Viking Cruises

First Time Ocean Cruise Guide

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Contact your local Viking travel advisor, call us on 138 747 (AU), 0800 447 913 (NZ) or visit viking.com | 25 At Viking, dining is never an afterthought. It is treated as an essential ingredient of immersive travel—and with all restaurants included in your cruise fare, every meal becomes an opportunity to connect with place, history and culture. FOOD AS CULTURAL STORYTELLING The Chef's Table—a dedicated specialty dining venue—features multi-course menus that change every few days. Each menu focuses on a single cuisine and tells a story, whether tracing the spice routes of Asia, capturing the coastal traditions of the Mediterranean or celebrating the rustic heritage of Provence. These menus rotate independently of your itinerary, meaning you might savour Korean barbecue and banchan while sailing the Baltic or explore the flavours of northern Italy as the ship drifts past Norway's glassy fjords. THE PERFECT MATCH Once The Chef's Table menu is finalised, the sommeliers step in, analysing each dish to find wines that complement or contrast in just the right way. A Mediterranean menu might pour southern French rosés and reds, while an Asian-inspired dinner could feature an aromatic Gewürztraminer. DISCOVERY ON EVERY LEVEL At its core, The Chef's Table is about discovery. Servers introduce each course with context, explaining where it comes from, why certain ingredients matter, and how traditional techniques have been adapted or preserved. These narratives turn dining into more than a meal; they create connections between travellers and cultures they might never have encountered otherwise. A WORLD OF FLAVOURS Beyond The Chef's Table, Viking's range of onboard dining venues offers further opportunities for culinary and cultural immersion. At its main dining venue, The Restaurant, daily menus shift to reflect the regions being explored, with locally themed dishes that deepen the connection to each destination. Elsewhere on board, Manfredi's celebrates classic Italian flavours with handmade pastas and slow-cooked specialities, while The Kitchen Table (an optional extra) offers interactive cooking classes led by the ship's chefs. EXPERIENCE A DESTINATION THROUGH FLAVOUR No two sailings offer quite the same journey, yet every menu follows the same principle: that food, when created with care and curiosity, can be a powerful connection to culture for travellers—inviting them to understand a destination not just through what they see, but through what they taste. This article was produced for Viking by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions and has been abridged for length. SOMMELIER THE CHEF'S TABLE

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