Here and there on Celebrity Eclipse there are little touches which set it apart from its older sisters, Solstice and Equinox.
The living tree in the central atrium, for example, grows in a giant pearl, suspended on elegantly curving tubes rather than the rather brutish girders which support the plant pot – albeit a Svarowski Crystal plant pot – on Equinox, and the entrance to the lavish spa area has been re-modelled and improved.
But what really sets Eclipse apart is the Qsine restaurant – it’s like nothing else on earth, or at sea.
You might think the food sounds nothing out of the ordinary; prawn cocktail, crab cakes, spring rolls burgers, meatballs, fish and chips.
The presentation, however, is extraordinary. The menu is presented on Apple iPads – there are 65 in the restaurant, and you can’t even buy them in the UK yet. No waiters or waitresses here – the food is brought to the table by “culinary tour guides.”
Prawn cocktail is “disco shrimp,” served in a glass dish surrounded by ice and a flashing blue cube. The crab cakes are “lava crab” covered in a ball of crispy noodles which look like Shredded Wheat but taste altogether different.
Spring rolls come to the table in actual steel springs; the burgers (above) are made from succulently tender Kobe beef in brioche buns, accompanied by truffle-flavoured chips; the meatballs come in threes – each the size of a tennis ball, each a different flavour and with a different sauce.
And the fish and chips might be made with Boddingtons beer batter, but they come as popcorn-sized nuggets.
A meal in Qsine will be a memorable experience and the bigger the group, the more opportunities there will be to swap and share tastes and textures.
The restaurant, which occupies the space devoted to Silk Harvest on Solstice and Equinox will be open each evening, and passengers can book online before they even board the ship. For a cover charge of $30 a head, there is no limit to the number of dishes that can be chosen from the 21-item menu.
Qsine is the brainchild of Celebrity’s vice president of Culinary Operations, chef Jacques Van Staden, who has worked at some of the top hotels in Las Vegas, and was executive chef at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC.
“You don’t come here simply to eat, you come to experience,” he told me. “That experience can last from one hour to four hours, and I’m sure we are going to be fully booked every night.”
crazy business! Looks tasty though.