Haute Cuisine and Comfort Foods Are Yours on Regent Seven Seas Cruises

What a difference a day makes!

That’s because when you sail on Regent Seven Seas Cruises – and you make a special food request within 24 hours of your meal – you can have practically anything you want, cooked the way you like, so you can enjoy delicious food that’s custommade to your palate.

I speak firsthand when I say that the culinary team on Regent Seven Seas Voyager recently handled all of my food requests – with accuracy and aplomb. Anyone who sails with me knows that I’m a professional dieter. I come aboard with my own bottle of lowfat salad dressing, low-calorie mayonnaise, and a wealth of requests. Then I ask for no olive oil on anything. A simple baked potato accented with my own bottle of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. And specially made lowfat carrot cake that substitutes pumpkin puree for fattening oil. (It’s even better than the full-freight version!)

The truth is, says Executive Chef Benoit Tesson, that as long as you give the culinary team 24 hours of advance notice, you can have the special-order meals of your dreams.

Of course, it all starts before you embark, when you notify the culinary team months’ in advance of your cruise. According to Chef Benoit, the ship’s team can handle any request – for diets that are keto; gluten-free; dairy free; kosher; lowfat; low sodium; diabetic; and vegan/plant based. (In fact, the Regent Seven Seas Cruise line overall has the largest collection of plant-based cuisine at sea. More on this in a minute).

I believe that most cruisers are unaware that if you just give the chef 24 hours’ notice, you can have a special order to tantalize your tastebuds. My special orders included lowfat tunafish salad for lunch; simple grilled shrimp and nonfat ratatouille for dinner; plus a dessert of Nutella “ice cream,” made with coconut milk and no added sugar. And I continually thanked Chef Benoit and his team for making it possible for me to cruise and still fit into my bathing suit every day!

Most travelers, I believe, also don’t know that Regent Seven Seas Cruises can easily also handle your requests for kosher meals. When you let the team know in your ore-booking questionnaire, you can make your kosher requests, “and we pre-order vacuum-packed kosher meals,” says Chef Benoit. For compliance, the culinary staff also uses a special oven, with special equipment, utensils, china and even silverware that is all vacuum-sealed. “And a kosher chicken is on the menu every Friday,” says Chef Benoit.

Oceans of Options

You can also easily order off the menu on those days when you don’t have the foresight for 24 hours’ notice. The cuisine in the Compass Rose, for example, offers oceans of options to please everyone’s palate. 

There’s a full plate of pizazz in the entrée selection – you can order shrimp, Maine lobster tail, scallops, salmon, dover sole and Branzino with special sauces of garlic-herb butter, Hollandaise, lemon cream, mango peach salsa, beurre blanc, melted butter and creamy herb sauce. These nightly available selections are in addition to the featured selections on the daily menu. The meat dishes are equally extensive – Black Angus New York strip steak, rib-eye steak and filet mignon; New Zealand lamb chops; veal medallions; half-roast chicken; and a pork chop. Sauces rum the gamut from green-peppercorn to mushroom to hickory-barbecue. These oceans of options mean that you really can “try it and diet” no matter your preferences, by just showing up in the Compass Rose without giving 24’  hours notice as to what you desire.

Vegetables and side dishes are also a-plenty.

A degustation menu is also available daily. For example, you can opt for vegetable Caponata; Maui red-onion soup; farfalle pasta with shrimp and pesto; a pear-and-rosemary sorbet; and chicken Kiev followed by dessert of spiced Baba au rhum with Tahitian vanilla cream. And that’s just one meal!

Canyon Ranch spa cuisine is also available – yay! – and so you can pick your dinner according to the nutritional information listed on the menu. For example, one great dinner is of the vegetable caponata (105 calories) ; beef consommé (61 calories) and entrée of delicious Latin-spiced Alaskan halibut filet (245 calories).

Just voice your choice in the Compass Rose, or any of the other restaurants on board, including La Veranda (with a great buffet lunch); Prime 7, which is a Michelin-worthy steakhouse; or Chartreuse serving authentic French cuisine.

It’s Very Vegan

Regent Seven Seas Cruises is also making waves – huge waves – in the fact that the line offers the largest selection of plant-based cuisine at sea. Vegans, now you can take delight in a wealth of offerings that offer taste without waist. New dishes like Wild Mushroom Tart with Brittle Pie Crust, Mushroom Duxelles and Red Pepper Coulis; Falafel Fritters with Harissa Mayo, Cucumber, Mint, and Capers; Spiced Potato & Green Pea Samosas with Tamarind Chutney; and Summer Berry Pudding Chantilly showcase a range of cuisines including Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Italian, Malaysian, and more. Other menu highlights include nourishing Power Bowls and Poke Bowls, hearty pastas and noodles, light and refreshing salads and soups and decadent items like an Impossible^™ Cheeseburger, and a Peach and Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal-Almond Topping. 

So, in other words, if you’re into broccoli,  and other plant-based cuisine, you’re in luck on Regent Seven Seas Cruises. A floret? I’m all for it!

For more about my wanderlust adventures, follow me on Instagram at @Debbikickham.