One this evening, only our 3rd onboard, were sat on the Port side of the Akvavit bar just opposite the noodle station. To our side, a little closer to the outdoor area than us, was the General Manager – the chap responsible for everything onboard that wasn\u2019t ship operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Saturday I\u2019d shared on the Viking Cruise Fans FB group my concern that I seemed to be invisible to wait staff, and we\u2019d had to track people down to get wine with our meal. I\u2019d also observed that our first breakfast in The Restaurant was sub-par, with a barely set poached egg and very slow service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The GM approached us, introduced himself, and said he understood we\u2019d had some concerns with food standards. He must have recognized me from either my FB profile picture on the security photograph Viking takes when you board, because he seemed fairly certain who we were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within a matter of moments he was joined by the Executive Chef, Wait Service Manager, and World Cafe Chef de Cuisine. We were still seated and, to be honest, it felt a little intimidating – absolutely not the intent I\u2019m sure. The mood was serious, there was no suggestion that any concern we had was anything less than entirely valid, and the message was that things would be perfect going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a little intense, and perhaps a little more \u201cserious\u201d than I would have wished for – but in part I could perhaps have avoided that by making our concerns known directly to staff onboard rather than online – I\u2019ll own that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the outcomes was that I got to know Executive Chef Alistair quite well, and he offered to have the kitchen prepare us a special Indian meal – which we happily accepted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we\u2019d had any concerns about the attentiveness of service, they were swiftly banished. It seemed that everyone, everywhere, now knew us. Executive Chef would pop up out of nowhere to check in on us – I assume they know where you\u2019re dining based on check in at the desk (we were in Manfredis one time) or your room number for a bar order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Waiter Manager Singh was now our best friend. He\u2019d stop by with wine recommendations, bottles would appear that weren\u2019t otherwise where we were, he found breakfast tea when none was visible. He was the very model of professionalism, engaged, attentive, but never aloof or too present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For someone with extrovert tendencies like myself this was quite fun – I enjoyed chatting food and wine with those who worked in that field. If you\u2019re a tad more introverted like Tracey, it was a little more \u201cspecial\u201d than she cared for. Lesson learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The evening of Sunday July 30th 2023, after sailing out from Isafjordur, we went to The World Cafe for dinner. There were a number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":[],"wpupg_custom_link_nofollow":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[65,47],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-2","tag-iceland","tag-viking"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/4103d2b0-e4a9-402f-a1d9-3d762c356a8e-47697-000009e9ab77890d_file.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pePLXi-oK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/4103d2b0-e4a9-402f-a1d9-3d762c356a8e-47697-000009e9ab77890d_file-768x1024.jpg\")
Careful what you wish for!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/c55b1f05-f7c0-4b3d-900e-20b7cbbe902d-47697-000009ea5a1ebd18_file-768x1024.jpg\")