Category: Reviews

American Seasons — on Nantucket

One of Nantucket’s long running restaurants, American Seasons has been serving imaginative meals for some years, and opened this year on May 5. The friendly neighborhood style restaurant is on Centre Street, not far from downtown and a very short walk from the Nantucket Hotel and Resort.

Nearly every restaurant on the island has had struggles with their supply chain and finding sufficient staff. But, while the staff was friendly and knowledgeable, the menu was shortened, with just six appetizers (chicken liver parfait, herbed greens salad, roast sea scallops, daily crudo, green bean salad and a duck egg) and six entrees (roast pork shoulder, Giannone [that’s a brand name] roast chicken, honey roasted halibut, salmon filet, rainbow carrots, and Muscovy duck breast).

Our choice of the Chicken Liver Foie Gras Parfait ($23) with house made vegetable pickles and brioche toast was a real winner. It was smooth, rich and delicious, although we admit we really couldn’t finish it all and still have room for the entrée.

But remember Restaurant Rule 1:

You don’t have to clean your plate! Eat what you want and leave the rest!

Our other appetizer was Island Grown greens and Herbs ($19) with apple-walnut oil vinaigrette and Pecorino cheese. A lot of it. In fact, all the grated cheese brought back the old joke about “dust my wets,” referring to pasta dishes. The salad was pretty good, though, if a bit less than we expected.

Our halibut dish, Honey Roasted Halibut with wild mushrooms and sunchoke puree, topped with a hazelnut crust had better be good, since it cost $50. And indeed, it started out that way, but once we’d managed to eat all the sunchoke puree, it was dry and not all that tasty. So we observed Rule 1.

Finally, our other entrée was the roast chicken ($44) with mushroom cream, fingerlings, trumpet royals and a sherry vinegar jus.

This brings up Restaurant Rule 2:

Never order chicken in s restaurant. They (usually) have more interesting things than that.

It was not particularly impressive. It was bordering on dry, and really didn’t have a lot of taste. Our bill was $179 including tax, but before tip, and included two $15 gin-and-tonics.

We hope that they polish up their menu, because this Is usually quite a good restaurant.

Stephen Spielberg’s Slum Clearance Story

Stephen Spielberg’s take on West Side Story seems to be about a slum clearance project rather than a modern take on the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. I will assume that you are familiar with the story: this article contains plot spoilers.

I am not sure exactly why Spielberg made this movie other than perhaps to comment on the evils of urban renewal. While he claimed that this was closer to the Broadway production than to the 1961 Robert Wise movie, it really isn’t true. Gone is the ballet sequence and Laurents’ dialog has been replaced by Tony Kushner’s talky speeches which make the movie drag when it should soar. And the destruction of upper West Side tenements was never part of the plot of the script devised by Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein.

Only part of the opening sequence is really choreographed as a dance number, and it eventually devolves into a brutal fight. And the dialog that follows has some pretty cruel lines that seem unnecessary. In the original show, Lieutenant Shrank (Corey Stoll) and Officer Krupke (Brian d’Arcy James) come on for just over a minute and deliver 5 lines about cooperating with them and leave. In this version, Shrank’s nasty comments on the Jets and Sharks go on for about 4:45, and includes this winner:

“By the time you get out, this will be a shiny new neighborhood of rich people. With Puerto Rican doormen to chase trash like you away.”

Filmed in sets more like a bombed out city than the Upper West Side housing projects it is really depressing to watch and is possibly a major indication of why audiences are staying away from a movie which, though problematic, has real merit in many other scenes.

Kushner also took it on himself to invent backstories that don’t add much of interest. Tony, in Kushner’s version, had spent a year in prison for nearly killing a boy in a gang fight. Just the guy you’d want your sister to marry!

And for no reason, both Bernardo (David Alvarez) and Chino (Josh Andres Rivera) are amateur boxers. While playwright Arthur Laurents described Chino as a sweet-faced young boy, whom Anita and Bernardo want Maria to marry, Kushner piles it on, making Chino not only a boxer, but a student studying accounting and (snort!) “adding machine repair.” Why do we need to know this? It explains why this Chino wears glasses?

You probably have read enough about this movie already to know that the character of Doc, who runs the drugstore where the Jets hang out has been replaced by Valentina, the late Doc’s wife, played by Rita Moreno, who was Anita in the first movie. This gives her a chance to comment on the story from the Puerto Rican point of view as well as advise Tony. It works quite well.

Laurents, in his book Mainly on Directing, praises the economical use of lines as a technique he learned working on radio. He points out that only 2 lines separate Anita’s discovery that Tony had just left Maria’s bedroom and the beginning of the powerful song “A Boy Like That.” Kushner observed that precept in that scene but unfortunately not in many other scenes in this overly long movie.

There is a lot of other parts of this movie that deserve praise: unlike the first movie, all the performers do their own singing, and they are far better actors than in the Wise film. (In his book, Laurents notes that the acting in that movie was terrible.) And further, the Sharks are actually Latinx actors, not white guys and girls painted brown.

Tony and Maria, the star-crossed lovers, are played by 27 year old Ansel Elgort and 20 year old Rachel Zegler, although neither matches Larry Kert or Carol Lawrence in singing ability. Both sing well enough to seem convincing in their roles. Zegler as the rather young Maria clearly has fallen for Tony, but there is only one place where that intense love shows in her singing: in the power duet with Anita (Ariana DeBose), “A Boy Like That,” that to me is the best musical number in the show.

Elgort has a light, pretty tenor voice, but he never really cuts loose with passion either in his singing or his acting. In fact, he is the only actor whose lip synching of his performance during sound recording seems off. This is possibly because he was singing more strongly in the studio than he was on the set, and his mouth movements didn’t quite match his singing. For comparison, here is Aaron Tveit singing Maria with real passion.

