Bautinn, Akureyri, Iceland: a whale of a time

14th August.
Sometimes when you are cruising, it is just simply a nice idea to not go back for lunch, and to try some local stuff. I know it means paying for a meal when it was already included, but it is a break from the on-board style and company, and gives you a chance to have something completely different, as the food may never adapt to local supplies.
We broke away from an organised tour in Akureyri to sample the delights of the town. The local church/cathedral was on the list but it was closed for an hour or so for a funeral, so we decided to have lunch and go back. Our good intention was that the big breakfast would mean that a small lunch would suffice.

We chose Bautinn http://www.bautinn.is/ because it was convenient, with no other recommendation or thought and that it had a menu we could understand and a price that was manageable. However, looking at the menu suggested that there were things here that we might never get anywhere else:

Guillemot was not to my taste, but when did I last eat Grilled Whale, and when would I get it again?

So decision made. It works out about £24.

So this is what you get alongside your soup and salad. Two kinds of sauce, but I am not a great one for cowberries with my whale, and I am not certain what Cowberries are.

It looks like a hunk of red meat off the grill, a bit like a chunky rib chop. Tastewise, it was like game - venison like. It was also hot enough scoring an 8.5 on the CHOF scale. It was a heavy meat, and you would have not guessed it came from a sea creature: it did not have the salty/fishy taste of the sea. I asked and was told that this was minke which some campaigners would prefer you do not eat.

http://uk.whales.org/campaigns/visiting-iceland-please-do-not-eat-locals but if you eat one animal.....

This may be a tourist curiosity, but what the heck. It is worth the experience, but game is not something that I would eat every week.

M.S Marco Polo: 3* ship with 4* food

9th to 21st August
This report covers a voyage from Tilbury to Iceland. The Marco Polo is a well known cruise ship that is favoured by the Brits. It is geared up to them and despite the fact that none of the catering or restaurant staff hale from this country, the food is geared up to middle class middle English tastes. One thing that is somewhat out of place is that, unlike other cruise lines I have been with where the restaurant and bar staff are Philippine, on this ship, at the time of the voyage, much of the crew, restaurant staff, stewards and entertainers were Ukrainian or Rumanian. Even the ship's doctor was seemingly from Ukraine. Now to the best to my recollection, there is no culture of commercial hospitality in Ukraine, and even in the post-Soviet environment, there is still a bit of 'take it or leave it because we are not here to please you'. The staff is showing a different culture, and I guess when Putin has got bored, we may all be going on our package holidays to the Crimean Riviera.
You get three full meals a day with afternoon tea and bar snacks in the late evening. There is no midnight buffet.
Essentially you either eat in silver service restaurants or buffet style, but the food is pretty much the same. We ate most of the time in the full service for dinner, and occasionally used buffet for lunch and most breakfasts. The buffet food was fine, but never scored over a 7 for hotness. The full service restaurants that served up food by Ukrainian waiters, plated out was surprisingly successful, most hot food scoring an 8, and never having to send anything back for being too cold.

The buffet special on noodle night

Buffet meal

Aubergines making love

 Whilst my pictures are meat heavy, there were always fish options.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food. The quantities at each course did not seem great, but by the time you had had several courses, and a full day of eating, there was no issue of insufficiency. For the cost that is charged on Marco Polo, whilst not in the same league as Saga or Viking, the food is pretty good, and I would have no problem about using this ship again (from a food  and hotness of food viewpoint)

Maya's world buffet and bar, Southend: an interesting buffet venue with the usual limitations

29th July 2014
Somewhat belatedly, I am catching up with my eating, and am gratified by the number of hits this blog has had, even if they are bots.
We had clocked Maya's some time ago. It is in the row of restaurants on the London Road, close to the top of the High Street in Southend. Somewhat unusually, it is upstairs with the entrance round a corner in College Way, unashamedly proposing that this could be cheap grub for students at the Ivy League university round the corner. There is a helpful web site at http://www.mayasrestaurant.co.uk/ with their own pictures that give a good flavour of the place. It is a fixed price of £12.95 during the week for dinner, and somewhat cheaper at lunchtime and a bit more expensive at the weekend. The price is fair and does not include drink which is realistically priced. The idea is that it offers a geographically diverse choice of popular dishes, and you can mix and match even on the same plate. So you can have pizza and curry or sushi and tacos. You get the idea. It is a good place for kids as there is bound to be something for everyone, but probably not a good idea to let them help themselves. This is not smart or pretty dining, and plates of food do not have significant visual appeal. As with most buffets, it pays to keep an eye on what is coming to an end or being replaced as the new dishes tend to be hotter and fresher (obviously).

Tureens showing various degrees of emptiness

Starter plate

There is a station where you can have mixtures of vegetables and meats stir fried with spices. Rather like a Mongolian barbecue but with less variety. The cook did not look happy in his work

What you get off the stir fry: this is hot

round 2 with chicken tikka masala and Thai red curry

The above is representative, and does not show you the sushi station and the taco station. The variety is interesting and the food is plentiful, fairly well cooked and of reasonable quality. It has the usual buffet problems of food never being more than CHOF 7 and unless you are very disciplined, you may be up and down to the buffet so often that there are gaps in conversation. The desert bar was interesting for not only having the standard stuff that you might get at a Chinese buffet, but also having profiteroles and a chocolate fountain. High risk especially with children around.

Would I go again? Probably. It is not as good as East a few hundred meters away which is almost exclusively Oriental, but for an evening meal it is a very good price for as much or as little as you want of what you want. Service is up to you.