It is the ‘sail-in’ that I really like; that second of land ahoy after which coming in to port. Standing on the balcony of my cabin, I can really feel the solar’s warmth on my face as Ventura crosses the waves of the Caribbean. St Lucia appears inside touching distance and appears nearly like a toy island. It’s stunning and evergreen, hemmed by white shores and dotted with mango bushes, historic plantation homes and crumbling sugar mills.
The agenda for at the moment’s lazy day goes like this: take a speedboat across the coast and have lunch at a cocoa plantation within the shadow of the Pitons, a pair of volcanic spines rising spectacularly from the ocean.
Sea meals: Marco on the balcony of his restaurant on the cruise ship Ventura
For many of my life I’ve missed out on journey, and subsequently the thrill it brings. As just a little boy rising up in Leeds, I made a few journeys to Italy with my Italian mom. She died instantly after I was six and I stayed rooted in Britain for 30 years, shifting from kitchen to kitchen, restaurant to restaurant.
Holidays didn’t occur. Actually, I managed to win three Michelin stars with out ever having set foot in France. As an apart, I lastly crossed the Channel – by then in my late 30s – however did not personal a passport.
So I waved a fishing allow as ID at bemused officers in Calais. Shouting ‘You’re a loopy Englishman!’, they let me in. It appeared that my life’s journey was not destined to incorporate many journeys overseas.
That modified eight years in the past after I joined P&O Cruises and opened my very own restaurant, the White Room, aboard Ventura.
Cheeky: A monkey with a child sips on a cocktail at a bar on the island of St Kitts
Since then, journey has been a major and vital factor of my life. At any time when I can discover the time, I sail the seas, discovering the world I by no means dreamt I would see.
A cruise permits me to mix work with immense pleasure. It has enriched and deepened my information of meals. I skilled in French delicacies and know just a little bit about Italian cooking, however cruises across the globe have left me with vibrant, gastronomic snapshots and insights into different meals cultures.
Positive, I should purchase just about something within the grocery store in Britain, however within the Caribbean I’ve tasted mango, vanilla, ginger and avocados like I’ve by no means tasted earlier than. There are dishes of buttered lobster, which is wealthy and tender, jerk rooster and different spicy dishes. The islanders do not measure their spices. Caribbean cooks inform me: ‘I’ve no recipe. I simply know how one can make this dish by means of style and contact. I learnt it from my grandmother.’
This cruise begins with the incredible check-in at Gatwick: you drop your luggage and do not want to consider them for the remainder of the journey as a result of the following time you see them is in your cabin. The airplane takes off in wind and pummelling rain. Eight hours later, we land in paradise. I step off the airplane at Barbados, which is just a bit bigger than the Isle of Wight, and stand for a second to savour the warmth and delicate, tropical breeze.
Then we take a bus to the port in Bridgetown, and I’m reintroduced to the sights and smells of the Caribbean; the new roads lined with bushes of palm, coconut, guava and breadfruit; the yellow, inexperienced and blue pastel colonial buildings; the remnants of British rule that embrace roundabouts and purple publish containers (Barbados is understood all through the Caribbean as Little England).
The bars are taking deliveries of Bounty rum and Carib beer, and we cross fairly little homes which have names like ‘Aberdeen’. There is a statue of former Barbados resident Admiral Nelson, and there are signposts to Hastings and Worthing.
Paradise island: St Lucia is one in every of Marco Pierre White’s favorite Caribbean locations
As soon as on board, I am going for a wander to my restaurant on the prime of the ship, on Deck 17. For me, Ventura is a floating lodge with one thing for everybody. There are 4 swimming swimming pools, a spa and a gymnasium. I inform passengers: ‘Please eat at mine, however for those who do not then you’ve gotten a alternative of 11 different eating rooms.’
There are additionally bars, a tennis court docket, a library, a on line casino, outlets, non-cease leisure and black tie and informal evenings.
Ships are completely happy locations, and that happiness begins on the prime, with Captain Paul Brown. There’s a stage of service on board that jogs my memory of my early profession, after I began on the Resort St George in Harrogate; that was an period when the client bought what the client wished.
Nothing is an excessive amount of bother for Ventura’s stewards and ready workers. On the primary day I requested: ‘Can I’ve HP Sauce, please?’ On subsequent mornings I did not must ask, as they remembered my cherished HP. We’d like our creature comforts, do not we?
