Last time I cruised with Silversea, in March 2009, there were five themed menus to choose from in the cruise line's super fine dining restaurant Le Champagne. a Relais & Chateaux collaboration and the nearest thing to a Michelin-starred restaurant at sea, according to executive chef Rudi Scholdis.
On new ship Silver Spirit there are 11 themed menus, with foie gras and Champagne, game, cavier and truffles among the new ones, adding to the previous selection of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Italian, North American and Spanish.
In May, I had the Burgundy one and the food was superb, but I reckon Julie Le Gallic, the chef in Le Champagne on Silver Spirit, went even better.
We had the foie gras et Champagne menu, which really was foie gras with everything - a foie gras terrine to start, white bean soup with foie gras, and then steak topped with foie gras. I wondered if the "surprise" in the dessert would be that there was foie gras inside, but alas there was not.
Or given it was a very minty dish maybe that was a good thing!
It reminded me of a restaurant I took my family to in France once which we called "Death by duck" as everything was indeed some part of a duck. In fact they even gave us a bill at the end (sorry couldn't resist that)!
I know a lot of people have an issue with foie gras, but with 10 other menus to choose from it's easy to avoid if you do have a problem with it. As I can't eat fish or seafood, it was a fantastic menu for me. I didn't have to ask if chef could prepare something different, which I hate doing, and the food was delicious to boot.
In fact my only complaint was that the soup was too rich. In my humble opinion, more bean and less foie gras would not go amiss. Several of us just couldn't finish it.
As ours was the $200 per person degustation menu, each course was served with a different wine - or in this case Champagne.
Usually maitre d'-cum-sommelier Marcello Belelli will explain where the wines come from, their finer qualities and why they have been selected for that particular course but not this time as we didn't have quite the right Champagne (it was due to be loaded in Barcelona, after we had disembarked).
However, he did tell us of a couple booked on Silver Spirit for five months who have reserved a table in Le Champagne every night. And of a past passenger who always dines in Le Champagne, asks for a hot dog and buys a $900 bottle of wine to go with it.
"Can he go off menu like that," I wondered. For $900 a bottle he can do whatever he likes, Marcello replied.
Jane Archer
