5 Days of Indulgence - Monarch of the Seas

So, in my last post I mentioned I was going on vacation. Part of this vacation consisted of a visit to Universal Studios in Orlando and the rest was spent on a cruise to two islands in the Bahamas. More on Universal later, but first the cruise. We went from Port Canaveral, FL to Coco Cay to Nassau and then back to Port Canaveral. The route looked something like this:


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Here is our boat on the right, docked in Nassau. Also in port was another Royal Caribbean ship, a Carnival ship and a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship.



Since this is a food blog, I won't bore you with the details of all the fun we had on wave runners in Coco Cay, or on the free beach in Nassau. I won't even mention all the time we spent in the casino or the great activities we participated in on the boat (and almost won). I'll just get straight to the food. I'll also apologize in advance because I have no pictures of the actual food for you to drool over. Everything moves so quickly in the Main Dining Room that you don't really have a chance to stop and reflect. That, and I was basically in a food coma the entire time.

Windjammer
First things first, let's start with the Windjammer. This is the buffet on the ship. I know it's super hard to keep buffet food tasting "hot out of the oven" and RC did a pretty good job of keeping everything tasty. There was a huge variety of food available every day for lunch until 2:30. You could really get anything you wanted - hamburgers, hot dogs, roast beef, potatoes, salad, pasta - you name it! They also had a variety of desserts that included chocolate cake with a mousse-like filling, brownies, and all sorts of cookies.

By far, the best lunch we had was on RC's private island of Coco cay. It was a huge barbecue complete with burgers, hot dogs, ribs, corn on the cob and mac and cheese. There was also salad available, but with everything I listed above, who really wants to waste valuable stomach space with that?

Main Dining Room
We had a late seating in the main dining room. Any of you who have cruised before know this means you won't eat until almost 9. Most days we stopped for a snack at Sbarro (pizza) to hold us over.

The first night was an Italian theme. You get a three course meal and can ask for more than one if you want it. I stuck with only three dishes though. I started off with the minestrone soup, then the Chicken Marsala and finished with angel food cake topped with fresh strawberries and grand marnier syrup. YUM! For the amount of people served in such a short amount of time, the food was impeccable. It came out hot and tasted like it was cooked to order. The chicken melted in my mouth and even though I wanted seconds and thirds of the expertly baked cake, I refrained. Before dessert, since it was Italian night, the waiters all serenaded us with an Italian love song. That was fun to watch.

The first night was also my brother's birthday. There was a minor snafu with the waiters and his birthday slice of cake didn't come out until we were almost ready to leave. Anyway, here is a picture of him as the waiters sing to him



I'm not sure what the theme of the next night was, but it was mostly fish and since I'm not a fan, I chose the prime rib off of the alternate menu. It was a little fatty, but still good. I just cut around the pieces that were a little too fatty for me. I didn't even need a steak knife to cut it.

On night three the theme was "International Cuisine" so I naturally gravitated towards the Italian. I went with a Caesar Salad, and the Eggplant Mozzarella Tower. This was basically slices of eggplant and Parmesan cheese fried into a delicious little patty, served with tomato sauce on the side. This was by far the best meal I had on the trip. I followed this up with Black Cherries in a cream sauce with vanilla ice cream.

On the last day we were at sea, so we were lucky enough to have lunch and dinner in the main dining room. I was glad of that because by day 4 I was really getting tired of the buffet.

For lunch, they put together a make your own salad bar where you picked the ingredients then one of the chefs tossed and chopped it for you. Think Saladworks but a thousand times tastier and with fresher ingredients. This was the highlight of my husband's eating experience because they had kalamata olives, which were never offered in the buffet salad bar. For our meals, I got pesto pasta and he got some sort of Japanese chicken skewers. I tasted his and it was delicious. The chicken was juicy and not dry like it can sometimes get on a skewer. My pasta was a little creamier than I like it, but it still tasted great.