Ariana DeBose has received a lot of praise for her acting, dancing and singing, and it is much deserved. “A Boy Like That” is certainly her top number. However, in this duet with Maria, she doesn’t hold on to her notes as long as she should to blend better with Maria. But her performance leading the big dance number “America” is outstanding.

To me the strongest acting by far came from David Alvarez as Bernardo. He communicated a strong, powerful gang leader ready to take on anyone. You can’t take your eyes off him!

Justin Peck’s choreography was certainly different from that of Jerome Robbins, but while the Prologue was rather straightforward, the dancing in the Mambo sequence at the Dance at the Gym was truly thrilling. On the other hand, the Rumble wasn’t ballet. It was just a violent fight with Tony eventually holding Bernardo down and hitting him repeatedly until someone stopped him. This was recapitulating the violence he was imprisoned for and was in terrible taste. Of course, he eventually stabs and kills Bernardo after Bernardo knifes Riff and that would have been more than enough.

The original orchestrations were by Irwin Kostal and Sid Ramin, but with Bernstein editing their work so he gets an orchestration credit as well. Orchestrations for this film were by Doug Besterman, Michael Starobin and Garth Edwin Sunderland. Nearly all of the music sounded like Bernstein’s originals except Tonight. Bernstein marked this number as “Moderate Beguine Tempo” in other words a dance rhythm. Part of that is the repeating Da-da da-Da-da-da-da in the accompaniment. But in the Broadway cast recording, there is also a bass line that is off-the-beat—on-the-beat that is completely missing. This helps move the song along. There were also a few odd orchestral passages in the Prologue that I never heard before.

One of the most powerful numbers in Act I is “Cool,” where Riff and the Jets sing about keeping their tension contained until the forthcoming rumble. But instead, in this version, Tony sings it. Riff has bought a gun from a bartender and the song seems to be about tossing the loaded gun around among themselves. Again, this was nothing envisioned in the original LRB script, and considering that the gun did not need to be cocked to fire, was rather stupid.

Musically, my favorite part of West Side Story has always been the Tonight Quintet, featuring Tony, Maria, Anita, Riff (Mike Faist), Bernardo and the Sharks and Jets. On stage this can be very effective, grouping them to suit the music. In the film, this is harder to do, and revolving shots between the five groups just doesn’t work as well. The vocal sound, however, was outstanding.

Usually, the Somewhere Ballet is included in WSS productions, where Tony and Maria and a couple of the Jets and Sharks battle out the Rumble again in ballet form, while an offstage soprano sings “There’s a Place for Us.” It’s a shame that this was lost and giving this song to mezzo Rita Moreno to talk her way through didn’t have the same kind of effect without the ballet. But it was nice to give her this honor.

“Gee, Officer Krupke” was inserted in the first act to give some comic relief but the tragedies hadn’t happened yet. Honestly, this was one of the least funny stagings of this number that I’ve seen. Needs more vaudeville, I guess.

You may have read that Sondheim hated his lyrics to “I Feel Pretty” and wanted to cut the song, as did Spielberg. But fortunately, Kushner intervened because he felt that the suspense of Maria not knowing that Tony was dead was important. And it is a good thing they didn’t, because this number is a standout in this movie, performed by the women who work nights cleaning Gimbels, including Maria, of course.

The ending is close to the original, where Chino finds Tony and shoots him just as Maria arrives. In the original they sing a bit of “Hold my hand and we’re halfway there,” from Somewhere before Tony dies. I missed that but when both gangs walk off together, it was still extremely effective.

So, overall, a mixed bag. I wish they had lived up to their promise to stay close to the original, since the cast would have done it well.

Newman’s Own Pizzas

We thought that the Newman’s Own pizzas we say in the grocer’s freezer would be a nice change from our making our own. The pictures, at least, looked enticing. So we picked up a couple of them: Supreme and Harvest Vegetable.

The pizzas come in a box and sealed in plastic as well, on a cardboard disk about 10 ¾ inches. So, the pizzas are about 10 ½ inches each.

You cook them in a 425˚ F oven for 10-12 or 11-13 minutes: the veggie one takes the slightly longer time. You are supposed to remove them from the cardboard disk, but the picture didn’t make that clear, and after we put them in the oven, we discovered that fact in the text, and used our pizza peel to lift them off the cardboard to continue cooking. You are supposed to cook them until the cheese melts and the crust browns a bit. Because of our snafu, this took a bit longer then 12 minutes, but they came out looking pretty nice.

We cut them into 6 pieces each.

While we thought the flavors of both pizzas were quite good, they really were diminutive. The thickness was less than 1/8 inch, except for the occasional pepper or sausage lump. The pepperoni was sliced so thin it only had one side. Surprisingly, the ingredients suggested that this was a yeast dough. It certainly didn’t rise much.

The package said that a serving was 1/3 of a pizza, or two of the six slices implied in the package picture. That was about 250 calories, which is not going to fill you up very much. Each of the 6 slices weighed about 1.8 oz, meaning that the whole baked pizza weighed about 10 oz. Initially the pizzas we 15.7 or 17 oz meaning that there was at least a 5 oz water loss in baking. By contrast, the pizza we usually make produces slices of about the same dimensions that weigh about 5 oz each.

Essentially, this was a tasty 2-dimensional pizza, that left us kind of hungry. I guess if we had looked at the grocery receipt and found they were only about $7.50 each, we shouldn’t have been surprised. We did go away hungry, though.

Ten products you can skip –as seen on TV

Cable news, even when its reporting is sound, is rife with advertising of products you never heard of. And for good reason, advertising is relatively cheap on cable news and anyone can flood the news with “wonderful new products” that probably aren’t that great.

