All right.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm Joseph Kalanick, executive chef on board the Windstar
Legend that we're on now.
I'm, um,
I've been in the culinary, my culinary journey started in 1979.
So I am 45 years in the kitchen.
Um, I started at Dominic George, your house, ST Catharines, Ontario.
Um, Stephen Chirico and I went to school together and his father
was Dominic Chirico when he owned Dominic George, your house.
I went there to work for one weekend and basically I've
never left the kitchen since.
I started my culinary journey at Sea in 2000 with, um, I started with
Holland America Cruise Lines, and then I moved on to Home and Tour Cruise
Lines, and then I moved on to Seabourn.
And then, because of COVID, everybody on the earth kind of stopped.
Everybody remembers COVID, right?
Well, I was happily, um, semi retired at home and living in Jamaica.
And I received a phone call from Windstar Cruise Lines.
And as I say, when they make an offer, you negotiate.
And then they make an offer you can't refuse, right?
So, and that's how I ended up here with you, wonderful people.
Okay?
So we'll start with the tour.
We'll go in through here, and we'll stop at different stations and different
sections, and then we'll come all the way around, and we'll finish here.
If we can just hold the questions until the end, because the people at the front
are asking questions of the back people, and then we can't really hear the answers.
And so if you think of questions that you'd like to ask, just wait
till we come back to the podium here, and then we'll have a little
question and answer period also.
Alright, right this way please.
In here, the glass floors are a little slippery, and
the thresholds for the stainless steel are going to be a little sloped up.
Okay?
So in this section here, Um, we have different, kind of like you have at home.
You have your blue bin, your green bin, your yellow bin,
whatever it is for recycling.
We have our own system here.
Everything is labeled, so it's, uh, recycling is at the source.
So everything is, is, um, separated and segregated in each individual area.
And then it's sent to the recycling station so that they can finalize it.
And then it's much easier for everyone to finalize.
Um, in this section here, we've got our main dishwasher.
This is our home bar.
This is kind of like the Cadillac of dishwashers, the big one in the back.
And so it's all computer controlled.
Um, Echo Lab takes care of our chemicals and the computers that are on it.
But because we're in 2024, we don't trust computers either.
Um, we have manual, uh, temperature checks of wash, rinse, and sanitize.
Taken three times each meal period and documented for, uh, HACCP, so hazard
analysis, critical control points.
Um, this way we can identify if there is a problem.
Uh, once a month, Echolab comes in and they hook up their computers
to our computer, and they do a, a circuit test onto it, just like
the mechanic does to your car.
Right, he plugs it in, finds out what's wrong with it, if there's an error code.
On board, we have technicians that can also repair these.
So the large one is for all of our plateware, and the small one here
in front is also, um, Hobart, and it basically runs the same way with, uh,
Liquid soap injectors and sanitizers, and then everything is air dried.
Straight this way, please.
Watch the thresholds, please.
Coca Cola and olive and salmon.
Three teas straight.
Uh, good morning.
Good morning, everybody.
Come right in, please.
We've got Gorgonzola and Black Olive canapes, or smoked salmon and cream
cheese with paper, if anybody would like one of those, I'll tell you.
So right into this station here, this is called Gare Manger, right?
Come right in, please, come right in.
So this is Gare Manger, you guys here do, um, as you can see, the
sandwiches are made for maybe the Yacht Club, if you've enjoyed the
Yacht Club on Decade Forward, right?
So anything that's made for the Yacht Club that's made fresh daily,
uh, Chris can take care of that.
And, uh, my second party, Joseph, they take care of salad dressings,
they take care of sandwiches.
Maybe you had shrimp cocktail last night in the dining room.
Or any of the cold salads, maybe a lovely little Caesar salad or a market salad.
Um, any of that comes out of, uh, Garmanger here.
Any, uh, smoked salmon platters that you enjoy in the, in the veranda.
Um, anything like that comes out of Garmanger.
Right, so full, uh, full production.
Okay, now on this side here, we've got our bakery and our pastry.
So bakery and pastry, they share a station here, they work offset hours.
Um, bakers usually work at night and then finish the products during the day.
Um, four o'clock in the morning, the breakfast pastries are just
coming out for the, for the veranda or the, or the yacht club.
Um, all of it is, is specifically coordinated for, for timings.
Lunch breads come out just before lunch, no earlier than 11 o'clock.
Dinner breads, no earlier than 5 o'clock at night.
Very strict with that.
That way you get the freshness and choices of the ingredients and the product itself.
Okay, so we don't bake in the morning and then serve it at dinner.
This is all baked and served.
So example is that if you're in the candles or the quattro, the specific
breads that go into those two restaurants.
They're separate and apart from the other breads that we have on board the ship,
and they are served and baked specifically for those restaurants at a specific time.
Okay, all the bakery and the pastry, all the breads are made on board,
uh, pastries are all made on board, our pastry chef here, Marvin, right,
takes care of all that, he's our, our, our pastry chef, senior pastry.
