The sea is not usually a place for vegetarians. Sharks eat seals, seals eat fish, big fish eat medium fish eat small fish, and it's only when you get down to herbivorous plankton that you find anyone hitting the salad bar.
The food chain is about the same on cruise ships. Whereas most people stepping across the gangway can look forward to literally hundreds of menu options on board, vegetarians may end up feeling like Gandhi at a Texas barbecue, nibbling at the garnish while others heap their platters full.
But it's not like that on every cruise line.
I took the veggie plunge 21 years ago, dropping meat, fish, and foul from my diet and gradually learning the secret roadmaps that help vegetarians navigate in an overwhelmingly carnivorous society. In 1997 I began writing about cruise ships for a living and started the whole process over again at sea, learning which cruise lines offer the best and widest range of meat-free cuisine, and which truly understand the vegetarian soul. In a world dominated by the question "prime rib or lobster?" you can still find a few galleys that understand the subtleties of tempeh, tofu, seitan, and soy milk. Seek and ye shall find.
Do Vegetarians Float?
I'll never forget attending my first wedding as a vegetarian. It was at a tony country club, with the reception on a lakeside patio. I asked a waiter if there were any vegetarian items among the hors d'oeuvres and he replied, sweeping his arm out to the lily pads and pond grasses, "Sir, there is a whole smorgasbord here for you. All you have to do is graze."
It was a typical sort of response, and I really couldn't blame him for it. After all, most vegetarians have adopted their diet by choice, so it's a bit much to expect that the world to always keep a nice potato-cauliflower curry on the stove in case we drop by. On the other hand, cruise lines are a service-oriented enterprise whose bread-and-butter is fulfilling their passengers' every wish. And when vegetarians are on board, our wish is often for Boca burgers and vegetarian lasagna.
According to my survey of eighteen U.S.-based cruise lines, only 2 to 6 per cent of passengers identify themselves as vegetarians. Those numbers seem to be holding steady, though a small but growing trend in America's eating habits is adding some variability -- and giving cruise lines further incentive to program non-meat meals. "Based on meal counts, the number of vegetarians we serve would be around 6 percent," says Karl Muhlberger, NCL's director of culinary operations. "However, this number can be higher as we also have non-vegetarians ordering vegetarian meals for the health and weight-loss benefits."
Minority Diet, Minority Menus
For the most part, cruise ship menus offer about the same percentage of veggie options as do most middle-American restaurants -- generally one option for every course at both lunch and dinner in the main dining rooms. Thankfully, most lines these days have begun bringing in influences dear to many vegetarians' hearts -- Indian, Thai, Latin American, Mediterranean -- rather than resorting to the kind of bland steamed vegetable "special meals" that are the bane of vegetarians everywhere. On Cunard, you might be offered Greek Spanakopita; on Disney, South Indian vegetable biryani; on Lindblad, baked poblano chile rellenos stuffed with red rice and queso; on NCL, spiced eggplant kebabs; on Princess, Moroccan vegetable ragout; and on Royal Caribbean, vegetable pad Thai. Pastas also figure prominently on most cruise lines' menus, either noted as specifically vegetarian options or simply as "always available" alternatives for all passengers.
In the buffet restaurants, all lines offer an assortment of vegetarian-friendly meals, though some are more diligent than others at identifying them. If you have your doubts about the meaty content of any dish, just ask someone on staff. Among the various specialty restaurants of the cruising world, most offer some kind of vegetarian alternative, though taking this route usually robs you of the full theatrical effect of the restaurant's presentation. At NCL's Cagney's Steak House, for instance, vegetarians can order a sample plate of the small dishes otherwise available to carnivores as sides: baked potatoes, marinated mushrooms, etc. Me, I would have preferred a nice tofu steak with garlic mashed potatoes, or kebabs with roasted vegetables and seitan. But that's just me.
Room service generally offers about the same proportion of veggie to non-veggie items, weighted toward sandwiches, veggie burgers, salads, cheese plates, and pizza.
Lines That Stand Out from the Pack
So, we know vegetarians can survive on pretty much any cruise ship, but will we be happy? Years of experience have taught us all to make due with French fries when our friends are scarfing down spicy ribs and buffalo wings, but when we get to choose the restaurant, we generally pick one with more variety. Same thing with ships. Luckily, a few lines really stand out.
Beyond simply offering one veggie option at all meals, three lines -- Crystal, Holland America, and Celebrity -- all have a separate vegetarian menu available by request at dinner. Just be sure to ask for it when you get to the restaurant and your culinary world will expand five-fold. The veggie menu at Holland America (tel. 877/724-5425; www.hollandamerica.com), for example, offers four cold and two hot appetizer selections (including items like vegetarian sushi and asparagus timbale), a choice of four soups (including a nice celery and stilton cheese option), and six different entrees. When I sailed aboard Veendam a few years ago, the menu's tofu stroganoff was so good I ordered it nearly every night, occasionally varying it with the featured vegetarian entree from the main menu.
Another standout is Princess (tel. 800/PRINCESS; www.princess.com), which offers six to eight veggie options (plus a pasta selection) scattered across the courses in every dinner menu. At lunch, the line offers between five and seven veggie options. Featured dishes might include pepper-crusted tofu steak with soba noodles; vegetable paella with saffron rice, green beans, and mushrooms; and baked eggplant stuffed with mozzarella cheese, croutons, and herbs, with a pimiento coulis, and the menus also offer several always-available vegetarian dishes, including a veggie burger and fettucine Alfredo.