It is a family-pleasant ship. There is a nursery for infants and the Reef Membership for teenagers of all ages. My sons Luciano and Marco have beforehand joined me and had the time of their lives. Life on Ventura is stress-free for fogeys, and youngsters discover it thrilling to get up beside the ocean, however in a special place every day.
Little England: Pastel colonial buildings line a road in Bridgetown, Barbados
I prefer to sleep with the balcony door open: I’m a kind of individuals who really feel reassured by the sound of rolling waves because the ship voyages in the direction of tomorrow’s port of name which, over a 15-evening vacation within the Caribbean, might be Grenada, Dominica, St Kitts, St Maarten, Tortola, Curacao or Bonaire. Or it might be St Lucia, my favorite of the Caribbean islands I’ve visited. The speedboat drops us within the little port of Soufriere, implying sulphur-in-the air (because of the close by sulphur springs).
On the prime of the city sits a Catholic church – a lot of the islanders are Catholic – and alongside the entrance of the port there are rows of brightly painted wood homes. These are folks’s properties which within the night double as bars for locals and vacationers.
We take a brief drive into the hills to the Boucan, a boutique lodge and restaurant on the Rabot Property, a cocoa plantation owned by the British chocolate firm Resort Chocolat. The property is overseen by British couple Phil and Judy Buckley, who moved right here eight years in the past.
We chat over ‘cocoa tea’, a St Lucian breakfast speciality which tastes not of tea however cocoa, and are given a guided tour by Cuthbert Monroque, the nursery supervisor. He breaks open a cocoa pod and invitations me to suck on a younger bean, which is roofed in a slimy, candy mass.
Cuthbert takes me by means of his concoction for insecticide and fertiliser, which include ‘components’ reminiscent of chives and garlic. It is like listening to a chef recount a recipe: ‘…add bicarbonate of soda and cayenne pepper, mix and go away to soak for one month,’ he tells us.
The tour ends at a greenhouse the place Cuthbert invitations me to graft a cocoa tree. Prince Charles and John Main have additionally grafted bushes for this plantation.
At lunch, Boucan’s cooks excessive gentle how one can use cocoa and choco late in meals. I’ve used it as a thickener to a sauce – it replaces blood, the unique sauce thickener.
The chocolate offers richness and a velvet texture.
Sights and smells of the Caribbean: One of many vibrant properties on the island of Barbados
At Boucan, I’ve tuna with a cacao and herb pesto sauce, served with crisps produced from plantain, after which a scrumptious casserole of rooster breast with curry-spiced creamed coconut and cacao nibs.
I drink glasses of chilled grape fruit juice and contemporary lemonade and stare out to the Pitons – Gros Piton and Petit Piton – and really feel extremely privileged to be in such an incredible setting.
There’s one other pretty lunch when Ventura berths for a day in Grenada. BB’s Crabback is a extremely cool, chilled-out restaurant the place the shoppers do not go away with out writing their names on the wall. It is a five-minute stroll from the port and overlooks St George’s Harbour and, on the opposite facet of the harbour, Grand Anse seaside.
I’ve fried shrimps with black pepper; candy shellfish with scorching pepper and a few residence made mango salsa to chill it.
I even have goat curry with the identical home-made mango salsa. Earlier than heading again to the ship, I’ve a few scoops of nut meg ice cream – a primary for me and completely delectable.
The cruise features a day at St Maarten and one other at St Kitts. On the latter, there is a brief drive to Cockleshell Seashore, the place two buck monkeys dart in entrance of the automobile. Leroy, the driving force, says: ‘We have got 45,000 folks on St Kitts and 55,000 monkeys. So extra monkeys than people!’
On the seaside there’s the Reggae, a buzzing bar and restaurant the place Bob Marley’s music performs loudly. For about £15, you may take pleasure in child again ribs ‘the very best on the island’, and on each desk there is a bottle of Brimstone Flavours. It is a sauce produced from Scotch Bonnet peppers and the label says: ‘Hellfire on your meals, not for you soul.’
Strive it, however with warning.
Getting there
P&O Cruises (pocruises.co.uk, 0843 373 0111) affords a 15-night Caribbean fly-cruise on Ventura from £1,649pp with return flights from the UK, full board and leisure. The cruise departs Barbados on November 7 and visits Grenada, St Lucia, Dominica, St Kitts, St Maarten, Tortola, Curacao and Bonaire.
Marco is on board various cruises this yr and subsequent to supply masterclasses, demonstrations, hosted shore excursions and extra. A 12-night cruise to Madeira, Canaries and Portugal with Marco from August 11 begins from £1,089.
