Explora reports 129 chefs work the kitchens on each of its ships, roughly one chef for every seven guests, which the trade press calls the highest chef-to-guest ratio in cruising. That ratio is the whole answer to how an all-suite, all-included ship feeds up to 922 guests across eight of its nine restaurants without a banquet line. Cooking made to order at that scale is a labor cost, and Explora pays it. I sailed Explora I with my family, and I run hospitality for a living, so I watch a kitchen and a turnaround the way most guests watch the sunset. This post is the operator’s view of how the food gets aboard and out of the pass.
A note on what I can and cannot tell you first-hand. I sailed Explora I, not her sisters, and a galley is a back-of-house space no guest walks through. So the scale numbers here are documentary, drawn from Explora and from maritime trade press, and the cold-chain and turnaround mechanics are how the industry runs, not figures Explora has published for its own ship. What is first-hand is the front of it: what came to the table, when, and how fast the boring parts moved. I will keep those straight as I go.
How does Explora provision food for an all-inclusive ship?
A ship at sea is a closed system. Nothing arrives mid-voyage. Whatever the kitchens will cook for a week has to be aboard before the lines come off the dock, stored cold or dry in the hull, and rationed across every meal until the next provisioning port. That is the basic tension, and it is the one part of this that my years on the water taught me before any hospitality job did: out there, you have what you brought.
For Explora the answer has two halves. The first is the load: perishables go on first and straight into refrigerated storage, with chefs inspecting herbs, produce, and specially sourced meats as they come aboard, usually low in the hull where the supply doors and cold rooms sit. That is standard practice across the industry, not an Explora trick, but it is the reason a turnaround looks like controlled chaos from the dock.
The second half is what makes Explora different: it does not try to carry the whole week from one warehouse. Sourcing leans on local markets in the regions the ship sails, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Asia, with chefs doing in-port market visits along the way. Explora documents chefs in Sorrento bringing ingredients aboard, in one case alongside guests who came along to pick them. On a 922-guest ship sailing port to port through regions with real markets, that is operationally plausible in a way it simply would not be on a 6,000-berth megaship that has to feed a small town from bulk pallets. The ship I sailed, Explora I, is exactly that size.
Why is included multi-venue dining harder to run than one dining room?
Most people have this backwards. An all-inclusive ship with eight included restaurants is the harder operation, not the easier one.
Think about it as an operator. One main dining room runs a fixed menu, a fixed seating, and predictable covers. Eight venues all draw from the same cold chain and the same storeroom, each with its own menu, its own prep, its own waste. And because dinner is in the fare, there is no a-la-carte check rationing portions for you. A guest can eat at the steakhouse Monday, the Japanese room Tuesday, and the all-day market Wednesday, and the kitchens have to be ready for all three regardless of which way the crowd breaks. Forecasting and waste control matter more on this model, not less.
The Emporium Marketplace is the clearest example of the labor it takes. The all-day market venue on Deck 11 runs, by Explora’s own account, around 212 feet of countertops and 18 separate cooking stations, with chefs cooking a la minute, to order, in front of you. Sushi and sashimi at one counter, a raw bar, a boulangerie, a charcuterie and a fromagerie, a patisserie, a fresh-pasta station working dough imported from Emilia-Romagna, a rotisserie, pizza, a dessert bar. Eighteen stations all cooking to order is the chef ratio spent in one room. You cannot staff that off a thin galley. The 1-to-7 chef figure is the input cost behind it.
Who is behind the food, and is the menu actually fresh?
The culinary program is run by Franck Garanger, born in Angers, France, trained from the age of sixteen, named a French Master Chef in 2008, who worked alongside Paul Bocuse and Alain Passard before joining Explora in 2022. The tasting-menu restaurant now carries his name, Anthology by Franck Garanger. The menus were developed over roughly a year in a dedicated kitchen in Angers before the first ship sailed. Explora also says it carries the biggest food budget in the cruise industry. That last one is the line’s own claim, so take it as a claim, not an audited fact, but the chef ratio and the Emporium build-out are consistent with a galley that is not cutting the food line.
On “fresh,” be precise, because the marketing wants to round up and I would rather not. The menus rotate and lean seasonal, and the in-port sourcing is real and documented. What Explora does not run is a no-menu, all-improvised kitchen, whatever a stray search result might tell you. It is a structured, seasonal program with genuine local sourcing layered on top. That is a real and unusual thing on its own. It does not need to be inflated into something it isn’t. For the room-by-room read on where to actually eat, my restaurants guide has it, and the dining hub lists every venue.
What does turnaround and re-provisioning day look like?
Turnaround day is the guest-invisible counterpart to the part of cruising guests do see. On my sailings, embarkation and disembarkation were genuinely fast: met at the dock, handed a drink, the boring parts happening around me rather than to me. That is first-hand, and it is the front of an operation whose back end is running flat out the same morning.