Prevagen does not improve your memory, as explained in this Harvard Health blog. . You have probably seen Prevagen ads everywhere. Targeted particularly at seniors who may experience normal word finding difficulties, the claims may mention “studies,” but not “doctors,” because no doctor recommends. It. Allegedly extracted from jellyfish (apoaequorin) actual studies have shown no significant effect, although by rearranging their data (called p-hacking) Quincy Biosciences has claimed it does. The FDA does not agree as explained in this Science Based Medicine article. The Global Council on Brain Health concludes that “there is no convincing evidence to recommend daily dietary supplements for brain health in healthy older adults.”

The ASPCA does not help your local animal shelter. Despite their tear-jerking ads, the ASPCA is a New York City organization, and is not an umbrella organization for your local SPCA. Give to your local animal shelter instead. Further the ASPCA has been criticized for euthanizing pets rather than saving them.

Zerowater is a water filtering pitcher which takes about six minutes to filter a quart of water. Consumer Reports rated it Very Good and the competing Britta filter Excellent. It takes only about 1:15 to filter a quart of water. However, the Zerowater seems to removes 98% more contaminants. Unless your tap water has an unpleasant taste or smell, these may not be that valuable.

Mr Clean Magic Eraser. These products look like a good idea and have positive reviews, although it is not clear how they improve on a damp paper towel and some SoftScrub. According to reviews at The Spruce, “Because the eraser works by scrubbing at the surface with tiny but extremely hard threads, you should not use on highly glossy or satin finishes….it is not appropriate for paneling or wood finished surfaces. It will strip away the surface and create damage and the sponge does begin to break down after [several] uses.

Tac Shaver by Bell and Howell. The reviews of this shaver are mixed, but according to this review apparently it didn’t last long and the beard trimmer didn’t do much. The Bell and Howell company you may remember from years back essentially got out of the technology business in the 2000’s and is now just a name owned by Westview Capital Partners.

COQ10 with Turmeric – If you are taking statins, a COQ10 supplement won’t do much of anything more. And turmeric is mostly good in curries.

Flex Seal is one of those As Seen on TV pitches you probably are skeptical of. You should be. It works for some things, but has a cumulative review of 1.5 out of 5 stars.

Yoshi Copper Grill Mat– It “sort of works” but can’t be placed over an open flame. You could use it on a gas grill with covered burners, though.

Spin Power – is a multi-outlet charging station for your cordless devices. It does not include any spot for phones that can be charged by induction. It has mixed reviews on Amazon as you might expect from anything from ASOTV.

WATCHMAN – is an implant from Boston Scientific for stroke prevention. It is FDA approved and in wide use, But it was criticized in a handful of studies cited by Dr David Becker from Chestnut Hill Temple Cardiology and by Dr John Mandrola of Baptist Medical Associates of Louisville. If you are a candidate for this implant, discuss these objection with your cardiologist. The product has been generally successful.

Spurtles – I never heard the word outside of the commercials from Lucinda’s Kitchen. They seem to be a set of wooden kitchen utensils made of acacia wood. Lucinda claims these exactly fit pans and jars and are more useful than what you have now. (I seriously doubt that.) You must hand wash them rather than tossing them in the dishwasher. This review calls them low-quality, not durable and having delayed delivery.

We try ‘Freshly’: delivered meals of little distinction

Freshly has been advertising heavily on TV and the Internet, promising “meals cooked by chefs and sent to you fresh.” The meals aren’t terribly expensive, amounting to $8.99 per meal in small quantities and $7.99 per meal if you commit to 12 per week.

We too advantage of an introductory offer and ordered six meals, figuring that we would order the second six after we’d tried them out. As you will see, we never got that far.

We placed our order on March 30 for 6 meals: two each of

Slow-cooked Pork and Herbed Gravy with Skillet Kale and Roasted Potatoes
Steak Peppercorn with Sautéed Carrots and French Green beans
Homestyle Chicken with Butternut Mac and Cheese

We got an acknowledgment that they would be delivered on Friday April 3, and they did come late that afternoon, but after our dinner plans had already been decided as homemade pizza.

The meals come packed in an insulated box surrounded by two sheets of frozen gelatinized water-ice. The meals were cold but not frozen and we quickly refrigerated them. Their literature says that they should keep for at least 5 days, or you should freeze them to keep longer. They also noted that we should use them fresh by the Use By dates, which were April 9 and 10. You can heat any of them up in the microwave in around 3 minutes.

Saturday April 4, we decided to try the Slow-cooked Pork and Herbed Gravy. We supposed there would be real pieces of pork in the dish, but it was for the most part present only in very small granular pieces, like bits of ground beef. These meals are not for hearty appetites, the pork dish was rated at 420 calories, and the portions were small. But we are dealing with the old Catskills joke here: “The food is terrible and such small portions.”

The pork mixture had an unpleasant aftertaste that grew with each bite. We found we had some leftover homemade applesauce in the refrigerator, and by alternating bites of applesauce with the pork mixture, we were able to finish eating it. The Skillet Kale was another story. While there are number of well-known techniques to reduce the strong flavor of kale, they didn’t seem to have used them. It allegedly contained turkey-bacon crumbles but we didn’t notice them. The taste was simply vile. We rated this dish as one of the worst dinners we had ever had.

But we still had two more meals to try. Steak Peppercorn with Sautéed Carrots and French Green Beans seemed innocuous enough, so we had it for dinner on Tuesday April 7, long before the April 10 Use By date. The beef was actually Flat-Iron Steak, but their literature seemed to indicate that they had marinated it in something, so it was fairly tender.

However, by the third bite we knew we were in trouble. There was a taste and aftertaste that was so strong it began to make us feel nauseous, and we didn’t finish it. The carrots and beans were no better. My companion asked, “how can they screw up carrots?” They too had a different, unpleasant aftertaste and we ended up tossing both meals in the trash. The steak is supposed to be “topped with a creamy peppercorn sauce,” but we really didn’t detect this at all.

