Why Oceania Riviera Is Fit for Food Lovers

Why Oceania Riviera Is Fit for Food Lovers

In a flowering garden in the mountains on Turkey’s Aegean coast, at Kirazli Sultan Konak, a boutique hotel and restaurant, cooking instructor Muslume Corak speedily rolls a mound of dough into a practically sheer rectangle. She cuts it into teensy exact squares just before filling each individual with ground lamb and pinching the sides shut to make manti. Following, it is time for me and my 10 fellow vacationers — all voyaging on Oceania’s Riviera, on a 10-working day sail amongst Trieste, in Italy, and Istanbul — to check out. We have to chuckle at our clumsiness fashioning this kind of sensitive dumplings, but even so toast our makes an attempt with a Pinot Grigio – like 2015 Turasan Emir, an indigenous grape developed only in the Cappadocia region, then feast together on an alfresco lunch. Boiled manti doused with creamy yogurt, lamb-stuffed zucchini blossoms, close to-melting roasted eggplant, lamb kebabs, and area apricots and plums fill our wood-planked table overlooking environmentally friendly hills and a mosque, much from Ephesus’ vacationer crowds.


Ordinarily, I look for out my have culinary discoveries on shore when cruising, but the encounter of traveling aboard the 1,238-passenger Riviera is no regular cruise. There are several food and wine outings of the type that would be difficult to safe independently, these as an olive oil degustation at an estate exterior Kotor, Montenegro. There are culinary discoveries aplenty on board, way too. Oceania Cruises boldly declared the Riviera (and its twin, Marina) reason-crafted for meals enthusiasts far more than a decade back, and the vessels harbor complimentary significant-finish specialty dining places and fingers-on cooking courses taught by chef-educators.




On my cruise, I marvel in excess of the stellar components and pro techniques apparent in every single eating location, from casual to extravagant. About at Jacques, the namesake eatery of legendary chef Jacques Pépin, cooks patiently caramelize onions for the richest, most deeply flavored onion soup I have savored in ages. At Crimson Ginger, which embraces modern Asian fusion cuisine, cooks toss crispy duck into watermelon salad, trend sole into tempura, and embellish pad thai with unwanted fat lobster chunks.


Red Ginger’s chef-instructors educate the restaurant’s most common dishes at the Culinary Heart, the first-of-its-sort cooking university at sea, so my partner and I indicator up for a class. We obtain all-around the instructor as he demonstrates each individual phase, and then, back again at our individual stations, we replicate it ourselves. I’m excited to operate with rice paper for clean pomelo spring rolls, but how do you soften it just plenty of to roll it without the need of tearing? We study tricks like moistening our hands and get the job done floor, and to firmly roll the filling, genuinely packing it snugly.


Afterwards that evening, we dine at La Reserve, the only restaurant on board that rates a payment, for the 6-training course extravaganza paired with three distinct Dom Pérignon vintages (such as generous pours of their 2008 rosé).




Wine is also entrance and center at one more memorable second — an tour to a winery in Santorini, Greece. Our van driver weaves alongside slender roadways up steep hills, the Aegean a constant shimmering blue down below. On a random roadside, we pull around so our guideline can display us the grapevines. Growers cultivate the vines into minimal basket-like shapes, preserving the grapes from the sun, heat, and intense island winds. We applaud character and ingenuity right before continuing to Santo Vineyard in Pyrgos, a village not considerably from Fira, Santorini’s money.


Several people return house from cruises raving about jaw-dropping environment miracles like the Acropolis. Not me. I’m still wondering about all that I have eaten and acquired. 


10-day cruise from Trieste to Athens from $1,499, oceaniacruises.com