July 31, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Lileks is cruising.
I've been on exactly one cruise, on this ship, and it was actually pretty great. It was a family cruise, and I was the only person in my demographic (it leans heavily to the under eighteen and over fifty), but that actually turned out to be a plus; I wore my rattiest bathing suits and ugliest comfy shoes all week. Heaven. Really, it's pretty hard to go wrong sailing between the Greek Isles.
Most of my fellow passengers were experienced cruisers, and they displayed an obsession with food that was frankly astonishing. The food, to be honest, wasn't that good, except for the fresh fruit, upon which I gorged myself about six times a day. I also had a couple of good lobster tails. The rest of it ranged from uninspired to dreary. The only vegetables were wan, and drowned in mayonnaise or vinegar.
But there sure was a lot of it! If you wanted, you could have a six course meal every night. And everyone except me, my mother and my sister did. They seat you at a table with different people every night, so I got a decent cross section. And without exception, they* ordered everything they were entitled to. Not only that, they were shocked, and in a few cases indignant, when I didn't do the same. I was the lightest eater at our table--it was very hot in Greece--and without exception, they focused on me. "You're not going to have dessert?" they'd say in amazement. "I hope you're not on a diet."
No, I'd explain, just not particularly interested in another Teutonic construction of bland custard and soggy pastry.
"But it's free!" They'd say, as if there were some moral imperative to eat food one didn't want as long as one doesn't have to pay for it. One woman from Virginia told her husband "I think maybe she's anorexic" when she thought I couldn't hear her. I don't know why she would have thought that; I was sitting six inches from her. And if you've ever met me, you know that I'm about forty pounds and a healthy appetite off anorexic. In New York, I'm considered quite tubby.
But I did not laugh. I was raised to laugh at people behind their backs. It's called "manners".
I'm still at a loss to explain this behaviour. Tickets on the ship cost thousands of dollars; almost all the passengers were quite financially secure. I find it hard to imagine that any of them ever had to deny themselves food for financial reasons. So why did they suddenly go bonkers and start gorging themselves just because a cruise ship offered them an unlimited supply of mediocre meals?
* (the English speakers, at least; my mother doesn't speak another language, so that's who we sat with)
Posted by Jane Galt at July 31, 2007 9:19 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksBut it's free!
It really doesn't get much more complicated than that.
My singular cruising experience was similar. Everyone else was raving about the food, and it was OK, but on just about everything, I could do better. Presentation was generally lovely, but that was the best part. It's basically highest-end cafeteria food, which is a lot better than your basic cafeteria food, but shares the qualities of all mass-produced consumables -- the flavors are dulled and the textures are iffy at best. And everyone else was raving about it, and stuffing it away.
The ship was gorgeous, though.
Never, ever, dine, if it possibly can be avoided, in a setting in which 1000-plus, or even several hundred people, will be having their meals prepared at the same time. It is imposssible to cook well in this manner, absent the institution of slavery. The only extended voyages I've ever taken were on working vessels with small crews, and I'd wager I dined in a superior fashion to those who were supposedly traveling in a luxurious manner.
Every time business has taken me to New Orleans, Las Vegas or come other typical convention setting, I always avoid the hotel banquet where five hundred people are give their choice of hideously prepared chicken, beef, or fish, and instead skip out to some place where good food is treated with the care it deserves, by people who have spent the time needed to master their skills. To eat typical banquet fare in New Orleans is a mistake of monumental proportions, of course, and Las Vegas now has great restaurants, but even places like Orlando have pretty good options. For goodness sakes, get the heck out of the Hilton!
In my experience, mothers always speak another language.
I've also been on only one cruise, and my family and I saw the same thing. We were seated with the same people the whole time, and all of them ordered one of every offered entree at every meal: steak, lobster, etc. Sometimes they would eat a few bites of it and decide they didn't want it, sometimes they would order a second round. Same for appetizers, soup, dessert. Except for the mother, they weren't even overweight.
They had the same astonished attitude you saw when they noticed we weren't doing the same.