Since we hadn’t had much to eat, we broke out one of the Homestyle Chicken dishes, with Butternut Mac & Cheese. At first, we though this was going to be a winner, but by the third bite, the chicken tasted odd, although reasonably tender, and we couldn’t finish it either. The only thing we can say is that the mac and cheese was OK. But the green beans had the same off taste as the other vegetables, and we couldn’t finish them either. This may have been the “fragrant garlic oil” but we didn’t note any garlic flavor.

Now, we’ve eaten in lots of restaurants in a lot of places, and there have been a number of misfires in all those meals, but this is the only time we can think of where we really couldn’t finish the meals because they were absolutely terrible.

We immediately canceled our subscription to Freshly and they sent us nice polite acknowledgement. However, they’ve placed a cookie in our web browser’s database that keeps us from browsing their website further unless we renew our membership. This is unprofessional. Fortunately we have other browsers we could use to look up their prices and policies.

We obviously don’t recommend Freshly at all.

Ziggie and Mad Dog’s steakhouse—Islamorada

If you think that a steakhouse called Ziggy and Mad Dogs is not likely to be of interest, you may be partly wrong. According to the history on the menu, the restaurant was founded in 1952 as Ziggy’a Conch by Ziggy Stocki. And in 2005, Jim Mandich, who had played for the Miami Dolphins as “Mad Dog” Mandich purchased the restaurant. He and his partner Randy Kassewitz refurbished it and opened it as a steakhouse called “Ziggy and Mad Dog’s.”

While basically a steakhouse, the menu does include chicken, pork chops, veal chop and some seafood and pasta. The outside of the restaurant maintains the informality of the original, although the inside is somewhat more formal. But with ESPN playing on TVs in every room, it has a bit of a sports bar atmosphere about it, rather than the décor you might associate with charges approaching $200 for two (with tax before tip).

Every few minutes a drop of water would fall on my head, probably from a leaking air conditioner in the ceiling, which I didn’t find endearing. The waiters are pleasant and knowledgeable, but as steakhouses go, we’ve had better for the same price range.

Our two salads: the Mad Dog Wedge and Mixed Baby Green with Goat Cheese (each $12) were good enough but not much better than you might find at Applebee’s. They also bore little resemblance to the photos on their website.

Our Cowboy Ribeye ($40) had a crisp burnt crust and served with Bearnaise ($4 extra) was properly served medium rare. But with the crust obscuring the contours, it was difficult to delineate the bone to cut around it. However, the meat we found was juicy and tender.

The Smothered Medallions ($36) were easier to work with and more tender, as it was a filet mignon with caramelized onions, au poivre sauce and stilton bleu cheese. It was probably the better choice.

In our mind the Garlic Salted Onion Rings ($8) were the best thing on the menu. They were crunchy and dry to the touch and not a bit greasy. We were very impressed.

Our two scoops of gelato brought the bill to $189 before tip including two drinks and two glasses of wine.

Overall, this is a pleasant enough place, but we wouldn’t repeat the experience. There are so many better restaurants in the mid Keys to try.

Pierre’s: elegant dining in the Florida Keys

Pierre’s, in Islamorada, is one of the most elegant restaurants in the Keys. Where informality usually reigns, Pierre’s features a more formal atmosphere with excellent French fusion cuisine and highly trained staff.

Pierre’s is situated in an old plantation-style house, with a lounge on the first floor and an elegant oak-paneled restaurant on the second floor. An elevator is available just behind the desk where you check in. On warm(er) evening you can also dine on the veranda, where you can also watch the lovely sunsets.

The dinner menu features vegetarian dishes, seafood, beef, chicken and lamb dishes as well as appetizers that include soup, salads, caviar, crudos, ceviche, charcuterie and a cheese board. While not inexpensive, dinner at Pierre’s will probably be the bets dinner you will have on the Florida Keys.

We started by sharing the cheese platter, which included s triple crème, a bleu cheese, and several harder cheeses, unfortunately not identified, fig mostarda, nuts, grapes and crostini. It was plenty for two, and a few bites for four, but everything was a rich and thoughtful selection.

For entrees, one of us chose the Local Catch Meuniere with Crab. The local catch was grouper, apparently only four hours out of the ocean, served with roasted fingerling potatoes, beurre noisette, haricots verts, Pierre’s garden parsley salad with pickled shallots, bell pepper rings and Meyer Lemon olive oil, and topped with crab. The fish was moist and tender with just a hint of acid from the Meyer lemon.

For our other entrée we ordered the Florida Lobster Curry, served, amusingly, in a coconut shell, over forbidden black rice and braised baby bok choy, all served with a Thai coconut curry sauce. This was certainly one of the most imaginative presentations we’ve ever seen, and the lobster was perfectly cooked without being in any way tough.

For desserts we ordered a traditional chocolate tart, which was chocolatey rich on an excellent crust, and a white chocolate cheesecake, which was both lighter and more flavorful the typical cheesecakes and definitely worth your attention.

Overall, our experience at Pierre’s was outstanding. The waiter and servers were courteous and knew what they were doing. Our only criticism was a long wait for the check.

Beware, however of their dark, unlit black spiral staircase, and take the elevator instead. It is really hard to see the steps. Be sure to ask if you can’t spot the elevator.

M.E.A.T. – An outstanding burger place in Islamorada

M.E.A.T. Eatery and Taproom has restaurants in Islamorada and Boca Raton. They both features single and double burgers, as well as pulled pork, blackened fish, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches and variations like the Cow and Pig Burger. Their hamburgers are called the Nancy Pants, and come in single and doubly variations. And on top of that, all of their delicious fries are cooked in duck fat!

Their taproom features a dozen or more beers on draft, and many more by the bottle. They also offer wines by the glass and bottle.

