Eat kosher food on your cruise's port days

I have covered in two separate posts food on the boat (breakfast and lunch/dinner). What happens when you are at port? Almost no ports have kosher food options.

Ports with kosher options

Although some cruises stop in places like Los Angeles, New York City or Boston, most do not. Obviously if you stop in one of those cities, you will have no trouble finding kosher food. Outside of main US cities, most ports kosher food is harder to come by. Even in the stores, you won’t find stuff with a hechsher like you will in the US.

If your cruise stops in Nassau, you are in luck if you plan to do an excursion at Atlantis. There do have one restaurant that has packaged kosher meals, which are surprisingly delicious, but pricey. They also only keep a few in stock, so I suggest calling in advance, so they know to have enough on hand!

Staying on the boat

Although you may want to get off the boat and explore, if you don’t have a big excursion planned you can just eat back on the boat. Any of the food I previously talked about is available during port days. The buffet area never closes, even while docked so just let the Matre’d know the night before that you will be on the boat while at port and work out a time for your food to be ready. Any of the options should be available to you. If you are sailing with Norwegian make sure you plan ahead when ordering lunches for those days (see more details on my Keeping Kosher on Norwegian Cruise Line post).

As an added bonus for this option, the ships amenities should all be open and not crowded. If you have been looking for a time to try out a water slide, mini golf, rock climbing wall, or whatever else your ship offers, you can do that on port days without any lines.

Take food with you

A kosher cruiser should never go on a cruise without a wide selection of Ziploc bags (I recommend a variety such as this) and a soft cooler (if traveling with a family I recommend a cooler backpack like this). At breakfast (or the night before) you can ask for extra salmon, veggies, potatoes, etc. Just wrap them up and throw them in your soft cooler. Head to wherever they have ice available on your ship, and you are good to go. Something like salmon is good cold so this is a great selection.

If you are lucky enough to have a cruise with kosher yogurt or waffles that you had for breakfast, you can always ask for a bagel with cream cheese and lox that you can wrap up for your lunch. It might be a lot of carbs, but hey you are on vacation!

Salad obviously is another item that will travel well. Just ask for whatever aspects of a salad you want (with or without lettuce depending on your feelings of their lettuce), throw them in a gallon bag, and you are all set.

I obviously would not recommend getting any of the packaged hot meals, but everything else you should be able to take to go. Just remember your Ziploc bags and your soft cooler!