And mattresses. In the entire Regent fleet, we are now on mattress generation seven. The goal, in everything, is 100 percent comfort.”
Just a few hours in, and I’m starting to get it: bottomless coddling (if anything is not to your liking, the GM’s door is always open), plus the deep sea soughing just beyond your own veranda. Life ashore cannot easily compete.
Onboard, unlike in real life, you’re never more than a three-minute walk from eight vastly different dining venues, all included—several gastronomic, a handful casual, some indoor, some out, with all wine, champagne, and cocktails likewise included. “Once our guests step onboard, they don’t have to worry about anything,” a crew member tells me. “Everything is here for them.”
Bernhard Klotz, VP of Food and Beverage for Regent, is another man obsessed, in his case with “flow”—how seamlessly dishes are delivered to tables (the new kitchens on Grandeur are all designed with that in mind)— and with the “authenticity” of the ingredients, a perpetual challenge of ship cooking. “Long-lasting items we stock up on. Perishable ones are delivered to us in containers throughout the journey—so long as there are reliable ports to fly them into. If there aren’t, we may request a change of itinerary.” And there’s always the search for the local. “If our ships are sailing the west coast of Africa, it’s super-challenging to find things like arugula or fine herbs. But in South Africa and South America, the vegetables are incredible.”
Each evening, an hour before dinner service starts, tastings are held in the kitchens— not for passengers but for the chefs. “We’re looking for the consistency of quality of certain dishes,” Klotz says. “Then the chefs have 45 minutes to adjust things.”
I take part in three such tastings: at Compass Rose, the main and largest restaurant; at Pacific Rim (pan-Asian); and at Sette Mari (Italian). The chefs, up to two dozen of them, gather around a long, gleaming aluminum counter, and dozens of small plates start arriving in rapid succession, the process presided over by Senior Executive Chef Michael Meyepa, who is Mauritian. We sample everything from caviar and foie gras appetizers to desserts. (Speaking of which, one Regent creation, the 14-layer chocolate cake from Prime 7, was featured in the April 2023 issue of Bon Appétit.)
“This is laksa. You know it?” Meyepa asks me. “It’s a curry-based Singaporean seafood dish with tofu, sweet potato to add volume, basil, cilantro, scallion, fried shallots for crunchiness and flavor, then shrimp, squid, and scallop, and a sauce of ginger, garlic, and lemongrass.” (Whatever supply challenges exist are clearly conquerable.) Meyepa shouts instructions to his team. “Gentlemen, this duck nee...
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Town & Country (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2024