Among their Fun Foods, suitable for starters are their unusual Chicken Wings: House Smoked and topped with a Honey Chipotle BBQ and Bleu Cheese Crumbles. They were featured on Diners, Dives and Drive-ins, and winner of the Best Sauce in the South Florida Wingfest. They wings are, grilled, not fried and the idea of saucing them and adding bleu cheese crumbles is a great one that I may steal for my own kitchen. You get eight pieces for $13.95. I think we finished six of them! They were really terrific, and fortunately they offer wet-dry wipes and napkins alongside.

We, of course, had to try the Nancy Pant Burger: 5 oz Angus Burger served with Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato & House Fries. One of us got the single and one of us the double. They were juicy and perfectly cooked, and unlike most such sandwiches, they didn’t fall apart in your hand (that much). These are truly great burgers, they were named to the Top 101 Burgers in America several years running.

Incidentally, the burgers come with several unique condiments: a specialty mango-chipotle ketchup and a caraway/vinegar mustard. The mayo is unchanged and classical ketchup is also provided.

The whole M.E.A.T. experience is fast and courteous, and completely unlike fast food emporia. You can pick up a menu from the bucket when you come in, and sit at any table or at the bar. When you decide what to order, you go to the counter and place it. They give you a receipt and a card to leave on your table so they know where to bring the food. They’ll deliver your drinks and food as soon as they are ready, or in two steps if you order wings as a starter. Then, you pay on the way out. The food and service are terrific, and we’ll go every time we are in the area. Our bill, with two drinks was only $52, about one third of our Chef Michael’s bill. What a great place!

Chef Michael’s in Islamorada

If you look at lists of the top restaurants in the Florida Keys, Chef Michael’s always comes out near the top. Their sign features the hogfish, a local mild-tasting fish that can be prepared any number of ways. And they do.

Despite the unprepossessing façade, Chef Michael’s is a fine restaurant with excellent food and a knowledgeable staff. Since our hotel was close by, we walked over about 5:45 only to find the place already very busy. They were able to get us one table, but take our advice, and make a reservation. People come from all over the Keys to eat there.

Their menu includes seafood as well as meat and poultry. Interestingly, while the actual fish they serve change daily, they offer the same preparations:

Pontchartrain – lightly blackened then topped with crawfish & shrimp in a piquant Creole cream
Ambassador —sautéed w/ crabmeat, shiitake’s, capers & key lime butter
Adriatic — grilled, then napped w/ our olive oil & herb concoction
Juliette — seared w/ shrimp, scallops, chardonnay butter & toasted almonds
Mixed Nuts —pistachio, cashew & macadamiacrusted, served w/ our “nearly famous” mango sauce

as well as Grilled, Sauteed, Fried or Blackened.

For appetizers, we chose the Conch and Crawfish Fritters and the Bahamian Conch Chowder. The chowder was rich, spicy and filling, but we ate every bit. The conch fritters were excellent: mildly spicy and crispy and a remoulade dipping sauce.

Since hogfish was on the menu that night, we ordered Hogfish Pontchartrain, and while it looked at first like a small portion, it was incredibly delicious and very filling, especially with the crawfish and shrimp on top. The Creole cream went well with the fish and with the accompanying rice.

We also ordered the Seafood Pasta, Shrimp, Scallops & Lobster, Oven Roasted Tomato & Basil Cream, which was a huge portion that might feed two or three people. But every bit of it was delightful, and way above what you normally get in seafood pasta dishes.

Chef Michael’s is the kind of place where the waiters are really knowledgeable and happy to help you choose your food and wine. Our waiter also made it a point to stop by several times to make sure that we were pleased with everything. We were.

We have to admit we skipped desserts, but they appear to be house-made, and the Salted Caramel Cheesecake Brûlée and the Chocolate Toffee Mousse Cake both sounded terrific.

Chef Michael’s is not to be missed if you are visiting Islamorada, or the Keys in general.

Should you take a cruise?

The above photo shows the Seabourn Odyssey (450 passengers) adjacent to the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas (2700 passengers). Royal Caribbean has much larger ships in its fleet.

We don’t take two or three cruises a year like some people we’ve met, but we’ve been on three cruises in the last 10 years and have picked up enough experience to make some recommendations. You might have seen some of the disappointing cruise ship photos, and you may have read Don Saltzman’s snarky review of a luxury cruise.

Put all that hyperbole aside. Cruises can be relaxing and invigorating and a lot of fun. It depends on you and what sort of things you enjoy. And how much you want to spend. We have limited ourselves to 7-day cruises because longer ones seem to us to be too much of a good thing.

Our experiences were a cruise around scenic Alaska on the Celebrity Millennium about 10 years ago, and a cruise on Seabourn to the Caribbean and another in the Mediterranean on Seabourn a year later. Both of them happened to be in the same ship, the Seabourn Odyssey, although all the staterooms had been upgraded during a winter drydock.

The nice thing about cruises is that you don’t have to pack and unpack everyday: your hotel comes along to every port, and your dinner or lunch is waiting when you come back from your excursions. The only disadvantage is that the ship usually is again underway by 6:00 pm, which precludes dinner in town. The only exception was at Monte Carlo, where they stayed in port until 11 pm in case you wanted to visit the casino. Recognizing, as Penn and Teller put it, that casinos are for people with poor math skills, we didn’t avail ourselves of the gambling.

Deciding on a cruise

You first need to decide on your budget. We created a spreadsheet of information for 11 of the most popular cruise lines from mass market to luxury. Here is a small copy:

You can look at the entire table full size here. The table identifies cruises from about $2000 to well over $10,000 for a week for two people. This price may or may not include airfare, and you can sometimes get a good deal booking the airfare through your cruise line. We chose our cruises with rooms having a balcony (veranda). You can get ocean view staterooms a bit cheaper and windowless interior cabins quite a bit cheaper, but they can get a bit claustrophobic without a view. Prices were recorded in mid to late January of 2020, and probably change all the time. Photos were taken from cruise ship web sites or in a few cases from CruiseCritic.com.