On a turnaround in a homeport, the industry rhythm is roughly this. The ship is in around dawn, crew working by half past six, the last guests off by mid-morning, the new ones boarding from late morning into the afternoon. Inside that same window, the ship is being emptied, cleaned, and re-stocked at once. Perishables load first and go straight to the cold rooms; dry and frozen stores follow. It is a compressed nine hours or so of unload, deep-clean, and re-load, all under one clock.
The scale is where Explora’s smaller ship is the point, not a weakness. A megaship can take 600,000 pounds of food and beverage across 500 pallets on a single turnaround, the kind of volume that arrives in dozens of tractor-trailers. Those are not Explora’s numbers, and I am not pretending they are. They are the contrast. A 922-guest luxury ship provisions smaller and more often, which is exactly what makes the in-port market sourcing realistic rather than a brochure line. You cannot pluck produce from a Sorrento market for a town of six thousand. You can for a ship this size.
The cold chain itself runs in temperature bands, broadly the way any serious food operation runs one: chilled proteins held near freezing, frozen stores well below, fresh produce in its own range by type. Those are general standards, not settings Explora has published for its galley, so I will not pretend to a precision I do not have. The point is only that “all-inclusive” does not mean infinite. It means a planned, bounded cold chain feeding planned, bounded service.
Where does the all-inclusive model show its seams?
A galley is not magic, and the honest operator’s note is that it runs on labor and storage, not on infinite supply. The one place I felt that as a guest was venue hours. The gelateria was reliably shut when I wanted it, and pool and hot-tub hours wound down sooner than I expected. That is the most “I paid for this, where is it” gripe I had on the ship, and it is real.
But read as an operator, it is not a failure so much as the math showing through. Every open station and every late hour is a shift, and a shift is a head you pay. A galley that staffs to one chef per seven guests and cooks to order at 18 Emporium stations is spending its labor where the food is, which means some peripheral venues run on tighter hours. That is the trade, and it is the same trade that makes the dining as good as it is. Confirm a specific sailing’s venue hours before you book, because they vary. For the wider picture of what is and isn’t in the fare, the inclusions page lays it out, and my overall verdict puts the food in context with everything else. If you are sailing multi-generationally, the read on Explora with kids covers how the all-day venues work for younger eaters.
The food was the part of Explora I would defend hardest. Eight of nine restaurants in the fare, one dinner upcharge, the Anthology tasting menu. Sakura, the Japanese room, I went to three times and planned evenings around the teriyaki. It is a generous budget spent on the one line item that makes made-to-order possible at sea: people in the galley. The ratio is the reason the food tastes the way it does, and the reason you can order it eight different ways without anyone behind the pass blinking.
Questions people ask
How does Explora Journeys provision food for a whole voyage? A ship at sea is a closed system, so everything the kitchens will cook for a voyage has to be aboard before departure, stored cold or dry in the hull. Explora loads perishables first and straight into refrigerated storage, then supplements that base by sourcing from local markets in the regions it sails, with chefs doing in-port market visits. Because the ship carries up to 922 guests rather than several thousand, it provisions in smaller, more frequent loads than a megaship, which is what makes that local sourcing practical.
How many chefs work on an Explora ship? Explora reports 129 chefs per ship, roughly one chef for every seven guests, which trade press describes as the highest chef-to-guest ratio in the cruise industry. That ratio is the cost behind cooking to order across eight included restaurants and the 18 cooking stations of the Emporium Marketplace, rather than running a single banquet line. It is the clearest operational reason the food holds up at scale.
Is the food really all included on Explora Journeys? Onboard dining is genuinely included: eight of the nine restaurants are in the fare, with the Anthology tasting menu the single dinner upcharge. The all-day Emporium Marketplace, the steakhouse, the Japanese room, and the rest are all covered by the fare you already paid. Shore excursions, air, and a small number of paid add-on experiences sit outside it.
Does Explora source ingredients locally in port? Yes, and it is documented, not just marketed. Explora has chefs do in-port market visits in the regions the ship sails, including a documented example in Sorrento where chefs brought ingredients aboard, in one case alongside guests who came along to pick them. The menus rotate and lean seasonal, layered on a structured program developed over about a year before launch, so this is real local sourcing rather than a no-menu, all-improvised kitchen.
Why is included multi-venue dining hard to run? Eight restaurants all draw from one cold chain and one storeroom, each with its own menu, prep, and waste, and because dinner is in the fare there is no a-la-carte check rationing portions for the kitchen. A guest can eat at a different venue every night, so the galleys have to be ready for every option regardless of how the crowd breaks. That makes forecasting and waste control harder on an all-inclusive ship than on a single-dining-room one, not easier.
What does turnaround day look like on a cruise ship? In a homeport, the ship is in around dawn, crew working by early morning, the last guests off by mid-morning and new ones boarding from late morning onward, with the whole ship emptied, deep-cleaned, and re-provisioned inside that same compressed window. Perishables load first and go straight to the cold rooms, with dry and frozen stores following. On Explora I the guest-facing side of that day, embarkation and disembarkation, was genuinely fast, which is the visible front of an operation running flat out behind the scenes.
— Justin