St. Thomas Day - Dinner at The Lawn Club Grill

Grandma Trudy finds the menu selection at Luminae too limited so we have been trying to go to the specialty restaurants instead. However, when we got home from the beach this afternoon, we discovered there had been a little mix-up regarding our dinner plans. We thought that Dharma, our butler, had reserved a spot at The Lawn Club Grill for us tonight, but he told us those reservations were actually for tomorrow night. When we had given him our specialty dining requests, Dharma had said that we should receive paper invitations, but none ever showed up. I'm not sure where the mix-up occurred, but Dharma said he would try to fix it so we could eat at The Lawn Club tonight. He reported back that they could squeeze us in if we came right when they opened at 6:00pm.

We got ready to go and were just about to leave, when Grandma Trudy said that she was too tired to come to dinner tonight. The beach really wore her out so she she decided to go to bed early and sent us on to dinner without her. We were sad that she wasn't going to be able to join us but totally understood her need to rest after our long day at the beach.

When the remaining three of us arrived at the The Lawn Club Grill, we were greeted by Hugo, the Maitre D', who had managed to fit us in. He was extremely good at his job and somehow managed to make us feel as though we were the ones who had done him a favor by showing up at the last minute instead of the other way around.

The Lawn Club is interesting because they encourage you to participate in your food preparation. It was really fun and perfect for us, especially because of Sweet Pea, but most of the other passengers declined the cooking experience, saying, "We are on vacation and just want to sit down while someone else cooks for us!"

The first part of our meal involved preparing bread dough for flat bread pizzas.



Sweet Pea was disappointed that she never quite got the trick of tossing the dough in the air, but Ross was a master. Can you see how high he got the dough in the picture below?



After preparing the dough, they let us select toppings from the salad bar area. Sweet Pea picked tomato sauce, cheese and corn kernels.



Then they grilled the pizzas for us in a very hot pizza oven. They were delicious. Bon Appetite!




Next we were called back to the cooking area where we were allowed to help choose seasonings for our meat.



Sweet Pea and Ross moved to the grill to cook our food. It was really hot back there!





The chef showed them how to turn their steaks a quarter turn firing cooking to get the best grill marks and discussed how to determine how done they are by feel. Ross said, "I always use a thermometer." To which the chef replied, "I don't have time for that." Maybe we now know why all the steaks are coming out medium...? :)




The steaks were good, but it's hard to find better beef than we can get in the Midwest.




The dessert was a warm chocolate chip cookie with ice cream. It was amazing. Unfortunately they must bake it directly in the dishes because it was so hot that Sweet Pea burned herself on the dish. It wasn't too bad, but Hugo ran off and got us some ice.




After dinner we dropped off Sweet Pea at the kids club, which is her favorite place on the ship. Ross and I stopped by the World Class Bar and ordered a couple of amazing cocktails. I discovered "tropically yours" which is a slightly more sophisticated piña colada.

The we played a round of pub trivia, which apparently means "not very serious" trivia. Our host, Giuseppe, was hilarious and told us that of we didn't know an answer, we could make an animal sound and he would give us some multiple choice answers to choose from. Needless to say it sounded like a zoo in there.



We were pretty tired after that so we collected Sweet Pea from the kids club and turned in for the night.

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