At NCL (tel. 866/234-0292; www.ncl.com), a section of the buffet is given over daily to an awesome spread of Indian vegetarian dishes, often including lentil, potato, and spinach curry and crisp poppadom bread. The spread is available for lunch and dinner daily on all the line's ships except the two U.S.-flagged vessels based in Hawaii.
Maximizing Your Veggie Power
Vegetarians come in two basic models: evangelists who won't shut up about their diet (and why everyone should eat the same way) and stealth vegetarians who just quietly order the cheese quesadillas and hope nobody makes a fuss. The latter are dearer to my heart, but the fact is that making a bit of noise will get you a better selection of vegetarian cuisine on cruise ships.
"Most of the time vegetarians pass unobserved," says Josef Jungwirth, director of culinary operations for Royal Caribbean International. "The galley doesn't even know they are in the dining room." And that's too bad, because every cruise line will go out of its way to make up special meals for guests. Royal Caribbean (tel. 800/327-6700; www.royalcaribbean.com) itself has been receiving more and more requests for Indian vegetarian meals on its ships, but you can also order any number of other types of veggie cuisine, limited only by the ingredients the galley has on hand. To arrange special meals, just talk to your waiter or maitre ?d the day you get aboard, explain your level of vegetarianism (lacto, lacto-ovo, etc.), and tell him about any dishes or cuisine types you especially prefer. Waiters on all lines are trained to assist passengers following special diets, which in the case of vegetarians means explaining foods that are on the menu (for instance, many will know whether a soup is made with a meat stock, or can easily find out) and assisting in getting your special requests to the galley.
On smaller ships -- for example, the luxe vessels of lines like Seabourn (tel. 800/929-9391; www.seabourn.com), the more adventure-oriented vessels of Lindblad Expeditions (tel. 800/EXPEDITION; www.expeditions.com), and the cozy small ships of Cruise West (tel. 800/296-8307; www.cruisewest.com) -- guests can actually sit down with the onboard chef and talk about what kinds of meals would please them the most.
If you follow a strict vegan diet you have to prepare a little further in advance, communicating your needs to the line before you board ship so they can be sure to have the right ingredients on hand. Celebrity Cruises (tel. 800/437-3111; www.celebritycruises.com) offers a full vegan option as a matter of course, as part of its special vegetarian menu.
Like foreign policy, a cruise line's ability to serve your dietary needs stops at the water's edge, when you get off ship in port. Longtime vegetarians will be well versed in scoping port towns for veggie-friendly restaurants, but you might want to consider bringing along some snacks if you're taking an all-day shore excursion that purports to include a meal or box lunch. Lines like Celebrity, Crystal, MSC, NCL, and Royal Caribbean will make you a special lunch if you request it 24 hours in advance. Lines that maintain private islands in the Caribbean (Celebrity, Costa, Disney, Holland America, NCL, Princess, and Royal Caribbean) generally provide vegetarian options at their beach barbecues.
Vegetarian Junk Food; or Yes, We Have No Banana-Mango Smoothies
The funky little secret among vegetarians is that most of us enjoy junk food just as much as the next guy -- we just prefer that it not be made from, y'know, pigs' hooves. Thankfully (and as you might expect), the cruise lines are adept at providing enough junk that we can gain our five pounds while on board, just like everybody else.
Nearly every line offers veggie burgers (either garden patties or Boca-type fake meat burgers), fries, and sometimes onion rings from their pool-deck barbecues, and all the mainstream lines offer pizza from either a dedicated pizzeria or a station in the buffet. None make their pizzas with tofu cheese (for you vegans) or rennin-free cheese (rennin is an enzyme from cows' stomachs that's used in the curdling process), but in my philosophy pizza holds a special "don't ask, don't tell" place in the vegetarian universe. Costa (tel. 800/462-6782; www.costacruises.com) and MSC Cruises (tel. 800/666-9333; www.msccruisesusa.com) make particularly good pies, and the pizzerias at Carnival (tel. 800/CARNIVAL; www.carnival.com) are open 24 hours. Celebrity and Princess will deliver fresh pies to your cabin in a classic pizza box, and several other lines (including Crystal, Disney, and NCL) offer personal pies via standard room service.
At the other end of the spectrum, a couple of lines have cafes dedicated to healthy spa cuisine. Aboard Celebrity's Millennium-class ships and Century, the Spa Cafe offers raw veggie platters, vegetarian sushi, salads, and fresh juices. Ditto for Costa's Concordia and Serena, whose Ristorante Samsara specialty restaurant serves a full menu of "wellness cuisine" created by Michelin-starred chef Ettore Bocchia. On new line Azamara Cruises (tel. 877/999-9553; www.azamaracruises.com), you can get a fresh carrot-apple, tomato, or carrot-ginger juice (or whatever combination you like) or a fresh smoothie from the buffet's juice bar at breakfast. On Seabourn, you can get a mean fresh fruit smoothie at the Sky Bar on Deck 8. Tell 'em Gandhi sent you.
Talk with fellow Frommer's cruisers on our Cruise Message Boards.