Fine dining, an animated Frenchman, and a rather extraordinary evening aboard Celebrity Summit.
I’ve never had a Michelin-starred meal, but this may be the closest I’ve come. And it was pretty divine.
The unlikely setting was a cruise ship sailing from Miami to the Bahamas and Mexico. The even more unlikely part was a tiny, rather irritating Frenchman who spent the evening running across my dinner plate.
His name was Le Petit Chef. And he had absolutely no intention of letting us enjoy dinner in peace.
It was April 2024, and a large group of us girl cousins had flown into Miami from different corners of the world for a cruise aboard Celebrity Summit. Getting everyone together was an occasion in itself. We had plenty to catch up on, and in our family, that generally means a great deal of laughter, conversation, and several people talking at once.
But on this particular evening, something rather extraordinary happened.
We stopped talking.
A Little Frenchman Takes Over
The restaurant was lovely. The lighting was low, but not so dim that you couldn’t see what was in front of you. There was an intimate, almost theatrical quality to the room.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a little chef appeared on our table.
Le Petit Chef. Literally, the little chef.
And little he was.
An animated Frenchman, complete with a chef’s hat and an exceedingly squeaky voice, began scurrying across our plates, tossing ingredients around, preparing elaborate dishes, and generally making himself the center of attention.
Now, under ordinary circumstances, I would not appreciate this level of nuisance during dinner.
I like a good meal. I like good company. I particularly like conversation. And I don’t generally need a tiny man with a squeaky voice interrupting all three.
But there he was, commandeering the entire evening.
Le Petit Chef is an immersive dining experience that uses projection technology to transform the tabletop into a miniature stage. Before each course arrives, the animated chef goes about preparing it, with varying degrees of success and considerable theatrical flair.
At one point, he was giving us what amounted to a lesson in tomato sauce, throwing tomatoes here and there and smashing them across the plate.
And there we sat, a group of women who had traveled from around the world to spend time together, silent as lambs.
Watching a little man make dinner.
I found the whole thing slightly ridiculous.
And rather delightful.
The Food, Thankfully, Was No Gimmick
For all the theatrics, there was still the matter of dinner.
And this is where Le Petit Chef surprised me.
I started with a marinated tomato salad with Manchego cheese, Serrano ham, pine nuts, and ciabatta.
It was a rather small salad, certainly smaller than the generous plate I would ordinarily hope for. I found myself wanting more, although I suppose that is the point of a carefully portioned, multicourse meal. There was plenty still to come.
For my main course, I ordered the filet mignon.
I seldom eat red meat, so when I do, I want it to be worth the indulgence.
This one was.
The filet was served with potatoes, broccoli, and Bordelaise sauce, a classic French preparation traditionally made with red wine and beef stock.
The meat was exceptionally tender, delicate to the bite, practically melting in my mouth. The sauce had a gorgeous richness and just enough of a kick to make every bite interesting.
It was the sort of steak that makes you forget, momentarily, about everything else happening around you.
Including a miniature Frenchman.
And I don’t say this lightly: it was quite possibly the best steak I’ve ever eaten.
And Then There Was Chocolate
Dessert arrived, and whatever reservations I’d had about this peculiar little production were becoming increasingly difficult to defend.
It was chocolate, rich and decadent, and I wish I could tell you the precise name of the preparation. What I remember far more clearly is how extraordinary it tasted.
There are desserts you enjoy and forget almost immediately. And then there are desserts you find yourself thinking about long after the evening is over.
This was the latter.
Between the filet mignon and that chocolate dessert, I’d had one of the most memorable meals in a very long time.
Which was rather amusing, considering how thoroughly skeptical I’d been about the whole business.
The Peculiar Pleasure of Dinner and a Show
There’s something inherently strange about sitting down to a fine meal and surrendering the evening to a performance happening directly on your plate.
Normally, dinner is where the conversation happens. It’s where stories are exchanged, opinions are offered, and one person inevitably interrupts another.
At Le Petit Chef, the table itself becomes the entertainment.
And for our group, that was perhaps the strangest part of all.
We had come together from different parts of the world, with plenty to say to one another, and instead found ourselves captivated by a tiny animated chef who was barely bigger than our dinner plates.
I can’t imagine wanting every dinner to unfold this way. There is something to be said for lingering over a meal without anyone, animated or otherwise, demanding your attention.
But I also can’t deny how much I enjoyed it.
The experience was clever, occasionally absurd, and unlike anything I’d encountered before. More importantly, the food was genuinely excellent, which is not always a given when entertainment becomes part of the dining proposition.
Would I go again? Perhaps. Although next time, I might prefer to let the little chef do his thing and save the conversation for afterward.
As it turned out, the most surprising thing about the evening wasn’t that a tiny Frenchman had taken over our dinner.
It was that, for once, he managed to get all of us to be quiet.
