KenzSailing

So, I'm staying out of OLoPPs way as the stroganoff symphony gets underway. This has me reminiscing about NYEs of yore(boring alert, Vince will like this, everyone else...) Back in the day, we were smitten by Alinea in Chicago(still are.) Way back in 2014, we got the wild hare to go to Alinea for NYE(yes, fly into Chicago in the winter on SWA). We were younger and less wise(now not younger, still less wise.) Odd thing was, we could only get a 9 PM(maybe 9:30) reservation. Later than we'd like, but we booked it. We get there, place is humming(quietly, everything at Alinea is done quietly) and we go thru our progression of dishes that one by one make it a glorious evening. It's getting on toward midnight. We're about to ask for the check, server stalls us. They usher EVERYONE in the restaurant into the kitchen where BOH staff awaits. Chef is there is and says a few words of thanks for the support. Then they sabre open a huge bottle(Jeroboam?) of champagne, pour it out, and we all toast the new year. In Alinea's freaking kitchen. It's reasonable to find this either silly, wonderful, or both. Put us in the wonderful camp. Oh yeah, we went back the next year and did it again. Difference was, the next day they started knocking out walls to make way for Alinea 2.0(remind you of anything.) These days, they do two NYE seatings like every other joint. I am not given much to this sentimentality but some things are not what they used to be. Also, we got into and out of Chicago on NYE on SWA both time with nary a hitch. Lucky duckies.

Yes, Happy New Year all(I mean, they've already worked off their hangovers in eastern Australia.) Over here at the Chez, the fun is about to get underway. Mrs Chef will soon start on her famous NYE stroganoff, followed by her NYD brisket. I do love the greatest hits portion of the program.

I can deal with a couple hundred bucks in admin fees to discourage multiple ghost bookings, but that one is a bridge too far for me too. It comes across like a scene out of a US prohibition era movie where the muscle is saying to the shop owner "now are you sure you don't want to book the door to door fare?"

Thanks, now I understand your perspective. Without criticizing your strategy in any way, I'll just point out that old Crystal implemented the admin fee as a deterrent to exactly this behavior. Guess it's working.

Sincere question: who do you cruise on that doesn't have some type of fee upon booking? I've looked at Celebrity recently only to discover they quote two cruise fares, the teaser one with a nonrefundable deposit, and the considerably higher one with deposit refundability for a substantially higher amount. That's a bigger bite than any admin fee, and my TA tells me it's pretty common in the premium/MM segments.

I caught "saplings" too, but let it go. Lesson learned, the typo gloves are off. So I'll point out Keith "leaned" his lesson from the saplings, which I guess refers to a trip to the fitness center. En garde!

Thank you, very kind.

Talk about being thankful at this holiday season, yesterday I picked my car up after 109(!) days in the shop. That was fun(and it's not doing our cruise budget any favors.)

Well, I'll have you know I walked all the way down the stairs to the kitchen, because that's where the goodness was. Mrs Chef at the Chez was cooking away, a turkey breast with the rest of the gravy food group going. It was a wonderful mid-day repast, followed by some football(watching, I'm not talking activity here) and there may have been a nap in there somewhere. Now, we're off to OLoPP's favorite part of the day: an evening snack of cold turkey sandwiches. As Khan Noonien Singh famously observed "turkey is a dish that is best served cold." Or something like that. OK, I was off just a little:

Vince, We had a great good time at the new Caruso's Grocery in Pike and Rose(man, has that development been a success.) Very good food, large portions(share with someone else or be prepared to take home a lot of food.) And they mix a very good Manhattan. My kind of joint.

That caught my eye when they announced it. It smacks of pulling forward revenue to help drive the RCI stock price.