I guess they thought it was how to get maximum value from their expenditure: there's a Will & Grace episode where Grace gives her boyfriend hell because he gets fruit at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Sometimes, in my less-than-lucid moments,* I am half convinced that AYCE buffets will be the downfall of American civilization.
* = in other words, most of them
Go to Vegas, baby! There you WILL be considered anorexic. You've not really seen such a site as going to an all-you-can-eat buffet when a family of four all sit at a table (and one woman, I kid you not) used two straight-backed chairs to sit in, one for each cheek.
They will each use at least two large platters for gathering entrees, before they cruise the dessert patch, bringing back a few handfuls of small pastries, and usually at least one bowl of ice cream smothered in chocolate caramel syrup.
Replicate that to about 50% of the audience, and it is guaranteed to make a normal person lose their appetite. In Vegas you have the incredibly unhealthy obese, and those with finely honed bodies that look great under feathers. Not much in between.
This attitude is sadly extremely common. Even in normal restaurants, many of my dining companions feel that they have to get their "money's worth" by finishing everything brought to them, even if they are no longer hungry. The idea of receiving less than you have paid for, even if you don't want all of what you've paid for, is so repulsive to people, they would rather stuff themselves silly.
Yeah, Las Vegas is a real dichotomy between the feed lots and good-to-great restaurants. There are some great meals to be had there, and not just in places that run $100-plus per person, but the old Vegas still exists as well.
My mother in law once chewed out my wife for taking sushi at the all-you-can-eat asian buffet. Better, she said, to take only sashimi, because rice is filling but not expensive.
She operates on the "attempt to bankrupt the restaurant" principle, apparenlty.
For my part, I'm inclined to regard all-you-can-eat raw fish as a bad idea.
It's a shame that so many restaurants feel market pressure to serve up gigantic portions, instead of cooking meals of a size consistent with a healthy appetite, with good ingrediants, as well as possible. The opposite phenomena can be frustrating as well, of course; expensive restaurants which serve teeny-tiny meals in which more care has been exercised on presentation than on taste.
I never ate so much fruit as when I went on a cruise. Regrettably I ate a lot of other stuff too.
Jane, did you lift a Kathy Griffin line? Wowee.
At one time, it was a very useful survival strategy to eat everything one had access to. I suspect that many people have a genetic predispisotion to do so. Presumably we will eventually adapt to an environment where food is plentiful... those of you who are uninterested in eating everything or repulsed by it are probably showing signs of this adaptation by the human species.
While I am able to restrain myself, there is a definite part of me that wants to eat everything that I have access. When I stop to consider why I feel this way, the little voice inside my head tells me that if I don't eat it now, I won't be able to eat it later. Total bunk, of course, but apetites can be difficult to ignore.
Also, when people go on vacation, I think that they tend to consciously or unconsciously relax their inhibitions . . . unfortunately, the metabolism doesn't care if you're overeating on vacation.
EI
Speaking of the AYCE buffet...
A few years back, I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. When you hike 15-20 miles a day, and your dinner at the end is some pre-packaged rice or pasta dish boiled over a camp stove, breakfast is a packet or two of oatmeal, and lunch is dried out bagels or tortillas with cheese or peanut butter, you lose quite a lot of weight, develop a fierce appetite, and get some terrible cravings for various foods.
Fortunately, a few towns that the trail passes near have all you can eat buffets, and hikers would come in and go to town. One day, a small group of us (all of us tall, strapping young fellas) found out that the term "all you can eat" had a more literal meaning than we'd thought. After really putting the hurt on the restaurant, a manager came to us and said, "Boys, I'm afraid that's ALL you can eat."
86ed from the buffet. Not sure if it's my proudest or most shameful moment.
The wife and I have been on a couple of cruises courtesy of the in-laws who wanted to spend time with the grandchildren.
The food was actually pretty good. This may have to do with the fact that the ships are smaller than average for cruise lines and that the demographics skew to those 60+.
