The day on Seven Seas Explorer begins with a couple of features not often found on even the most luxurious of cruise ships.
On deck, there’s complimentary juice bar, where a barista is waiting to blend any combination of fresh vegetables and fruits to order into vitamin-rich potions. Meanwhile, Explorer’s chefs are already returning from a morning visit to the local market with baskets of fish and farm-fresh fruit and vegetables.
Regent Seven Seas prides itself in having the most luxurious ships afloat and when it comes to dining, every meal is an experience in effortless regal splendor. Unique culinary options and surprises are part of Regent’s all-inclusive dining experiences. Each restaurant has its own galley, team of chefs and unique style.
As Explorer sailed on a journey along the west coast of South America, it was a good opportunity to put the kitchens through their paces.
1) Get your bearings at Compass Rose
The grand columned entrance to the main dining room is triumphal and the dining room is big but divided into smaller spaces so it always seems intimate. You’ll find you’re always looking up in Compass Rose, whose ceiling is dominated by a vivid chandelier composed of hundreds of pieces of deep blue hand-made art glass dramatically suggesting surging waves hitting the shore.
I recommend starting with an appetizer like the fresh fois gras or mussels to give you more time to browse the extensive menu. The selections have continental inspirations, with a broad range from steaks and chops to seafood to pasta and risottos. There’s also a Canyon Ranch spa menu.
With all the expertise in the kitchen it seems extraneous to tell them how to do their work. But that’s an option on Explorer. In addition to the chefs’ own selections of the evening on the menu of Explorer’s Compass Rose restaurant, there’s a separate list of the meats and local fishes available that evening. You can choose the portion, the prep, the sauce and the side dishes and have them create it for you while you enjoy the appetizers.
For instance, one evening the chef’s choice suggestion of fresh-caught Chilean conger fish with a ginger sauce. But with the design-it yourself-option, the same fish could be cooked in any style, with any of a dozen different choices of sauce from garlic-herb butter to mango-peach salsa and a choice of half a dozen styles of potato plus a selection of vegetables as sides.
Ultimately, there were so many possible choices on one evening’s menu that I went with the chef’s daily six-course tasting menu degustation. Each plate was large enough to stand on its own as an entrée. Scrumptious, but after five large courses, I had no room left for what must have been a wonderful dessert. But even if you pass on the dessert menu, the pastry chefs’ tempting confections are hard to pass up. Every evening sees a plate of irresistible petit fours arrive to top off the meal.
The dinner menu was completely different each night for 20 nights of this cruise from Chile to California, with ample opportunities to sample local cuisines of the countries we visited. The main dining room has the broadest selection of wines on the ship and if you’ve had a complimentary wine offered any other day, you can order it for dinner.
2) The many shades of Chartreuse
It’s hard to miss this restaurant’s namesake pale lime color in the art-nouveau style glass panels and artworks in this Parisian-style dining room. Mais oui, the menu is French, with English translations that are so long on verbiage they should leave a copy of the menu on the table for reference when the dish actually arrives. But the resulting dishes need no translation.
For instance, there’s hand-cut Charolaise steak tartare in a hazelnut-Dijon emulsion topped with Perlita caviar d’Aquitaine. Or roasted Cévennes rack of lamb with rosemary-mint persillade and sugar snap pea sauce. Or try the seared barbary duck breast with glazed turnips, candied Morello cherries and sour cherry mustard.
It all comes with a list of complimentary French wines, including Heidsieck Monopole blue top Champagne. You have to reserve ahead as Chartreuse books quickly. An option is that on some sea days the restaurant is open for lunch.
3) A spin around the Pacific Rim
Explorer’s Asian restaurant wins the yummy award and its décor is straight out of an exotic Shangri La fantasy. An assembly of dozens of bronze Tibetan prayer wheels that you can spin at the top of a long entrance to the dining room are embossed with wise words. My favorite advice is: “You were given this life because you are strong enough to live it.” The only strength you need in this restaurant is willpower to avoid ordering everything on an exhaustive menu.
The chefs take their inspirations from all around the Pacific, as the designs on dramatic wall murals and enormous lamp shades suggest. Menu items blend ingredients and spices from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Cambodia.
The duck salad with watermelon with hints of mint, cashews and cooling cucumber is a good appetizer choice to set your palate to the right frequency. The dim sum is so fresh and succulent, you’ll want to order seconds.
The can’t be beat entrees include blackened cod and a delicious tempura-battered and fried soft shell crab. The Pacific Rim includes Canada, of course, but somehow the menu also offers Canadian Atlantic lobster, which becomes a wonderfully complex signature dish with time-zone-hopping ingredients served on shiso leaf and finished with orange ponzu sauce and spicy mayo.
Again, make reservations in advance, preferably before the cruise begins.
4) A primer on Prime 7
There’s a bronze bust of a bull at the entrance of Explorer’s signature steak house and a Picasso etching of a bull on the wall. Prime 7 restaurants are a feature on all four Regent Seven Seas ships, but the design here is a different take on club-style steak houses. The décor features purple trim and mirrored accents and the room is divided by screens to create romantic alcoves. The plates are eye catching: they’re rimmed with silver but from some angles they gleam like gold.
As you’d expect, the focus of the menu is USDA prime beef, chops and seafood. One surprising fail is that there was no vegetarian entrée listed. When one of the table guests asked for one, she was told that she should have ordered a vegetarian meal in advance.
Overall though, the preparation was excellent, with inventive twists. As an appetizer, I had a tower of lightly braised ahi tuna and avocado with a pomegranate soy dressing on the side that added a sweet top note. For an entrée, the Alaskan king crab came as a cluster of legs that tasted fresh from Arctic waters.
My only concern here is that the service seemed a little automatic. An amuse bouche was left on the table with no explanation that it’s a spicy tomato soup. Delicious as it was, any time you get something you didn’t order, you should get an explanation.
As always for steak houses, the rule is make reservations and come hungry. Prime 7 is also open for lunch on some sea days.
5) View from La Veranda
The rear of the pool deck is the breakfast and lunch buffet zone with daily specials that are constantly being refreshed, so the displays always seem to look perfect.
A drawback of the outside veranda deck by day is that an awning only covers half of the very sunny deck and there are no umbrellas to shade the tables around the rail that have the best view. There are plenty of window tables inside.
In the evening, those tables are prime locations, as the veranda gets transformed into a pop-up Italian-themed alternative restaurant Sette Mari (Seven Seas, get it?). Dinner starts with a daunting selection of antipasto including breads, olives and cheese that could make for a meal all by themselves.
6) Delightful dining on deck
Around the pool itself, there’s the all-day-long Pool Grill, which has its own seating area, a pizza bar and The Creamery, with fresh ice creams. At lunch time, the Grill offers many of the same dishes that are available in La Veranda, while at night it’s the place for grilled meat and seafood.
The signature burger in the Grill is freshly ground beef cooked to order and when it’s all piled together measures a full 6 inches tall, almost too big to get your mouth around. A tip for those who have already overindulged during the day is to ask for it without the bun.
And there’s always one last memorable feed before the cruise is over. It’s remarkable the lengths the crew go to through during an afternoon to clear the pool deck of lounge furniture and set up tables to transform it into the sexiest al fresco patio possible for the gala deck dinner.
Foods from all the restaurants are on offer and it’s a good idea to roam around the serving stations to develop a strategy before picking up a plate. The ship’s full contingent of chefs and staff make it a memorable meal, with live music and dancing afterwards.
It’s going to be tough going back home and not having a staff like this in the kitchen.
