The Seven Seas Grandeur debuted for Regent Seven Seas Cruises late last year as the third ship in a class that launched in 2016 with the Seven Seas Explorer.
While the ship offers few surprises to experienced Regent guests, each successive ship has doubled down on what the cruise line does best. And one of those things is the Culinary Arts Kitchen, a distinguishing feature of the Explorer class.
The 18-station version onboard the Grandeur, and the classes it offered, did not disappoint during a two-night cruise from Miami in January.
Stephano adds blueberries as a final touch to crepes dusted with powdered sugar and topped with allspice ice cream. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
Chef John Stephano guided our group through recipes for pasta al limone and French crepes with a rapid-fire, friendly and energetic approach.
"Who's having fun?" he asked his 18 students about 10 minutes into the cooking class. That question was followed by another: "Who's learning something?"
"All right, two for two," Stephano said, reacting to the many hands raised after both questions.
If there was a recipe for the hands-on culinary class Stephano teaches on the Grandeur, it would be equal parts fun and learning. His approach gave the class zest and kept students on their toes, while his food prep tips and tricks came almost too fast to keep up with.
A class above the rest
Regent isn't the only cruise line with culinary class kitchens, but having taken classes on both the Explorer and the Grandeur -- and on quite a few other ships -- I find Regent's to be among the best.
One key is the simplicity of the recipes taught. In the hourlong class, the lemon pasta and crepes my fellow students and I made were a success, aside from a few burnt crepes.
Stephano discusses the magnetic bottom of the induction cookware used in the Culinary Arts Kitchen. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
I have been through at least one cooking class on a cruise ship where the dishes were so hard that I felt inept, even like a bit of a failure. But these recipes were achievable and also something I'd be excited to try to make again at home.
Regent makes some things easier and faster for participants. We started with spaghetti that had been parboiled, so into the frying pan it went with a little extra-virgin olive oil.
As he showed us the steps to the dish, Stephano recalled growing up in an Italian household in Philadelphia, where his grandmother would parboil enough pasta to last a week. Home from school, he would pop some out of a freezer bag and make his own after-school snack.
But as simple as pasta may seem to make, even the more experienced cooks in the class lapped up some of Stephano's tips to make it better. How long to parboil pasta? A minute-and-a-half less than the done time on the side of the pasta box. Rinse it? "No way," he told us; just drain it in a strainer. Add oil? Sure. Your pasta won't stick -- but neither will the sauce you make for it. How much salt to put in your pasta water? Plenty.
"It should taste like the ocean," chef said.
After Stephano walked through the steps of each dish, students were sent back to their cooking stations to replicate the magic. It wasn't long before the scent of lemon and the sizzle of cooking pasta got my appetite going.
Ingredients for pasta al limone include parboiled spaghetti, olive oil, lemon juice and zest, starchy pasta water, Parmesan cheese and basil. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
Time passed quickly as I tried to keep the recipe on course. Our sampler class was only an hour, but classes typically take two and include more than two dishes.
My pasta al limone, topped with basil and Parmesan, turned out intensely lemony and creamy. My crepes, cooked in clarified butter, were amazingly thin from following Stephano's technique, and they were delicious topped with powdered sugar, blueberries and allspice ice cream.
I put a few dirty dishes in the wrong spots and banged my hand opening the still-new utensil drawer at my station, but the sweet smell of success pervaded both my station and the entire kitchen as my classmates turned their ingredients into a finished product.
The Grandeur hosts twice-daily classes on sea days and a single late-day class when ships are in port. Stephano also leads culinary safaris ashore, such as a visit to a spice market in Belize made earlier this year.