The odd thing that I noticed is that although there was three sittings per day in the dining rooms that a goodly number of people, those less than 50, teenagers and children, consumed almost all of their meals in the buffet style Lido where the food was acceptable but hardly noteworthy.
Go figure!
I've met you at a blogger party in NYC a few years ago. Assuming you've stayed approximately the same weight since then, you're not tubby...even in NYC. Not anorexic either, but certainly svelte...even in NYC.
I have cruised once: a cruise won on a TV game show(!) in 1987. The ship, the Costa Riviera, was relatively small -- VERY small in comparison to the behemoths out there now -- and had an Italian crew. Since we went out of Florida and plied a Caribbean route the passengers were mostly American, and so was the food, albeit with a kind of Italian feeling about it. I don't remember anything specific about the food except that (a) it was of course plentiful, and (b) it was generally quite good.
The one cruise I was on had food that qualified as "very good, by suburban standards". No risks, not much in the way of contrasting flavors, no use of the bitter side of the palate, too much use of fruit (often good, in the Caribbean) and way, way too much butter, but otherwise nothing problematic. I can absolutely understand those who ate bottomless amounts of it. That's what it's designed for, after all.
Portion sizes in restaurants are pretty much gargantuan. I like the Ratatouille idea where there were about four very small bites of the entree on the plate. The rest was all eye candy where the goo was sloshed.
An effective idea for some, seems to be to order your meal, then ask that half of it immediately be placed in a to-go box, and then be served only what is left. Cuts your portion in half, so you don't feel like you're missing out, and you have another meal for another time.
One dieting theory holds that you should not eat more than five bites of any single food item, as after five you no longer fully appreciate the flavor.
And people say people won't overuse health care if they're insulated from the costs...
I do realize that I'm the only one who thinks this, but I always feel compelled to pipe up in these conversations. One of my major problems with restaurant food is that it's almost impossible to find a restaurant that will actually serve me a full meal. Cheesecake factory will, as will Bennigan's, but that's about it.
Of course, this may be related to the fact that I'm a 20-year-old guy who alternates, depending on the season, between dancing thirty hours a week and lifting weights four or five times a week. I have a pretty healthy metabolism.
Jadagul: Oh, for the days when I had that problem!
Might I suggest the essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace? He chronicles his experience taking a cruise. Interesting perspective on things, and quite well written.
I've been on a cruise before. Some of the food was wonderful; some wasn't that great (it was never the same meal twice in a row that was poor). My family tended to each order a different entree to get a taste of what each other was served. Nobody that I recall gave us grief over skipping a course, but of course since I was a child I *always* wanted to try the sweets instead of the salad.
A colleague once commented that it's interesting that people will continue to eat at a buffet even when their marginal utility is negative.
He was the same one who applied game theory to potluck dinners: You "win" if your contribution is worse than the average dish served.
I was also deeply disappointed in the first cruise food I had. Like a high-end cafeteria. Perhaps the people who rave about it are commenting on their own taste.
One dieting theory holds that you should not eat more than five bites of any single food item, as after five you no longer fully appreciate the flavor.
...and since very few people will have the time and energy to prepare more than four or five unique dishes for a dinner table, you've suddenly cut your food intake to 1/3 of a normal serving. Clever, if it works for anyone.
Megan, I've been on that ship, too, and think "dreary" was far too kind a description of the food most of the time. I wasn't planning to be on a diet, and didn't need to be on one in the first place, but I lost a few pounds over the course of two weeks, as a result of inedible dinners. I had hoped dessert would provide sustenance of a sort, but I was "not particularly interested in another Teutonic construction of bland custard and soggy pastry," either and ate a lot of fruit as well.
Nice ship. Lousy food.
Jadagul-
I used to feel the same way. A few years into grad school, I felt differently.
Age does something to the metabolism.
Right now, though, it's hard for me to comment objectively on portions, because I'm fighting a cold and colds always make me hungry. I'm eating all sorts of crap right now.
As to cruises, I went on one, and the food was OK, but nothing to write home about. Mostly I just liked the setting. I found it relaxing.
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