High Tea (and Brunch) On The High Seas

Dinner at Palo is a delight. Hopefully by now you’re convinced of that, but dinner isn’t the only meal you can enjoy at this beautiful restaurant.

If you’re lucky enough to be enjoying a cruise that’s longer than three nights, then you can sample the Champagne Brunch, which is generally held on days when you’re at sea. Before we first tried this on our cruise around the Mediterranean, we had heard great reports about this – and we could quickly see why.

The second you walk into the restaurant, you’re greeted by a complimentary glass of champagne. If you don’t drink alcohol, then you can always request a freshly squeezed orange juice instead.

The next thing you notice is the amazing array of food on display. There’s so much of it that you’ll be glad that your server is there to take you on a guided tour of it! With different sections for fish, meat and bread, there’s also a dessert section that seems to go on forever. This is not the place to come to if you’re trying to stick to a diet, as there are literally hundreds of temptations waiting for you.

As if that wasn’t enough, your server will then take you through all the hot dishes that you can order a la carte, alongside the buffet items. The choices when we were there included a selection of pizzas, including a dessert pizza featuring a very unusual combination of jelly and peaches on a sweet dough. It sounded as if it shouldn’t work, but somehow it did. Fish, meat and vegetarian items rounded out the choices and they were just as good as anything that’s served up at dinner.

You come away from your tour of the buffet, really wondering where on earth you start. It’s a daunting task, but someone has to do it! We sampled as much as we could, but we both found ourselves quickly filling up and, by the time it came to those wonderful desserts, there wasn’t much room left. Be warned – you really need to come here with an empty stomach to fully enjoy what’s on offer here and one thing’s for sure, you won’t leave here hungry.

Something else well worth sampling at Palo is the High Tea, traditionally offered on the 7-night and longer sailings, whether you’re a tea fan or not. As a Brit, I love my cup of tea morning, noon and night, but I’m very much a traditional tea drinker. If it’s not my beloved brand of PG Tips, then it’s not a proper cup of tea to me, but bravely I ventured forth to sample some of the unusual blends of tea that they have on offer. It’s a daunting task, trying to pick one, when you really have no idea about the different types of tea, but our server was really helpful and found one that I was able to drink, although truth be told, it didn’t come close to my PG Tips!

There’s more to this experience than just tea though. This is a traditional afternoon tea and you can expect to be served up with finger sandwiches with some wonderful fillings. The cream cheese and cucumber, smoked salmon and sour cream and prawn sandwiches are exactly what you’d expect to be presented with at this type of meal, but the chicken and curry one is a bit of a surprise.

Then it’s on to the scones, complete with your choice of cream and jam, and if there’s any room left after all that lot, then desserts await you. The chocolate éclairs are lovely, but the real winner for us was the trifle. Never before have we had such a great trifle. In fact, it was so good that we went back for seconds. And that’s the beauty here. At either the Champagne Brunch or the High Tea, if you want more, then all you have to do is ask and your server will bring more out to you.