celebrity, food and wine

Celebrity Cruises is revamping its shipboard dining and will have the new menus and cuisine in place fleetwide by the end of January. The news was revealed by Celebrity during a travel industry event in Las Vegas. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, Celebrity's vice president of onboard revenue and entertainment, said the new menus will be more contemporary and will have new presentations "to be more in line with what fine restaurants on land are doing."

Overseeing the menu redesign is the Celebrity's new vice president of food and beverage, Jacques Van Staden, who joined the line after working with Blau & Associates, a top restaurant consultant in Las Vegas. Blau is also consulting with Celebrity on the new menus.

At Monday night's reception, guests were given a sampling of what the new menus might feature, including mushroom risotto, mini hamburgers with foie gras and tiny parmesan baskets filled with goat cheese. "We want to take our cuisine further to define Celebrity in a new way," Lutoff-Perlo said. The cuisine will be revamped in all restaurants on all seven ships except for the specialty restaurants, she said. Specialty restaurants will be reviewed in a second phase once the new menus are in place.