Qsine on Celebrity Constellation

When we sailed on the Infinity, Celebrity’s Qsine Restaurant had an expansive menu of all sorts of crazy foods. Now on our more recent sailing with Celebrity on the Constellation, they still have a premium restaurant called Qsine, but other than the name and orange and white color scheme, it’s not the same place at all. Now Qsine has become dinner (or lunch) and a show featuring Le Petit Chef, a little animated chef who prepares food right on your plate at the table. Lunch in this restaurant is a real bargain. Often the premium restaurants on cruise ships offer lunch at a reduced price from dinner, but the menu is not the same. In this one you still get the reduced price at lunch, but with the same menu as dinner.

table setting for La Petit Chef at Qsine

Things on the table are set just so, as they need to be in the right place for the show. What looks like a plain white plate lights up around the edge when the show is about to start. The projectors are in the ceiling above, one for each plate, so the tables and chairs in this restaurant have to remain in the same place for it to work.

When that white light rings the plate if you blink or move your head or eyes a bit you see rainbow rings for a brief moment instead of white. Once they show starts that light goes away and the whole table becomes a movie screen.

menu for Le Petit Chef

There are 4 courses to the meal. The menu has a main menu option for each course and on the back of the menu there’s one other option for each course. The main menu option is the one that it will show the tiny little chef guy preparing, but whatever you actually ordered is what you will get served. They can adjust your meal for special needs like gluten or dairy free.

Le Petit Chef making soup

The first course is soup. Bouillabaisse is what the tiny little cartoon chef guy makes, but you can opt for French onion instead. To make the soup, he catches a variety of sea creatures and throws them on your plate. An octopus much bigger than him creeps its tentacles up onto the plate, but ends up losing a couple of them into the soup.

the actual bouillabaisse soup

Once the show is over, actual soup is served.

the tiny cartoon chef bronco-busting a lobster

The second course is lobster. The little chef throws a fish on the plate, which attracts a lobster much bigger than he is. It doesn’t stay on the plate, but he ropes it, and after it goes back in the water, he comes out bronco busting on the lobster, which eventually after somewhat of a struggle ends up on the plate. The alternative for this course is sea bass.

real lobster is served once the lobster portion of the show ends

Every course in the meal was quite tasty, including the lobster.

La Petite Chef cooking steak on a plate

For the main course the plate turns into a grill. The chef barbecues a steak on it and harvests some potatoes and a carrot as well as sawing down a broccoli tree to go with it. Using a gas can to light the grill doesn’t turn out well for the tiny chef at the end of the course, but then end of preparing each course never turns out well for him.

chicken from the other menu on the back

The actual food is not eaten directly off the plate that sits on the table for the show. It comes to the table on other dishes. Neither of us ordered steak so I have a photo of the alternative instead, which is chicken.

the little chef emerging from a tiny igloo

On the last course he comes out of an igloo and rolls a snowball to make ice cream. When he gets a bit farther from the igloo he’s towing two sleds full of things he uses to dress up the ice cream snowball with sauce and whipped cream and stuff. At the end he lights up a firework on top, melts his little igloo, and ends up in freshly melted water where there once was snow.

sundae

The show ends with tabletop fireworks – and of course getting served a real sundae unless you chose sorbet instead.

mango sorbet sundae

The sorbet was mango on the day we went there. It normally just comes with a strawberry, but if you ask they’ll top it with sauce and nuts to make a sundae.

tabletop fireworks

This was both the most fun and the most time-consuming meal we had onboard as it took a bit over an hour to complete. The food was also very tasty and well prepared. For a very different dining experience from anything else on land or at sea, it’s definitely the place to go if you are sailing on a Celebrity ship that offers it.

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