I agree with you completely but, as I recall, it was even a bit more extreme than that. In the pre-AI days, there was a surcharge for the specialties. I remember it as $7pp, something to do with the distribution of the tip pool(I'm fuzzy on that last point.) Then Crystal went AI, including the specialties, and demand for those seats exploded. The maitre'ds were overwhelmed, lots of unhappy passengers. I remember the Sushi Bar as being a particularly sore point, as the same pax would descend on it every evening of their cruise. So, on a cruise line where you had to pay additional for a lot of things(pre-AI), there had been a sizeable cohort of folks who wouldn't pony up $7 when they had "already paid for the MDR."

Great work, but remember the Department doesn't pay over-time.

Well, I know DRS(Department of Rampant Speculation) is the busiest department at Cruise Critic, but I think we could throttle back on this one. A fairly bare bones statement about the possibility of using OBCs for specialty dining could be implemented along very different lines: Maybe it's just the VR Maybe it's the old system of pay after two visits for crowd control reasons(and I'm not sure we even know how many specialty venues the 2.0 ships will have) And yes, maybe it's pay for specialties first-time-every-time, just like SS This one I'm content to wait and see. However, I have it on very good authority that the pillow chocolates and trash can doilies are making a come back. Also, the paddle tennis court is being converted into a Senor Frog's.

Interesting, Lots of exec churn at Regent, Oceania and Silversea. I'm guessing it's as simple as the incumbents being worn out getting their companies thru the shutdown, and it's now time to hand off to a new team. Still, that's a lot of simultaneous turnover.

Nice work Colombo!

TA says I got mine.

Well, yeah. We keep them right next to the Jello and canned mixed fruit that forms the basis of our festive holiday salad. Just down from the tuna fish that goes into a casserole.😁 I can chef things up pretty well on the weekend, but during the week we're just two folks who grew up at a certain time in the US midwest.

As Luke would say "may the crust be with you." 😁

I knew it, I'm guessing English, not math. Your prose is both too clean and too lively to have not worked with words at some point. Anyway, thanks for taking us along for the ride. And your husband flew a Warthog? Oh the stories....

Ahem, standards are slipping at the Chez. What was to be Sunday's Frittata Brunch became Monday's Frittata Lunch. Oh well, still satisfying. Two things I love about frittatas: They're basically a quiche without the PIA pie crust. I love things that omit the "hoo boy this will be fun" part of the recipe. Then, as long as you have the basics: (eggs, milk, cheese) the answer to "what else shall I add" is "what's in the vegetable crisper?" Waste not, and all that. Today is was red bell pepper, onion, sliced shrooms. After sauteing I cheat and throw in half a can of slice potatoes. Heaven.

Discord at the Chez: A(Brief) Tale in Two Parts One: Storm's a Brewin' So, despite our Document of Understanding(Christmas Carol Subsection) OLoPP, without warning nor provocation, declared a new edict: no carol humming before the Christmas wreath arrived. The kitchen staff, undermanned and overwhelmed by the holiday workload, felt this to be a fettering of their holiday spirit by which they could not abide(Carollers of the world, unite!) Conflict, sought by neither party, seemed unavoidable. Two: Dawn Breaks Just before the advent of hostilities, a holiday miracle straight out of a Hallmark movie: the wreath arrives(yes, we order our wreaths, we are those people.) Peace reigns at the Chez, the Eggs Benedict orders(sauce on the side for table 41) go out tout sweet. Post script: Chef was prepared to go nuclear on this. That's right, had it come to it, I would have hummed "The Little Drummer Boy" nonstop. That would have elicited a plea for anything else, even Mariah Carey.

Yep, same with beets. Me, I love a good beet salad. Once, in a hoity-toity restaurant my spouse, who had ordered a beet appetizer, looked up from it and pronounced "beets is beets." This was not an endorsement. https://www.justbeetit.com/beet-blog-index/hate-beets-that-taste-like-dirt-science-has-the-answer

Yeah, it's funny(not funny) all the stress points involved in restarting the whole world's economic activity in such a compressed timeframe. Oh well, as the old management cliche goes "it beats the alternative."

There you are. I figured you are in one of your "consumed by the job" periods. Funny you should say that. I saw a tweet just today to the effect that "I like Mariah Carey, but I hate Mariah Carey season."