Okay, so anything that you enjoy, maybe baklava or any of those, you can see
everything's all wrapped and ready to go.
Here for the yak pav.
So any of the granola, these are granola here.
Anybody wants a granola?
You're more than welcome to help yourself.
Thank you.
Very good.
Abby, no, no, no.
Abby, this is Abby.
This is my, this is my right hand man.
The hotel inventory ambassador.
So he's in charge of all the provisions everywhere on the ship.
Whether it's durables, consumables, or to be consumed, right?
So, Annie and I work very closely together.
We organize deliveries, loaning, and schedules for doing the ordering.
Thank you for you.
Have a great day.
my brother.
Alright, so back in through here, we have our provisions.
And our recycling center.
We don't usually do a tour in there because it's kind of like a little maze.
Everybody will get Some of you will come out.
Some of you won't.
We're supposed to give you paper from a tour a few weeks ago.
Just kidding.
Um, so we have our recycling center.
We commented on the recycling of the separation and the segregation.
Even at the point where if tomatoes come out of a box, or lettuce comes
out of a box, or it could be just a box of baby paper cups, the box
itself is fit into a box compactor.
The box is compacted and then it, It gets wound with plastic ties, and it even
comes with a little handle so the guys can pick it up and carry it and store it.
And then it's taken off the ship to a recycling plant.
Um, any wet garbage is, uh, separated and segregated, put into cold storage,
and then because of the waters that we're in, we don't necessarily
throw because we never really reach 12 miles out into the ocean.
So everything is separated and segregated and held in full storage.
And then every two days, approximately, we offload the wet food waste to Shoreside,
to um, recycle center Shoreside.
Right this way.
So this now, this is the big brother of the dish machine, right?
We've got this big pot washer.
And so this is in charge of, the guys that work this area,
they're in charge of washing the sheet pans and the baking pans.
The, the big mixing bowls, the plastic lexons and all that.
And again, the machine is computer controlled and, and by Echolab.
Computers, and they come in and they test them and do their, um,
circuitry and tuning on that.
Right this way.
You can just take a look when you pass this area.
There's stock pots in here where we do our own stocks.
If you have an environment you're in, Please wait for this area here.
We have a, uh, Southbound to Building 5, you'll see me here.
Uh, as I mentioned before, in the, uh, Quadro 24.
Please come right in here.
Come right in.
Watch the thresholds, please.
Come right in.
So, in this area here, this is our, so in the morning, the guys are still
doing main production for room service.
So, they'll prepare room service over where we started in the dish
room where, with the coffee makers and all of that, the organization of
the room service trays and all that is done by the room service guys.
The meals are prepared and presented here, and the room service guys
come and pick them up from here.
So this is a 24 hour operation, basically.
Um, if you've had any of the fish in the evening or at lunch, Mr.
Mookie in the back here, um, he takes care of all of our, our fish.
Um, any of the lobsters that you've had or if you were here, um You know, we had,
what, a snapper last night, or any of the products that are seafood related.
Any of the hot appetizers, Mr.
Mookie and his team take care of that.
Robert here on the end is my, my assistant.
He's one of my sous chefs.
And so he directly assists me with whatever, whatever I need.
Um, on this side here, we've got our hot production line.
So we've got Callie and Francisco and Jason, and now they take care of, they
take care of the different, uh, featured items that we have on board the ship.
So, any of the stocks and the sauces that we do with all that, we coordinate
all that with the, uh, the guys.
So if it's chicken stock, it's made from fresh chicken bones.
If it's veal stock, it's made from, you know, like your
demi glace and all of that.
It's all taken care of by the, uh, the guys here.
So veal bones directly come out.
From the, uh, uh, freezer, we do mirepoix, carotene and celery,
sweet bay leaf, peppercorn.
We take care of all that.
We put that into production into the oven.
And now we add tomato paste.
We take that out and we put it into fresh hot water.
Um, and now we boil that with red wine for about three days.
Right?
And now we have demi glace.
Right, so that can be used for any number of things, like the sauce that goes for
your steak, or whatever it happens to be.
Alright?
Great display of things.
It's one of the Hi.
Enjoy it all.
It's like at home, you drop it down and only the ring is left.
Alright, so.
We kind of get together for a little question and answer period.
Now, um, this is one of the smaller ships that I've been on and one of the
smaller teams that I've I've worked with.
Um, again, I'm Joseph Kalanick, executive chef with Winstar.
I've been here about two years now.
Um, the largest team I've ever had was Casino Windsor, Windsor, Ontario.
Um, I had 750 in the kitchen.
Um, this is a team of about, uh, 30 I have here.
Um, with the larger ships that I've been on, some of the Pullman tourships, I
would have 150 staff in the kitchens, right, and organize a team like that.
Um, going back to Casino Windsor, we had 23 outlets that we took care of.
Um, it was a food factory, basically.
We would have 250, 000 people, uh, would eat there in a 24 hour period.
It was over a million people a day would visit that.
This is before 9 11.
