Seabourn Pride's
  Cruising Chef

White orchids glow in the candlelight. Pink salmon, new potatoes and pale green leeks float in an appetizer of salty, savory caviar and saffron jelly. Red peppercorns crunch in the first-press olive oil vinaigrette. Long, thin and crisp breadsticks arrive with Forest Mushroom Essence. The soup has tarragon-stuffed morels and tiny diamonds of carrots, red pepper and yellow squash. It’s reminiscent of a deep woods pierced by sunbeams.

As the first two acts of our formal dinner on the Seabourn Pride unfold, our conversation flows as free as the wine. A hush falls over the table, however, when the tuxedoed waiters place our silver-domed entrees before us. Eight white-gloved hands descend onto the silver and with a "Tonight ladies and gentlemen for your dining pleasure, Viola" the domes come off to reveal the pièce de résistance. "Ahhs" are followed by silence. We begin expectantly. None are disappointed—Chef Jörg’s Signature Dinner plays to rave reviews.

There’s plenty of time to get acquainted with Jörg Lehmann, the Seabourn Pride’s Chef de Cuisine, on our seventeen long, luxurious days from Fort Lauderdale to Seville. "It’s always been food with me" says Jörg. He’s wanted to know what’s cooking, ever since he was small. "Daddy gave me this little wooden chair so I could run after mother and see what was doing on the table," he remembers.

"Even before I was reading, I made my first cake," recalls Jörg. "It was a flat lemon cake. Mommy made me the recipe. She took the label from the flour bag and drew six eggs and lemons and the rest. I still have it at home." In school, he was the only boy in the household classes, but Jörg was too interested in cooking to mind. After a tough three-year German apprenticeship program, he was off to see the world. Jörg liked cruising from the start, "I tried to work back on shore side, crushed a car, needed money and went back to ship. Tried again to work on shore side—nine months in south of Germany—said that’s not it, went back to ship and from then on—I’m a cruising junky." Still pushing thirty, he’s been the Chef de Cuisine on the Pride since 1999.
   
Culinary skills are just the beginning of a cruising chef’s repertoire. With his staff of twenty-seven, Jörg is responsible for the Pride’s main dining room and the less formal Veranda Club—which morphs into a bistro, trattoria or steak house most evenings. Then there’s my personal favorite, the twenty-four-hour room service and feeding the crew from the Captain on down. Jörg gets the goods, assures they’re top drawer and pampers them outrageously. All the berries, for example, are put in single layers on paper towel-lined trays and kept "cool, dark and dry." And they are checked every day to eliminate any that have begun to go bad. "Box by box, all the food goes through my hands," Jörg explains. If something doesn’t pass muster? "I go shopping."

Naturally, the galley is kept ship-shape—it’s cleaned from floor to ceiling twice a day and it must meet each country’s sometimes contradictory health requirements—garbage lids on for one port, off for the next. Then there’s the weather. "I usually get about two hours notice of a storm on the way," Jörg says and then he rushes to make the galley high-seas seaworthy which includes mounting garden fence look-alikes on the stoves to keep the pots from crashing.

"I’m mother, father, kindergarten teacher and couch person to the staff," Jörg observes. I expect with Jörg’s expressive face—by just raising and twisting his eyebrows, he can convey questions and exclamations—his multilingual crew always grasps his point. He does port talks, too. No shopping tips here, just hard core information like where the crew best travel in groups and where they might be slipped a Mickey. "Today’s drugged sailors don’t end up on a boat for Shanghai," Jörg says, "but they do end up without their money, jewelry and papers." Port talks aside, occasionally the crew will partake in the sailor’s time-honored tradition of drinking and brawling on shore. Then Jörg’s off to the local slammer to get his guys back on board.

At 5:30 this morning, when the Pride arrived in Casablanca, Jörg was off to the fish market. Four of his cooks and I tagged along. Our taxi inched through swarms of men streaming into the market. Carrying empty satchels, pushing empty wheelbarrows and riding big-basket bicycles, they dodged men on their way out—satchels, wheel barrels and bicycle baskets flopping with just-purchased fish. We crawled to a stop near a low concrete building. As soon as we got out of the cab we were bowled over—both by odoriferous offal and offers of help. Jörg took charge, striking up a bi-lingual conversation with one of our suitors—Jörg in English, the suitor in French—we were off, now a crowd of twenty and picking up onlookers at every turn.

Shouldering their way through hollering fishmongers and jostling crowds, Jörg, the cooks and the suitors inspected snapper, swordfish, shrimp, squid and dozens of dammed-if-I-knows. All were artfully arranged on ice in wooden boxes. When Jörg found something he liked, he yelled for a price and handed over the cash. A suitor picked up the box and on we shopped. When Jörg was satisfied, we trooped back to the cab, loaded the fish in the trunk and made a fast track back to The Pride.

This evening, along the marble corridor that leads to the Pride’s dining road, the fish Jörg bought is again displayed on ice but this time the dorade rouge, a type of red snapper and fresh sardines sit in a silver tureen surrounded by white asparagus, plum tomatoes and purple basil. I slip into the kitchen early to get a picture. Jörg is where he is every evening at 5:30, checking that all is in readiness for the night’s meal and meeting with his wait staff.

Tonight when the waiter whisks the silver dome off my dorade rouge sautéed in herb butter, I’ll be wise to all the searching-for, fussing-over, bucking-up and bailing-out that makes each of Jörg’s dishes a star in the Pride’s dining theater.

           By Kate Crawford  January 2003

LINKS WITH ATTITUDE                                          

Check out Chef Jörg's Signature Dinner Menu.