To approximate total costs, we assumed you would take four shore excursions (for 2), would order the drinks package and go to a specialty restaurant twice. We also added in the tips and WiFi charges if not included. This gives you comparable costs across a spectrum of ships. If the cruise line couldn’t or wouldn’t provide a cost, we added in one from a comparable carrier.

You also have to decide on whether this is an adult vacation, or whether you want to bring children. This can get a lot more expensive in a hurry. While Disney excels in cruises that entertain children, they are by far the most expensive cruise line, costing more than actual luxury cruises. We’ll deal with Disney separately below.

Travel agents

We strongly suggest that you work with a travel agent. They know a lot more than you do about cruises and you usually end up with more shipboard credits and good advice that way. One agent told us about a nearly secret whirlpool she used on deck 6 every day. And we used it too!

Ship sizes

Ships vary considerably in size with small ones like Seabourn, Regent, Crystal and Oceana being sort of boutique cruises. But the large preponderance of cruise ships are floating towns of 2000 to nearly 3000, and MSC being floating cities of 4500 to over 6000. Obviously, you are likely to get more attention in the smaller ships, but the really important number is the passenger to crew ratio. Note that for pricey Seabourn, that number is only 1.3, but for the larger, mass market ships, that ratio is 3.0 or more. That is what you are paying for: more personal service, which includes better food and more wait staff as well as more helpful cabin attendants and the like. You generally find that the cabins are more luxurious as well.

Here is a sorted table of the ships by staff ratio. Note that while the most expensive cruises have the lowest staff ratios, there are some bargains to be had. Crystal looks like a good bargain, although note that it has larger ships.

	Pasngrs	Crew	*Ratio*	Total
Seabourn	450	335	*1.34*	$9,240
Silversea	596	411	*1.45*	$11,000
Crystal	980	655	*1.50*	$5,601
Regent*	700	445	*1.57*	$6,999
Oceana*	684	386	*1.77*	$7,998
Princess	2600	1150	*2.26*	$5,226
Disney	2400	950	*2.53*	$11,279
Royal Carib	2730	989	*2.76*	$6,638
MSC	4500	1536	*2.93*	$4,889
Celebrity	2852	920	*3.10*	$6,035
Carnival	2980	953	*3.13*	$4,879

Excursions

You should decide your objective for a cruise. Most people treat cruises as times to relax and get away from the pressures of daily life. On most cruises there are stops at ports most days, and you can stroll through the towns or take guided tours. In Alaska, the towns are quite small, but if you want to see the usual Eagles and Bears and Whales (Oh my!) you definitely should book shore excursions. If you do, you will definitely get to see eagles and the mega-charismatic fauna!

Note from the table, that there is a wide variation in charges for what are probably the same Alaska tours, since there aren’t very many tour providers in these small towns. The typical charges for tours ran from $80-$125 on both Celebrity and Seabourn, but note that some other lines like Carnival and Princess mark these tours up by nearly a factor of two, to $225 to $249. Regent, Crystal and Silversea bundle them in their price.

In Saltzman’s screed referenced above, he complains about “nothing to do.” This is odd, but even the smaller ships have pools and exercise facilities. Some of the bigger ones have climbing walls and running tracks around the perimeter. But the reasons this is so odd is that cruises take you to destinations almost every day and there is plenty to do in exploring the town or island of the day. Trudging along cobblestone paths and hills of old European cities can take a lot out of you, and we usually felt we had most of our exercise by the time we returned to the ship. We usually found a whirlpool to rejuvenate in after our late lunches.

On Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises you probably should be a little more selective in choosing tours. In many cases, like Menorca and Toulon, a walk through town is all you probably need, and we found that your could probably skip the tour of Nevis, since you can walk to Hamilton’s birthplace from the pier. (The only remaining building is the stable, and they don’t permit pictures because the exhibit is so cheesy.)

Entertainment

Evenings on most cruise ships include various kinds of after-dinner entertainment. Our ship traveled with singers, dancers, a 6-piece band and soloists. Larger ships have more elaborate “Broadway style” productions. These shows consist of hard working young singers and dancers doing their best with what seemed to be pretty bland material and we think these must be aimed at some other demographic.

Meals on cruises tend to be creative and well prepared in the main dining rooms, with more informal food choices at other buffet-like venues around the ship. And you can get a pretty good dinner delivered to your stateroom if you don’t feel like eating in a large restaurant. Only a few ships charge for room service.

Celebrity

Despite Celebrity’s TV saturation of their surreal Dream Song (Jefferson Airplane) commercial with the improbable redhead in the clashing green gown, Celebrity is a good cruise line. It was originally owned by the Greek Chandris Group, but was sold to Royal Caribbean in 1997. The “X” on their ships looked to me to be a reference to the Unix X-Windows system, but it actually is the letter Chi for Chandris.

The ship we were on had 2800 passengers, but It never seemed crowded. The main dining room is a two level affair and there are two seatings at maybe 6:30 and 8:30. They have since added walk-in seating as well since then. You are assigned to a table for the cruise, in our case we shared the table with 3 other couples and found them friendly and congenial. You also have the option of dining in their specialty restaurant for an additional fee for about $50 a head. Since we had purchased a drinks package for the cruise the wine may have been included.

The dinner menus were varied and well prepared, but the breakfast and lunch were served buffet style from several smaller stations were you could get typical hot and cold breakfasts and lunches. The breakfasts were at best adequate, and while you could have a waited breakfast, it was the same food.

Celebrity excelled at baggage handling at a level we haven’t experienced elsewhere. We flew to Anchorage and stayed overnight at a hotel, leaving most of our tagged luggage outside our room for pickup. They took it directly to the ship and it was in our stateroom when we arrived, after taking a bus from Anchorage to Seward, where we boarded our ship. Even better, since we never really left the US, they took our tagged luggage from outside our room directly to our flight home from Vancouver. We never had to touch it. And while Vancouver is indeed outside the US, we were on a bus that delivered us directly to the transit area, so we never officially entered Canada. This was really well done!

