Radishes for Breakfast? - Yes Sir!

How often have you heard the claim - “Breakfast, best meal of the day!”? Well, on board Caronia you could definitely prove that claim if you wanted to. Of course, if it was your desire, you could have breakfast in bed, and many passengers certainly did. However, for the more adventurous “morning” people, a trip to the restaurant for breakfast would be de rigeur.

Elsewhere I have described the Commis Waiter duties for the Luncheon and Dinner periods. Having already worked up an appetite through delivering paperwork around all the deck pantries, and perhaps snatched an opportunity for a quick mug of Cona coffee, one of the next early morning jobs would be to prepare the hot bun trolleys.

This would mean clambering down to the bakery, sited just off the working alleyway and below the aft end of the galley. During the night the bakers would not only have baked fresh bread, but a whole range of buns, muffins, brioche, croissants and quite yummy Danish pastries. Although the galley itself was all-electric, the bakers ovens were fired with charcoal, and this was also used to heat the portable bun dispenser used in the restaurants.

This device was a highly-polished stainless-steel drum with a half-folding lid, the base of which held burning charcoal briquettes to keep the contents warm. Once you had arrived at the bakery, the mobile bun oven would be loaded for you, and then you had to carry this thing up the companionway to the trolley in the galley above.

Two of these bun ovens would be prepared for each restaurant. Trying to polish a hot stainless-steel drum and get a completely smearless finish was not a straightforward task, but it had to be done. One of the Head Waiters would come and check the trolley the moment that you entered the restaurant with it, and woe betide you if he found so much as a fingerprint or a speck of charcoal dust!

So, in a frenzied 10 minute period, there would be four of us clambering up and down this companionway three times each. Two of the trips upward would be to carry two huge silver trays of Danish pastries and two more of fresh bread and rolls; the third trip with the hot oven. If the ship was rolling a bit, all of this activity was a bit precarious, because the companionway was quite steep and there was no opportunity to hold on to a handrail! So far I haven't managed to find a picture of the bun dispenser.

Other Commis tasks in preparation for breakfast would be assisting the fruit pantryman with segmenting grapefruit and preparing yet another trolley. You would start in the cold pantry with the fruit juices, dispensed into glass jugs which were placed into a bath of crushed ice. Then the cereals would be collected and tinned fruit compotes prepared. By the way, the green figs in syrup were lovely! The last job before heading for the restaurant being to load the base with several small stacks of cereal dishes, all wrapped with a small tablecloth.

With the trolley positioned in the restaurant, you would then go back for a tray of fruit juice glasses. This had to be a separate trip because of the ribbed non-slip flooring in the galley. There was no way that you would risk glasses falling off the trolley as you slowly pushed it through. An accident involving broken glass would have meant disposing of all the food and the plates and then preparing the whole trolley again from scratch, including the replacement of all the base-cloths.

Because not all passengers came down to breakfast, this was usually a quiet and leisurely meal once the restaurant opened. The exception would be if Caronia had arrived early at an exotic port and the passengers were heading off on an arranged tour. As the menu seen left testifies, the range of food offered was extensive.

• 1953 North Cape Cruise breakfast menu transcript

Find out why Onion Soup Gratinée was a constant “speciality” on every 1st Class and Cruise Breakfast Menu