Later than night we had our last dinner on the ship. I was sort of sad to leave behind all this incredible food. I had Caesar salad again for my appetizer and followed it by a Cheese and Tomato Calzone. For dessert, everyone at the table ordered the brownie sandwich. To say this was heaven would be an understatement. It was two brownies with a layer of chocolate mousse in the middle. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Since this was the last night, the waiters put on a special show for us. Here's a few pictures of them as they paraded around the dining room singing.





After they were done, they asked us to dance to for them. That's when the music to the ever-popular Macarena started playing and we were asked to get up and dance. If you asked me what I expected out of this cruise, never would I have said "800 people doing the Macarena while eating dessert".

Breakfast
The only meal that left something to be desired was breakfast. The scrambled eggs were definitely powdered, as they didn't have the consistent that a real scrambled egg would have. The omelets were good, but the line was always pretty long to get one. I ended up eating a croissant and one of those single serve boxes of cereal without milk by the last day (the ship only had whole and skim and I prefer something in the middle).

Overall, the food on the ship was great. On our last afternoon on the ship, we took a tour of the galley and learned a lot about how they prepped the food. Approximately 800 guests are served at each dinner seating, which lasts only about an hour and a half. That fact alone amazed me. The executive chef then went on to tell us about the rest of his team. Every chef on the ship comes from a 5 star restaurant, and periodically chefs from around the world host training seminars for them so all the chefs stay up to date with the latest cooking techniques.







The galley was much smaller than I imagined, and it is quite an amazing feat to get all the food out in such a short amount of time. The pictures above basically show the whole thing. There is a salad and cold soups station, dessert station and hot foods station. On the wall behind where I was standing to take the picture is a small office for the executive chefs and a 42 inch screen that broadcasts to each chef what dishes need to be made.

If you haven't been on a cruise, I highly recommend you try one out - especially if you love food. It's a chance to try something new. The best part is that if you don't like it, they'll give you something else!

Culinary Tour - North and South Carolina

Last week, my husband and I ventured down to the Carolinas for a family vacation. When I say family, I mean the WHOLE family. There were 16 of us, including my husband's relatives from London, England. It was great to see everyone and to eat such lovely southern food.


View Larger Map

We stayed in Ocean Isle, NC, which is about 35 minutes outside of Myrtle Beach. Our first night there we dined at Tomo, a hibachi restaurant on the island. The show at this hibachi was similar to other hibachi restaurants, and the food was both delicious and reasonable. I had Chicken Hibachi and Jim had Salmon hibachi. Both came with a salad, soup, fried rice and vegetables. We also split cucumber rolls - 3 each. Other offerings at the restaurant included scallop hibachi, shrimp hibachi and teriyaki chicken. All of the above were ordered by others in our party and they said they were delicious.

Here is half of us at the Hibachi table:


Tomo Hibachi Japanese Steakhouse
120-7 Causeway Dr
Ocean Isle Beach
North Carolina, 28469


Tuesday - Outlet shopping in Myrtle Beach and then dinner at Benny Rappa's. This is a sort of unique restaurant because it has a menu that changes daily. I had eggplant parmesean and the rest of the family enjoyed lasagna, spinach and walnut ravioli, and italian sausauge. All of our meals came with a starter salad. Regular bread is complimentary, but they also offer garlic cheese bread for a nominal charge.

A note on getting there: Both Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach use a seperate numbering system. Even though the towns seem like one continuous town, there are TWO 17th streets, one in North MB and one in MB. When you're looking for Benny Rappa's make sure you're in NORTH Myrtle Beach. We went all the way down to 17th in Myrtle Beach, which was about a half hour out of our way.


Benny Rappa's Trattoria
1453 Highway 17S
North Myrtle Beach, SC 29582


After dinner we went to Broadway at the Beach to watch the fireworks. We also enjoyed a perennial favorite - Ben and Jerry's scoop shop!

There were five of us, and four of the group had Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road. I was the oddball who ordered Peanut Butter Cookie.


