Pleasing all palates

摘要

The maritime industry is an international workplace with shipping crews that represent various nationalities, cultures, and religions. As such, it can be challenging to prepare meals that cater to everyone's tastes on board. Maritime caterers have to keep up with the changing profile of seafarers by ensuring that they train cooks to be versatile at preparing meals for diverse nationalities. The founder and managing director of catering training provider Marine Catering Training Consultancy (MCTC) Marine, Christian Ioannou, said, "Some of our clients do have full-manned vessels with one nationality crew but most of them run vessels with various nationalities. In some cases, there are up to 10 different nationalities on board the vessel. This simply makes the job of the cook on board very complicated. Being able to cook and satisfy so many different nationalities is a difficult task." MCTC assists cooks with a distance coaching programme called 'Safe Food Handling and Nutrition', offers support and consultancy, as well as talking and consulting with them on various menu combinations. The Limassol-based MCTC offers distance-learning courses onboard, as well as training packages onshore, designed for new recruits and experienced crew members. Clients are evenly split between shipowners and third-party ship managers.