Kitchen tour and Last Formal Night

Friday, October 12th, found us at sea on our way to Fort Lauderdale where our wonderful Panama Cruise would end. While the rest of the ship had a Culinary Production show in the Celebrity Theater they could attend, this morning Angus, Joyce, Bonnie, Rich, Randy and I would meet at the SS United States restaurant to take the Captain's Club Select and Elite member's ship tour of the Infinity kitchens.

When we entered the specialty restaurant the harpist was practicing with an Clarinetist so there was lovely music playing while we waited for everyone to gather.


Tanushka, the Captain's Club hostess who had been nice enough to let Randy and I join this tour, split us into 3 groups and we were lucky enough to get one of the Sous Chef's as our guide.


We started out in the smaller kitchen of the SS United States were it was explained that everything for meals at that Restaurant and the Aqua Spa buffet was made only in that kitchen. We then made our way to the larger kitchen that serves most of the ship and even though it was only 11am they were busy preparing food for that night's formal dinner.
During our tour, they served us champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. If you look closely in the next photo you will notice Randy has a strawberry in hand, which he had taken for me since he doesn't like strawberries.
We walked through stations where they were stuffing potatoes, baking breads,making salads and of course creating those wonderful desserts we had been enjoying. All the kitchen areas were spotless and sparkling!


The chef explained that everything is made on the ship from the salad dressings to the bread crumbs that nothing is wasted, except of course for the food that we passenger's leave, though that's my editorializing, not his. During our walk we passed a wall that had menus for the various days and also photos of the food so that the kitchen staff could consult them and make sure they were consistent with the plating of the food.

We also went by the escalator's that the wait staff uses to ferry the food from the kitchen to the two levels of the main dining rooms.


After the tour we left our friends and went to the ship's photography department to pick up our copy of the Infinity DVD of our trip. I think this cost us about $29.95 and it was well worth it as it included detailed information on the Infinity, in addition to the lightning storm at sea we had gone through earlier in the cruise, a movie taken from shore by one of the ship's photographers of our transit through the canal, and there's a shot there of Randy and I on our balcony waving during the transit, though that's the only time you see us on the DVD. The only other person I recognize on the DVD was Len, though there were plenty of shots of events on ship and some of the shore excursions.

Before returning to our stateroom to rest before dinner, I watched the ice craving demonstration out by the pool. Here's a short clip of it.


That evening we met Joyce and Angus before dinner so that we could take some photos of us together. The photo above Angus took and I like it better then some we bought on ship.
We look pretty happy above because we always had a lovely time with Joyce and Angus. This cruise for them was to celebrate 40 years of marriage!

We were fortunate enough to find Annette and Thomas too and get a group shot of the 6 of us.

After photos it was time for our last visit to the Martini bar this trip! Here's Frank our favorite server shaking one of our martini's.
Randy was either looking very happy to see his apple martini or thrilled that we had scored 2 servings of those marvelous bread sticks. The rest of us had ordered my favorite, the blue cognac martini.
The last formal night of course meant it was lobster night! While I'm not a big fan of lobster I did order it and was very surprised that it was both juicy and flavorful as frequently when a kitchen is serving so many people at one time you can get it overcooked. Everyone at our table who had the lobster thought it was delicious, so we ended up having two tails each!

After enjoying those lobster tails, it was time for the production of the Baked Alaska parade. Randy joined into the spirit of the occasion and is waving his napkin.
Angus, getting into the spirit of the parade!


Our waiter Schubert presenting our Baked Alaska before he cuts into it. The Baked Alaska was very good, though of course for those passenger's who didn't want it, there were still several different desserts to select from.


After our wonderful dinner we joined Angus and Joyce at the Celebrity theater for the last production show by the Celebrity dancers and singers and like the last 2 big shows it was very good. It was then time for the Grand Midnight Buffet and though we were too full from dinner to indulge we did the walk through to see it.


The four of us then ended the evening at the Constellation lounge for a nightcap.