Wednesday - Every year, the family seperates and the girls have a ladies day. This year, it was decided we would tour Silver Coast Winery and partake in the wine tasting. The tour of the winery was very neat. Our knowledgable guide answered all of our questions without looking annoyed at all. After a 20 minute tour, and 20 minutes of questions, we were set to move on to the tasting. For $10 we tasted 10 wines - 5 white and 5 red. I loved their Calabash White so much that I purchased a bottle for $9. They also had a Viognier that I was very tempted to buy, but at $28 it was a little out of my vacation spending budget.


cheers! me and the in-laws

Silver Coast Winery
6680 Barbeque Rd.
Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28469


By the time we got back, it was too late to organize a restaurant expedition like Monday's, so we dialed up Cinellis for Takeout Pizza. Being from NJ, I'm a little bit of a stickler for the taste of a good pizza. It's not THAT hard - dough, sauce and cheese - but most places outside of my immediate area have a very hard time with it. Anyway, this pizza was pretty good, as far as pizza outside of the NY/NJ/eastern PA area goes. It was also finished relatively fast for the amount we ordered - I think there were 8 pies in total.

Cinelli's Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria
14 Causeway Drive
Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina 28469


Thursday - Today was newlyweds day. Yay! My husband and I set out on our own adventure in North Carolina. During the day we went to Southport, which is not far from Ocean Isle. We walked around and ate lunch at a gallery/cafe and went to the christmas and candy shops. Around 3 we caught the ferry over to Fort Fisher to go to the aquarium. Unfortunately, we got there at 4 and it closed at 5. The admission was under $10 so we took a chance and went in anyway. An hour turned out to be perfect for the size of the aquarium. We even got to see two of the staff don some scuba and clean the alligator tank - while the alligators were in it!!! Yikes!!


NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher
900 Loggerhead Rd
Kure Beach, NC 28449-3786


After the aquarium we headed to the next town over to enjoy a free wine tasting and some appetizers at 2 Wine Guys @ The Grind. We each enjoyed one complimentary glass and one we paid for. We also ordered an anitipasto tray with pepperoni and red roasted peppers.

After the wine, we still had time to kill before dinner, so we went to the Pleasure Island Beach boardwalk. I wouldn't say this was really a boardwalk (I'm from NJ, remember - we're KING of boardwalks!) but it had every store a boardwalk should have - surf shop, fudge shop, rides and an arcade. At dusk, a cover band took over the boardwalk to play their set. We watched for a bit and then made our way to Wilmington, NC.

For those of you who watch One Tree Hill, you'll be delighted to know that this is where it's filmed. We didn't, however, go on a star search for all of OTH's actors. We were here for dinner, so we headed straight for Front Street Brewery, where, for less than $40, we imbibed, dined, and went home with merchandise! Jim had the pulled chicken and I had the pulled pork. After tasting both, we decided that mine was the clear winner. The sauce was so delicious, I had to eat the whole thing!

Front Street Brewery
9 North Front Street
Wilmington, NC

Friday - Today was our last day, so the plan was to be lazy all morning. Unfortunately for us, the water had decided to kick it up a notch. A hurricane far off the coast made the waves extremely choppy with a bad undertow. The beach was evacuated before we even got a chance to change from pajama's to swimsuits. To kill the rest of the day, we went to Calabash, where they have a cute Christmas shop, combined with your normal souveneir store. Afterwards, we headed to Barefoot Landing. We had ice cream at Kohr Bros. and all the free samples we could stuff our faces with at the peanut shop, fudge shop and salt water taffy shop. Who needs lunch when you can dine on all those snacks?? By about 7, we were actually getting hungry, so we went to one place we could all compromise on - Ultimate California Pizza. If you've never been to one, it's very similar to California Pizza Kitchen, only I think this place has a lot more variety when it comes to pizza. Most of the choices can be made somewhat healthy, too. You can get your pizza on whole wheat crust, and they had a lot of low-fat options on the menu. Everyone was very satisfied with their dinner.

Ultimate California Pizza
2500 N Kings Hwy
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577-3079


After dinner, my husband, me and his cousin went to play mini-golf, where we were effectively pulverized by his cousin's high score. On the last hole I would have gotten a hole-in-one, but something was wrong with the hole and my ball went in and after two or three seconds, popped out!!! Oh well.