Celebrity has briefly advertised a Kids Sail Free program. Their drinks package at $59 a day seems excessive, but their current advertising suggests that they are offering drinks as part of the standard fare.

Seabourn

Seabourn sails on small ships having 450 to about 600 passengers, with very low passenger to crew ratios and excellent service. The level of attention you get is very high and many of the crew will soon know you by name. And on our second cruise the social director remembered us from the year before! Seabourn cruises are all inclusive except for the excursions: tips, liquor and all meals are included. Even the specialty restaurant, The Grille by Thomas Keller is available at no charge.

The rooms are a bit larger at 302 square feet and the cabins are quite a bit fancier. Since liquor is included in the fare price, they ask what you want them to stock your minibar with and keep it stocked all during the cruise.

One of the most relaxing things about Seabourn is sitting poolside, either in the shade or sun and finding a waiter at your elbow offering you a drink from his tray. They will also bring you any kind of drink you want, if that one doesn’t quite meet your taste requirements.

On our Seabourn cruises there was usually one singer doing pop standards with the band who was pretty good, but performance purporting to be “classical” were more like Lloyd-Webber and other popperetta rather than actual classical singing.

On our second cruise, they had cut some corners: the service in the informal restaurant suffered, and they were only offering two kinds of wine with dinner, where the year before they had four or five bottles to choose from. However, it remained an elegant experience we’d happily repeat.

There is a nominal charge for WiFi, but they provide enough shipboard credits to cover it. We never ran out.

Seabourn also features spas and treatments using the name of noted alternative medicine quack Dr Andrew Weil. Some of the excursions are labeled as “Mindful,” but fortunately none of the tour guides knew anything about this hokum. Weil’s treatment regimen includes yoga, Chinese herbal malarkey, and acupuncture, otherwise known as a pre-scientific theatrical placebo.

Carnival Cruises

Carnival is distinctly a mass-market cruise line with ships holding around 3000 passengers. The staterooms are much less fancy (early Holiday Inn) and they keep their low per room prices by charging you separately for tips, specialty restaurants and WiFi. Their liquor package is so high at $52 per person per day that you could never drink enough to cover it, and getting drinks individually is probably the only solution. They also have the highest passenger to staff ratio of any of the cruise lines we looked at 3.13. This is the kind of ship where they have Lip Sync Battles and Water Slides. Their excursion prices are roughly double those of Celebrity and most other cruise lines. They have several kids clubs on board.

Princess Cruise Lines

Princess Cruises is a slightly more upscale cruise line also owned by Carnival. Drinks, WiFi and tipping are folded into the base price. However, their excursion prices are even higher than Carnival’s. The room décor is significantly better than Carnival’s. Specialty restaurants have charges of $25-$29 per person, and they offer children’s programs for ages 3-7, 8-12, and teens. They also offer some 4-person staterooms featuring models so attractive you can’t tell which is the mom and which the daughter. Princess Cruise Lines and Carnival have both paid whopping fines for dumping oil and plastic waste.

Regent Seven Seas

Regent Seven Seas is a high end all-inclusive cruise line, where drinks, tips, WiFi, all restaurants and all excursions are included in the price. With only 700 passengers and a passenger /staff ratio of 1.5, you can be sure to get excellent service and attention to your needs. With five specialty restaurants in addition the main dining room and the Pool Grill, you are sure to find something interesting every night. They are so sure that they are standouts in the luxury cruise market, they even publish a comparison chart.

While their list prices seem high, they actually turn out to be two for the price of one fares, which makes them an excellent value. They also offer bundled air fare. While this is clearly a ship for adults, they do offer discounted children’s fares and a Club Mariner Youth Program.

Royal Caribbean

Royal Caribbean takes the cruise experience and turns it into a theme park. On the smaller Enchantment of the Seas with 2730 passengers, they have scuba, climbing walls and a bungee trampoline and an old arcade. On their larger ships, they also have dodge cars, laser tag, vertical sky diving into a large plastic tube, and a surf simulator (??). And on some Caribbean cruises, you may stop at their private CocoCay island (Bahamas) amusement park.

Their main Windjammer restaurant is open for all meals and the Chops Grill (at extra cost) is open for dinner, and lunch on sea days.

But Royal Caribbean doesn’t stop there. Their larger ships have over 6000 passengers, as you can see from this extensive table. Their latest Quantum Ultra (or maybe Death Star) class ships can carry 6680 passengers and 2200 crew, giving them an unimpressive staff ratio of 3.03. These are touted as the world’s largest cruise ships. These large ships have up to ten restaurants to choose from.

And as usual drinks, tips specialty restaurants and WiFi are all at extra cost. If you want to sit and quietly sip your drink around the pools, these are not the best ships for you, and if you really like to vacation in close quarters with a lot of people, you could skip the boat and just spend a few days in New York.

Oceana

Oceana is a top of the line small ship experience, with a staff ratio of 1.77. The fare is all inclusive including drinks, dining, tips, WiFi, excursions and airfare. Some of these are part of a bundle called OLife Choices which is a per-cabin program which includes drinks, air fare, 4 excursions and WiFi. The Culinary Experiences include te Grand Dining Room, Toscana, Polo Grill, Jacques, Red Ginger, Tuscan Steak, the Terrace Café and the Wave Grill, as well as coffee and tea shops and culinary classes. Oceana does not mention any youth programs. This looks like a fine choice, but Oceana cruise reviews are less than stellar, implying that their food and service have slipped.

