On our most recent Celebrity cruise, Chris and I were fortunate enough to be able to try Le Petit Chef, a specialty restaurant that was totally unique and new to us. I had purchased the 3-night dining package for our cruise and was able to book Le Petit Chef as a part of the package. Knowing that Le Petite Chef is more unique experience, we were curious to find out if the experience would be worth booking or if it would simply provide us with a gimmicky evening.
Le Petit Chef is an experience as much as it is a dining venue. We had originally booked our dinner for 6pm and then we were informed that we needed to change our reservation to either 5:30pm or 8:00p. This is because it really is more like a dinner show, which starts once all the tables have been seated. Le Petit Chef, which is a collection of animated sequences projected onto the table, has a prescribed meal that accompanies the animations. There are multiple storylines so that you can potentially attend repeatedly without experiencing the same menu or animation.
Our show was called How To Become The Greatest Celebrity Chef and involved having the little chef show us how he went from being a tiny little boy inspired by his grandma to become a world famous chef. The story pauses for each course of the meal, which we learned could be modified slightly, for example Chris asked for the shrimp dish to come without cucumber and they were able to accommodate that request. Our meal consisted of a tomato tartlet, a shrimp dish, a really delicious piece of beef (which was cooked to perfection) served over potatoes and a dessert that was okay. There was also a drink menu that accompanied the meal.
The show relies on DLP or Digital Light Projectors and an audio track that is designed to sync up with the animation. Not only is this why some of the photos show up kinda distorted, but also my husband was able to see some of the rainbows projected (he is weird like that). Also, we discovered that we were actually experiencing technical difficulties. We saw the end sequence during the shrimp dish and so missed what was actually supposed to play. Then, we saw the end sequence again for the last two courses. This, of course, took away from the whole experience but didn’t make it impossible to enjoy, as a whole. The table next to us missed the whole last part of the show and was offered a refund. So, clearly with the show relying so heavily on technology, there is definitely an opportunity for things to go wrong.
Because we booked the restaurant as a part of our dining package, we saved some money over if we had booked it separately. But, even booking it separately and at full price, it still came out to be about half the price it would have been if we had gone to the Le Petit Chef restaurant near downtown Atlanta. So, if you are wanting to give it a try then doing it on the ship makes a lot of sense financially.
Similarly to how we experienced Wonderland on the Royal Caribbean ships, we were glad that we did it, we enjoyed our food, and we were entertained. Just like with Wonderland, however, we feel like now that we have experienced it, we don’t need to try it again, even with there being multiple options for the show and menu.
Does this sound like something fun that you would like to experience? I would love to help book you one of the 14 Celebrity ships that offer Le Petit Chef.