On the way back home, we stopped at a BBQ place in VA called King's Barebeque Two. We drove Jim's grandparents home and they couldn't say enough good things about it. All 4 of us ordered pulled pork sandwiches and were definitely satisfied. The price was right, too. Each platter came with a sandwich, french fries, cole slaw and a drink and was only $4.

King's Famous Barbeque
2910 S Crater Rd
Petersburg, VA 23805-9223

Culinary Tour - New York City - SoHo

Over the Fourth of July weekend, my husband and I ventured into New York City. Recently, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened an annex in SoHo. (For those of you not familiar with NYC, SoHo is the neighborhood south of Houston street, on the southwest end of the island). Thanks to Yoko Ono's generosity, they have also opened a limited engagement exhibit called John Lennon, The New York Years.



If you live in the NY area and have any interest at all in music, this is a really fun museum. It costs $30, but you get your own headset that is your musical guide through the museum. As you pass exhibits, songs relevant to those artists play. For example, when we looking at the lyrics Madonna penned in a notebook, the lyrics were playing on our headphones. Anyway, my point is - it's worth the money if you're into rock n roll history. My favorite exhibit were the letter Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel wrote to each other while they were teenagers.

So now back to the food!

While we were there, we ate lunch, a snack, and dinner in the city. For lunch, we went to a pizza place called L'asso. It is located at 192 Mott Street off of Kenmare. We split a small Pizza Giardino, which was perfect for lunch. The pizza was really delicious, and worth the small argument my husband and I had while we were looking for a place to eat.

The Annex operates on a time entry system, so we still had some time to waste before we entered. It was a no brainer to stop by our favorite frozen yogurt place, Pinkberry (WARNING: link contains music so turn down your speakers if you're at work!). They were serving bing cherries as a topping because they were in season. Score! I got a small original yogurt with cherries and pineapple. Jim got a small original with kiwi and raspberries. What a great refreshing snack - and very low in calories compared to ice cream or other desserts.

After the annex (it took us a good 3 hours to go through it), we went to quite possibly the best mexican food restaurant I've ever been to. It's called La Esquina and it is located at 114 Kenmare Street. If you are in the area, GO HERE!! It's just that good. We had the Carnitas Michoacan (pork tacos) and the Tinga de Pollo, which is pulled chicken stew with tomato, chipotle and cinammon, served with avocado, cabbage and tortillas. We also got a side of yucca. For our drinks, Jim had a Michelada. This is any mexican beer, served over ice, lime and chipotle puree. I had something a little less adventurous, whit sangria. Both were very good, but the Michelada was a little too exotic for me. I liked the way it tasted, but don't think I could have a whole drink of it.

Overall Ratings:



L'asso: 3 1/2 stars, the pizza was good, but the service was sort of slow. Bobby Flay can't be wrong, right? Watch the clip above for a scene at L'asso from Bobby Flay's Throwdown.


Photo courtesy pinkberry.com
Pinkberry: 4 stars, there was a very long line, but on a hot summer day that always happens. The toppings are always fresh, and the order was perfect.


photo courtesy La Esquina
La Esquina: 4 stars, the decor in the restaurant was a little odd (naked mexican ladies who were far from models), but the food and service was excellent. For the amount of money our bill was, the food was well worth it.

Culinary Tour of Boston

This weekend, my husband and two other couples spent a long weekend in Boston. We've been there twice before, but I really love the city, so we decided to go back. So now, I will take you on a very small culinary tour of Boston. Warning: this tour is not for "serious" foodies. We ate where the locals suggested, and spent most of the weekend doing touristy things. These restaurants are by no means the creme de la creme.

Day 1

We didn't eat our first meal in Boston until Friday night because it took 7 hours to get there. Yes, 7 hours. We only live in NJ, but the traffic was awful. We stayed in Cambridge, so in the afternoon, we took a brief tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery while we waited for our other friends to arrive.

