Learning to Shun the Smorgasbord Buffet

From Lloyd's List (www.lloydslist.com)

Michael Grey

 

MORE years ago than I can remember, I wrote a rude column about the standard of catering aboard cross-Channel ferries, which during the 1970s was about as good as one would find in the average transport "caff", which is precisely what they were. 

Some gallant souls in Townsend-Thoresen, who obviously had learnt from the Thoresen bit of the company, had fitted a "Smorgasbord buffet" into their restaurants. It was an innovation as dramatic as the arrival of the medium speed diesel engine or the double-decked ramp. 

The passengers, however, were initially bewildered by this unaccustomed change in their catering arrangements, so the ferry company had been forced to "anglicise" the process. 

This enabled the cooks merely to tip the same lard-saturated food that they had always produced into a stainless steel trough, which the passengers could then transfer to their plates or, on rough passages, to the restaurant deck. 

It was all pretty disgusting, but when I pointed this out in an intemperate column I was taken to task by no less an authority than the managing director, who insisted that this swill was precisely what the passengers wanted to eat. 

Extensive customer research had verified this fact and the ferry company, he swore, was not in the business of trying to change people's eating habits. They had to reflect the mores of society. 

He was wrong, of course, and a few years later Sally Line appeared from the land Islands to demonstrate that ferry passengers could appreciate good food, well cooked and properly presented. Indeed, on my first trip on a Sally Line ferry out of Ramsgate, I ate such a variety of rich food that the same night I ended up in hospital having an appendectomy. 

There was clearly a lesson there, although I believe to this day that the illness was brought on not by greed but by my spending so much time looking at the sheer beauty of the food presented in the buffet that I had very little time to eat it before the boat docked and I rather bolted my meal. But you probably didn't want to know this. 

One of the best things about ferry travel is the opportunity it gives to study other human beings. Such is not vouchsafed to those who are forced to go by air as you can hardly look at the person beside one without appearing rude, and have to stare grimly at the upholstery. 

On one of the cheap flights where they economise on seat height, I recently sat behind a tall man with excruciating dandruff and reflected I was rather glad they never gave us anything to eat. 

Ferries are, in contrast, the very best way to travel and modern ferries, with their host of culinary distractions and comforts for passengers, are so much better than their more rudimentary predecessors, even though their passing is much regretted by ship enthusiasts. 

I thought of this just the other day, arriving in style in Oslo after an overnight trip from Helsingborg aboard Scandinavian Seaways' elegant Crown of Scandinavia. 

The previous evening I had sat in the bar, astonished at the extraordinary things that the diligent staff had persuaded the customers to buy. 

There was a middle-aged Swedish couple who looked as if they disapproved of most things in life, sitting in front of two lurid and fizzing cocktails, out of which were erupting tiny umbrellas, several dried flowers, assorted pieces of fruit and a swizzle stick shaped out of what appeared to be the neck and head of a giraffe. 

They sat for a long time looking at these astonishing drinks, mute, as if they were working out how actually to go about the business of consuming them. 

Perhaps they had requested a cup of camomile tea, their Skane dialect having confused the steward, although such was the efficiency of the bar staff that it would have been exceedingly unlikely. 

There was a tremendous run on Irish coffee and people were putting away brandy as if their very lives depended on it, even though it was early in the evening. 

But who am I to be judgemental? It must have been the air-conditioned sea air, or perhaps people anticipating the onset of sea-sickness, even though the Sound was like a millpond, which had given them such a gargantuan thirst. 

Then on to the fabled buffet, which was another revelation from both the variety and presentation of what was on offer and the extraordinary way in which the passengers proceeded to pack it away. 

I sat and sipped a glass of wine, nibbled at some excellent herring and just watched a performance from my fellow diners that was better than cabaret. 

After all, I had nowhere else to go that evening as the ship sliced through the calm waters along the Swedish coast. My fellow passengers were, in contrast, entirely focused, and seemed to be entrants in a trans-Baltic eating competition. Possibly they were the finalists. "Nul points" were clearly not an option. I had thought Americans were serious eaters but these ferry passengers, ravaging the buffet like their Viking forbears, would make Houston oilmen seem like fussy children in comparison. 

There was a man who sat behind an entire shoal of langoustines piled on his plate, ripping the crustaceans apart like someone possessed. His wife, meanwhile, was chewing into the best part of a sheep which she had piled on to her plate. 

There was little conversation throughout the huge restaurant, only the murmur of the ship's engines being barely perceptible above the asynchronous chomping of a hundred or so sets of molars. 

They polished off plateful after plateful, more courses than Tiger Woods sees in a year, and still they went back for more. 

I looked anxiously around the restaurant. Who would explode first? Were they natural gluttons? 

Were they so intent on getting their money's worth, having starved for days against the upcoming opportunity of a Scandinavian Seaways meal? 

Were they people who were determined to become clinically obese? Had I stumbled across a Fat Cruise? 

At one time, after calling for another glass of wine, I reflected sadly that I had campaigned so hard, all those years ago, to see the Smorgasbord buffet opened on the English Channel. I rather regretted it now, noting that greed is undoubtedly one of those seven deadly sins and that I would be judged guilty by association. 

As what passes for dusk in those northern latitudes fell over the Crown of Scandinavia and her gluttonous passengers, still taking on more fuel with feverish determination, I took a turn around the deck, then went to bed. 

But it is worth considering that aboard a modern ferry not a sugar cube is consumed without diligent operational analysis, and even the background music is carefully chosen to promote optimum consumption. 

It is a science every bit as important as naval architecture. 

This year's IMTA-Interferry Conference in Rotterdam is going to be almost entirely devoted to the designing of ships and terminals for passenger comfort, optimising the interior to make travel a pleasurable experience, designing for passenger flow and how onboard service can be improved by design. 

I guess they will try to determine how to make the odd extra dollar, too. No ferry person will wish to miss this event.