Crystal Cruises

Crystal Cruises is a luxury cruise line running ships with just under 1000 passengers, and with a staff ratio of 1.5. Tips, drinks and WiFi are included. The restaurants include the Waterside main dining room, The Marketplace (by day) and Churrascaria (a Brazilian steakhouse) by night, Uma Uma, a sushi bar by chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Prego, the inevitable Italian restaurant, Silk Kitchen Asian cuisine, and The Bistro and Trident Grill for informal meals. There is also an ice cream bar. Entertainment includes Broadway inspired shows, and movies. They also offer enrichment lectures featuring “thought leaders” and book readings by favorite authors. There are exercise facilities, a lap pool, yoga, Pilates, and some sort of hokum inspired by Feng Shui at the Crystal Life Spa. Most recent reviews of Crystal Cruises have been a bit mixed, criticizing the food and some of the excursions. Crystal tells us they will not be cruising to Alaska again until 2022.

Silversea

Silversea is an all inclusive luxury cruise line with under 600 passengers. They make their actual prices difficult to discover, as they want you to given them your name and address first. This link shows some of their current deals. Without going through “Request a Quote” it is hard to know what the prices will actually be. Fine dining abounds on Silversea, with a main dining room, The Grill, Indochine, La Dame, Seishin, La Terrazza, and Kaisecki. There is an air and hotel program, that offers free economy or business class for an addition $699 each way, per person. Online reviews of Silversea are mixed, but difficult to summarize. In general, this is likely to be a fine experience.

MSC

MSC is a European line that has made significant inroads in the US. Their ships are about 4500 passengers, but with a staff ratio of 2.93. However, MSC has announced plans for the Meraviglia Grandiosa, which will carry 6334 passengers, continuing the trend to megaships. MSC also has announced their private island, MSC Ocean Cay, off the Bahamas. Ships will stop their for a day of food and dancing going on into the night, where there will be a light show featuring the local lighthouse. The idea of visiting an actual living island instead does not occur to them, we suppose.

MSC cruises claim to have twelve distinct venues, including HOLA Tapas, Butcher’s Cut, Kaito Teppenyaki, Ocean Cay (seafood), and Marketplace Buffet. MSC also currently offers All-In Plus, with free drinks, free WiFi and $100 shipboard credit, for $419 per person for 7-day cruises.

Criticisms of MSC include rating it one of the “worst lines” by EscapeHere for lackluster food, outdated rooms and few English speaking staff. CruiseCritic is a bit more evenhanded with 2400 Excellents, 1800 Very Goods, 1375 Average, 1261 Poor, and 1107 Terrible ratings.

Disney Cruises

We waited until last to discuss the Dumbo in the Living Room: Disney Cruises. A quick glance at the cost table above reveals that it is easily the most expensive cruise line we’ve discussed, even though with a staff ratio of 2.33 it provides less attention and from the looks of their stateroom photos, it is far from luxurious: rather more like a budget motel.

The rooms have a separate toilet and shower, but no closets. The only storage is that small dresser in the picture. There is also some room to store your suitcases under the bed.

The reason for the high cost is of course, children. Disney cruises are not only about entertaining children, they also are housing and feeding them. So, while your typical veranda stateroom looks like it is for two adults, the couch unfolds to a bed, and there is a pull-down bunk bed as well. So, the base room charge is really for four passengers, two adults and two smaller people. So, while Disney claims that adults could sail without children and eat and drink in the adult areas, this is not very cost effective.

Much of the child appeal of Disney cruises is the encounters with costumed Disney characters, the “clubs” for various age groups (and not unlike that on several other lines) and the Broadway-style shows. Some ships actually present (probably shortened) versions of Tangled and Frozen, but it appears that some of the time these are pastiche shows along the lines of “Frozen Lion King Aladdin II.” (OK, I made that title up.)

Dining on Disney cruises schedules you to rotate among three different restaurants, with your table mates and servers coming with you to maintain continuity. There are also several more informal choices, including pizza and burgers. While the food is included, ice cream at their soda shop is not. Every Disney ship has at least one adult restaurant as well, the Italian Palo being the most common. Some ships also have a French-style restaurant called Remy, named after the rat in the cartoon Ratatoille, who wants to become a chef. Personally, I don’t find the idea of rats in the kitchen particularly appealing. In the cartoon, Remy opens his restaurant when an established chef invests in it. (However, no one mentions that this will be a short investment, since rats’ life span is only about 18 months.)

You can see a complete run of menus from a Disney cruise here. Note that the menus and the food names are drenched in Disney promotions and Disney kitsch.

The problem with these adults-only restaurants, of course, is that you still have to get your children fed. Apparently, if your kids are old enough, they can eat at their usual table and then the servers will escort them to the kids’ clubs. Of course, if they are that old, they probably would prefer a cruise without the costumed characters milling about.

Disney has a bizarre tipping policy. Tips are not included in the price, and while bartenders add 18% to the drink charge, Disney suggests that on a 7-day cruise, you tip your server $31.50, your assistant server $24.50, your head server $7 and your stateroom attendant $31.50. You can arrange to have this charged to your bill if you like. It amounts to about $189 for two that should probably be bundled into the cost of the cruise.

Disney does not have an overall drinks package, but their liquor prices are so cheap ($5-$8) that you can easily charge them to your account. However, premium drinks (like Scotches) can run up quite a bill. And unlike most cruise lines, they don’t mind you bringing on your own booze. They do have a beer mug package. Buy a souvenir mug and you can get it filled with beer whenever you ask. Stay classy, Disney. On the other end, they have a wine package, which means you can buy 3, 4 ,5 or 7 bottles of wine ahead of time. It’s kind of an odd idea, but apparently cost effective.

Overall, Disney cruises are not for us, as our children are grown, but even when your kids are young, you might do better to take them on a less aggressively Disneyfied cruise and take them to a theme park instead. To be fair, some adults like this sort of thing, and you might be one of them, but you can spend a lot less for a more luxurious experience on some of the other cruise lines. Other critics have been less impressed.