That night, we ate at Asgard Irish Pub. Sorry, I have no pictures for you - but I had the Irish Dip and my husband The Asgard burger. Both were very delicious. Another member of our party had the Irish Stout Pie and he loved it. Overall, it was an A. They would have gotten an A+, if it weren't for the drunk woman who almost passed out and threw up on us. (BTW - she wasn't dining at the restaurant, just a passer-by).

The rest of the night was spent barhopping in Cambridge. We ended up at a cute place called Tavern in the Square. Also recommended to us was Miracle of Science Bar and Grill, but that was more of a grill than a bar.

Day 2 - Sightseeing

On Saturday we went sightseeing in Boston. The weather really cooperated with us, too. All week, it said it was going to rain, so we all prepared for the worst. The storm held out until Sunday, though.

Saturday started out with a "quick" breakfast at Mariposa Cafe in Cambridge. The food here was good, it just took FOREVER, and the cafe had no customer service whatsoever. My bagel/egg sandwich was incorrect (no cheese, please!) and it was like a chore for them to correct it. It also took almost an hour to deliver three orders of waffles. When we asked, they simply replied, "oh, we only have one waffle iron, i guess she should have told you". Now, I know making waffles with one iron is tough, but no way would it take me an hour to produce three orders, and I DON'T EVEN OWN A RESTAURANT!! I had a mint mocha with my egg sandwich, and it was delicious. If you go there, I recommend getting your coffee product to go.




DO NOT ORDER THE WAFFLES!!!


Okay, now that breakfast was done, we headed into Boston. For most of the day, we did the Freedom Trail, which takes you around famous historical spots in Boston, all conveniently connected with a red line painted on the sidewalk. Here are some highlights:


City Hall


A memorial to Paul Revere


The Old North Church


Samuel Adams in front of Faneuil Hall


Petting Horses

We stopped at this point to have lunch. We ate at a place called the Black Rose outside of Faneuil Hall. I don't have any pictures of the food because it was really nothing to write home about - my hubby and I split a grilled chicken sandwich. Here are some pics of the interior though.








Back to sightseeing. We headed towards the Harbor next. It was such a beautiful day out, we spent some time just sitting and enjoying the soft breeze.


Near the Harbor


On the Harbor

After the harbor we went to Newbury Street, which is Boston's shopping district. We went in some stores that were way overpriced and browsed. Oh! We also caught a wine tasting at one of the liquor stores. I found a wine I liked but didn't write it down. All I know is it's a rose, it's from Oregon, and the label looks like an American Flag. Let me know if you know this wine!

To kill some time, we stopped at Whiskey's a bar on Boylston Street, which runs parallel to Newbury. If we were hungry, we would have chowed down on their $0.15 wing special, but we just had some beers instead.




After the drink, it was time to go to dinner. We had a reservation in the North End (Boston's Little Italy) at a restaurant called Al Dente. We waited an hour anyway, and were kind of annoyed, but all bad thoughts left our heads after we dined on the most amazing food.

My husband and I split an appetizer of spinach crepes. They were filled with spinach (not pesto) and ricotta and in the most divine cream sauce. I used my bread to soak most of it up. Hey! I earned it, with all the walking we did all day!


Best. Appetizer. Ever.

For our meals, I had tri-color tortellini in arrabiata sauce and hubby had steamed clams over linguine.







After that delicious meal, we were too full to really do anything. We went to a bar near the harbor and had a couple beers, then turned in for the night.

Day 3 - Harvard

Our last day in Boston, and here comes the rain. Not regular rain though, that misty rain you can't hide from under an umbrella. Since we were going to a museum and then driving home, it wasn't that big of a deal, though.

This morning, we tried a breakfast cafe across the street from Mariposa. It was called Luna Cafe and the food was a little slice of heaven. The staff were very friendly, and even though we had a big group, very accommodating. I love going to little places where the owners actually care if someone gets a good meal. I would highly recommend eating here if you're ever in Cambridge. They have something for everyone. They're also open at night.


Orange Marmalade French Toast


Blueberry Pancakes


After breakfast, we went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. We spent about 3 hours there and then packed in the car to head home. What a weekend!