Um, after 9 11, it went down to maybe 200, 000 a day, right?
It was pretty dramatic.
Like, you know, and everything else in life, we lived through that.
We lived through SARS.
We lived through COVID.
We, you know, all this fun to survive, and this is what the world is.
Um, we have galley.
We do, uh, cooking demo.
Um, in the veranda in the next 15 minutes, if anybody wants to come and
join us, uh, we'll be doing Italian seafood chowder and, um, chicken
and mushroom in a boulevard, right?
Very regional, uh, food for, for the area that we're in.
Um, and if anybody has any questions, I'm here to answer
a few questions if you'd like.
The kitchen operates 24 7?
Basically, yes, because we have different teams that come in.
Um, we've got guys in the kitchen at four o'clock in the morning, slicing,
dicing, chopping, making sure your omelets are fresh, you know, everything's
cooked and like I say, all your, um, breakfast pastries are just coming
out of the oven as, as, as you guys are waking up and having your coffee
and going to the veranda for, for breakfast or, or many room service
orders this week also, and they take care of all the, uh, So your team must
work the shifts, some work nights.
Yeah, yeah, some work nights, just like a regular factory, basically.
So we have teams that work, uh, Um, offset hours, uh, we have production guys that
come in and they do all the, the cold platters and all that for breakfast.
Um, all the fruit chopping, slicing, dicing, and all that.
Same fare, mostly on the night shift.
Anyone else have any questions?
You say you have 30 people right now on your team?
Pardon?
You say you have 30 people?
I have 30 on my team right now, yes.
Is that typical, or is it because it's a reduced capacity?
Well, yeah, it's like everything else.
If you don't need all the people, you don't have all the people here.
So, when the ship is full, I would have, um, 40.
So, but considering the amount of guests to crew ratio, you're still
looking at basically one to one.
They actually, we have more staff on board the ship than we
have guests, right, right now.
So basically it's, it's one to one, one to one ratio.
And that's probably the highest ratio of any cruise line going right now.
Some of these large ships are Um, 35 and 40 to one, yes, or one, one
crew member to 40 is usually how the large ships are operating right now.
So you can't get the same, you can't, there's no way that you can get the
same amount of service, uh, based on, on those types of principles.
Okay?
You have a new flat base menu?
We have plant based, you can see on the dining room menus, or in the veranda, we
have, um, SOS, they call it, so no sugar, no salt, no oil, no gluten, um, uh, the
whole program is sponsored by the, uh, American Health Association, uh, we're
in, uh, conjunction and association with them, and so all of our, uh, recipes and
all that are, are produced by Cali, in the back, Um, here, and, uh, Francisco,
and they take care of all the plant based stuff, so whether it's for the
veranda, whether it's for breakfast, whether it's for, uh, lunch, or whether
it's for the dinner menus, um, they take care of all that, so we have appetizers,
we have salads, we have soups, and we have entrees that are all plant based.
Yes.
In the last room there, there's like a large round thing made with garlic.
January 30th, January 28th.
Right, right.
So we make our own black garlic on board.
It takes about 21 days, 17 to 21 days, and that would be used for the candles, right?
So that, so in the candles on the plate, and plus it's used for one of the James
Beard Foundation dinners in here for the black garlic as we make it on board.
So we were basically roasting and fermenting.
Garlic, and it'll take 21 days to make black garlic.
Everything is scratch, everything is scratchy, yes ma'am.
And your, it feeds all the crew as well?
Yes, we have a special, we've got a rest, we've got a crew restaurant
and an officer's restaurant.
Um, we have special meals for them.
Um, everything's posted in the kitchen here.
And so it's more, um, as I say, ethnic cuisine.
So we do Indian vegetarian every day.
We have, um, Indonesian food.
We have Filipino food.
We've got some dishes from Brazil, depending on You know, the crew that's
on board and I design the menus based on the crew that are on board and, you
know, we have always KFC fried chicken and KFC gravy every embarkation day.
You know, it's something that the crew really looks forward to
because on embarkation day, even if you can get out and try and find a
KFC, this is one of those things.
This is one of their highlights of the week, as they say.
So now they can sit down, have a nice, decent lunch.
KFC chicken, KFC gravy, a nice bowl of french fries, that KFC coleslaw, and
all that is made genuine, uh, based on, as they say, captured recipes.
Is that a proper way of saying it?
Yeah, anyway.
Yeah.
Anything else?
How many people are on board?
I can't really say.
You can check with reception on, if it really is that important,
I could call reception for you.
Okay, no problem.
Anybody else?
Have a great day.
I want to say thank you very much for joining us today on our galley tour.
Remember, you can just set your glasses or your Or your little plates right here
and somebody will take care of that.
Like I say, if I get home, the only thing left will be the ring.
You guys have a wonderful day.
Thank you so much.
We'll be doing a cooking demo in 10 minutes in the veranda.
So that's deck 7 where you have breakfast and lunch.
Thank you very much.
Have a wonderful day.
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