As the Majestic Princess sails into Sydney Harbour tomorrow to a jamboree reception, with breakfast TV on board and a super-secret event planned for the harbour in the early hours, you can be sure of one thing: the guests will be royally fed.
Sydney’s newest and biggest ship will feature not one but two Michelin-starred chefs: Chinese chef Richard Chen at Harmony and three-hatted, French chef Emmanuel Renaut at La Mer.
Cruise Passenger was aboard Majestic Princess’ inaugural voyage, and has eaten at both restaurants.
If you like your food, Australia, you’re in for a multi-cultural team.
The Duck Master
Taiwan-born chef Chen was executive chef at Wynn Las Vegas’ Wing Lei when the restaurant became the first in North America to be awarded a Michelin star.
Chen is known as the “duck master” for his modern take on duck and other traditional Cantonese dishes using innovative Western ingredients and techniques.
He says his favourite dish is wok-fried lobster with XO sauce. We’d agree with that.
Diners can choose up to five courses for lunch or dinner. Starters include chilled abalone with green papaya salad, steamed pork spare ribs with squash and fermented black bean or Peking duck salad. There’s also a choice of two soups (herbal or shredded roasted duck with dried scallop) and the main specialties include sizzling chicken casserole with Sichuan sun-dried pepper, steamed sea bass or diced sausage with calamari, pickled daikon and chilli.
You can also order fried rice, noodles or vegetables on the side.
Desserts include red bean crème brulee; green tea cheesecake and sake-marinated melon with coconut pineapple ice cream; mango sago soup and pistachio gelato.
Chen dishes are beautifully crafted with a masterful balance of flavours and are super delicious. Diners have to pay $29 per person to dine at Harmony, but it’s worth it!
You can find the full menu here.
Over at the speciality La Mer restaurant, chef Renaut is working wonders with his seafood and meat dishes.
Diners are welcomed with two unusual tasters – crust-less sardine sandwiches and crispy chips of ox tongue. Very adventurous.
For hors d’oeuvres include regulars escargot, pate in dough or ahi tuna tartare and crunchy-coated egg with creamy yolk served with wild mushroom and wine sauce.
Sound good so far. It is!
For mains, there’s duck (magret de canard), tender roast pork tenderloin (filet de porc roti) and an equally impressive red snapper with scallop mousseline on a thin toasted bread slice served with lemongrass lobster sauce.
Desserts are a selection of floating island praline, chocolate and Chartreuse parfait, chocolate-mint tart or spice-roasted pineapple.
Renaut has created a tantalizing menu, showcasing authentic French dishes with his signature flair. Diners have to pay $35pp for dinner.
Cruisers on Majestic will be spoilt for choice when it comes to dining as the ship also has a Crown Grill – the ultimate steakhouse at sea, a lobster and dim sum bar on deck 16, a chopsticks noodle bar, Alfredo’s Pizzeria and Allegro Dining Room for traditional breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Read his menu here.
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Firstly, the ghastly embarkation at Shanghai was not Princess’s fault. Secondly, the fact that wines were not available was because us Aussies are such copious consumers and we kept emptying the cellars. Thirdly, the folk that met only ‘wingers’ must be so themselves as my girlfriend and I found plenty of interesting conversation and delightful company. The lack of a continuous promenade deck is an over sight of the designers. And service is often dealt out as to how one approaches the staff. We had no problems at all. Bev Friling
Loved it! Our only complaint was the disgraceful embarkation process in Shanghai. Aside from this, we experienced brilliant service from dining service, bar service and cabin steward service. The food was ‘to die for’, delicious, nutritious and beautifully presented. Shows and entertainment were funny and totally and thoroughly enjoyable! And also, we have such happy memories from our ‘Princess organised’ shore excursions!
I loved the ship on the Shanghai to Sydney repositioning. The service staff throughout were excellent – friendly, cheerful, obliging and efficient. The food was very good and I enjoyed the additional Asian offerings on the buffet. The ship was very comfortable, the only (slight) downside being the lack of a wrap around promenade deck. Unfortunately there seemed to be a number of whingeing oldies on the ship. It seemed as if many of them were only happy when they were grizzling about one triviality or another. Perhaps they should stay home, go back to P&O Australia or go to a caravan park next time.
Worst Princess cruise experience ever. Bad service, sometimes no service at all. When you order 5 choices of wine and they have none and then have to show you a piece of scrap paper to make a choice from.
No walk around promenade deck is bad enough but that just about sums the design of this ship up. If this was my first Princess cruise it would be the last.
Just came back to Au aboard Majestic Princess, the ship was beautiful but that was where it stopped, not a fun ship like other Princess cruises I have been on.
Did not find 1 person that was happy with the experience or 1 person who would travel on it again.
No music for the generation of cruisers that where on the ship, Market place a flop with nothing in the right place, at first they closed half of it at the start of peak times and you had to walk from one end to the other to find what you wanted.
With the warmer weather coming its time for crusing in class a great chef fantastic looking packages that suit i’m ready for fun please come aboard..