Saga Cruises: High quality food at inconsistent temperatures.

Xmas 2024

This year, because it was not our turn, we embarked on a the Saga Cruises ship Spirit of Discovery. There is also a sister ship, the Saga Spririt of Adventure which is almost identical. I have been with Saga Cruises several times but this is the first report of their food on this website by me.

Essentially you are given three dining possibilities. There is a main dining room with silver service meals three (and four if you include afternoon tea) times daily. There is a grill which offers buffet style food except in the evenings when it is served (did not use this) and three specialty restaurants offering either steakhouse meals, fish, or pan-asian style. At lunchtimes there is a veranda style service for informal lunches such as fish and chips, burgers and hot dogs etc. This is usually freshly prepared and has been adequately hot, but who wants cold fish and chips? There is also 24/7 room service which typically takes about 15 minutes to deliver. This has been hot enough taking into account that fact that it comes from a galley to your cabin on different levels.

The temperature of food at the point of service is  big deal to me, and I know from previous Saga Cruises that unless you make it known or choose very carefully, you are on a hiding to nothing relating to the temperature of hot food and even the temperature of different elements of a meal. I always have had to tell serving staff about this, and I think I earned the nickname 'Mr Hot Food', but I did not care because it is a big deal for me. The issue in my opinion is that they go out of their way to look after you on a Saga Cruise, and tepid meals spoil my experience.

I did not even attempt trying to get hot food from the breakfast buffet. It is on display for up to three hours in baign maries and there is absolutely no control over what temperature it is at the moment of serving. You can watch until a new serving is delivered and pounce, but that is not how eating should be done. I have simply given up trying to get hot food from the breakfast buffet and similarly with the served breakfast. Instead I have worked out that you need to put in a request at the fresh cooked egg etc counter and that seems to work.

In the main restaurant, despite my requests, it is completely inconsistent for many dishes. The soups are usually very hot and will score a 9 on the CHOF scale. The worst offenders are sliced meats which can come at any temperature from a 6 (barely edible in my opinion) to a 8.5, and their accompanyments can be a complete mix of temperatures. Attempts were made to use a very hot plate, but I have no idea how long the plated foods were hanging around and often the plates were hot, but the food was not. I know it is a major undertaking to deliver high quality table de hote food to up to 900 people in a short window but my point is that just as other people have dietary restrictions, I have a need for hot food to be hot.

Whilst these are unretouched images it is clear that a lot of effort has gone into the presentation of this food and the quality of the ingredients is excellent, especially the steaks and other meats but they simply do not seem to be able to deliver a consistently hot meal to my needs. Whilst I did not send anything back, food was often delivered at a CHOF score of 7+ and diffent ingredients of a plate were at different temperatures. Nothing I said seem to make a difference, and the only way around this was to avoid any kind of buffet, when the score could be as low as 6 (they did not seem to heat their containers significantly), and to focus on things that had to be individually prepared such as grilled and fried dishes. The thing that bothered me was that no one else seemed to care, and it may be that Saga cruise passengers normally eat their food tepid, or they are so un-used to restaurants that they know no better. There were complaints about food but for other minor infractions relating to the spicyness of food (usually bland to British tastes) or saltiness.
Food in the specialty restaurants tends to be hotter because they are dealing with smaller numbers.

Another things to mention, which is nothing much to do with hotness, it that Saga Cruises seem incapable of delivering top class deserts. Their panna cottas and mousses and similar are stodgy, dense and possibly have been frozen before delivery. I tended to avoid them and focussed on their cheese selection and it is true that Saga Cruises have the best selection of cheese on any cruise line I have been on.

Would I use Saga Cruises again? If you ignore the issue of the age of most of the passengers, the answer is yes because they really know how to look after you, and if you are picky the food can be just about hot enough.