30 minutes with Reflection Restaurant Operations Manager Lazo Organdjiev

1. Where are you from? Background? I am originally from Macedonia. I went to a technology high school, started college in the food technology area and after 2 years of college, I started as a shift manager at a small chain of fast food restaurants. That chain grew to four restaurants, four bars, and one nightclub, so I became a manager of all these venues. I was managing 185 employees during the high season, but then the economy wasn’t doing so well and the business growth was slower. There were no weekends, holidays or days off, which I didn’t mind, but I felt like I could do more. I wanted a bigger challenge. There were no more opportunities for growth in the company so I started to look around.

2. How did you find your career with Celebrity? One of my friends was working on another cruise line and told me about his experiences. He explained that everyone started at the bottom, and they wouldn’t hire people as managers as they needed to learn all the parts of the business. This was about 1998, so I applied, they called back a few months later, said they would be visiting from the Miami office.

3. How did the interview go? It was like a 5-minute interview because 350 people showed up for one or two positions. All yes or no questions, as he had to be very efficient. He explained that working on a ship wasn’t easy, you would work hard, always had to be well-groomed, always had to be on time, you had to be good with people.So after he finished explaining, I said, ‘Stop searching, you have one in front of you. I like to work hard, I’m always on time and well-groomed, and I’m good with people.’ He laughed.

4. So you got the job? He said, ‘When can you go to the ship? I said, ‘I don’t know, give me a couple of hours and I can be ready (laughs). I’m ready, I can go anytime you like.’ He said I got the job, and two weeks later, I was on the ships.

5. Which ship did you start on? I started on Galaxy, she was one year old,and I started as Assistant Waiter. You shuffled between the Main Dining Room and Ocean View café, since back in those days there were no specialty dining venues.

6. How many people did you have in the dining/restaurantroom staff on Galaxy? If I remember right, about 130.

7. How many people you have on Reflection dining/restaurantroom staff? 286 people in total in my department.

8. It seems like Reflection (RF) is used as test platform for many new culinary ideas? It’s the flagship still, and has more venues than the other ones, so it’s the pilot for many things that happen. Sushi was launched here first, burgers were launched here first, now Qsine is launched here first. I’m proud and honored to be on RF the last two-and-a-half years, so I consider it my ship. Some think it’s the hardest ship to be on, with the most guests and venues, but I don’t think about working on other ships, as maybe it might be boring, I think.

9. Do you think people expect more because RF is the flagship? I think 50 percent of the people are happy right away when they enter the ship just to come onboard and see the beauty of Reflection.Then it’s up to us, and our staff, to complete the whole experience for them.

10. One of the Hotel Directors on the Millennium(ML) Class told me he prefers the ML class ships because he likes the challenge, since the ML class ships might not have all the dining venues and bells and whistles the Solstice (SO) class ships might have. His team needs to try harder than if they were on a SO class. Do you agree?Millennium Class ships don’t have all the things we might have, but they have their own soul, and their staff has to work hard to make an impression that will make their guests happy, and they do.

11. How many restaurants onboard RF? 12 in total.

12. If you had to trade jobs with anyone on board, who would it be and why? Whose joblooks pretty good on here? Mine(laughs). I really enjoy my work.

13. Favorite meal in the rotation? Right here in Murano, and I’m a meat person so the Chateaubriand would probably be my choice.

14. How many crew restaurants onboard RF, and do you oversee their operation as well? Yes, it’s one of the 12 on board.We also take care of the Aquaspa, guest room service, Oceanview Café, all the specialty dining, Luminae and Blue.

15. So how is the crew restaurant set up? it must be a challenge since many of the crew are on for many months at a time, instead of just a few weeks like the guests?Yes. I would like to say more about the crew mess: It functions as three restaurants matching almost what we have for the guests. We even named them that way. The first section is Qsine International, where we serve popular international food, curries, Asian food,food popular with our crew mixture. Then the second part is the bistro on I-95(major crew highway onboard on deck 2), hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, French fries, easy convenient food which always seem to be popular with the younger people, then we have the last section, which is Blue. We call it Blue Healthy:steamed vegetables, wheat pasta in tomato sauce, lighter fare like tuna and salad bar, and as things change it becomes more and more popular.

16. How often do you change up the crew menu? Well,like with everything on Celebrity we take feedback from our guests, but we also take feedback from the crew and we follow up on it.

17. So the crew is your best critic? Yes,we have our crew welfare meetings with representatives from different departments where we just discuss what the crew thinks about the food. They bring issues up, tell us what they want more or less of, and we follow up onit. Of course you can’t do miracles, but if it’s in the range of possibility to happen, we try our best to make it happen. It helps a lot that people know their voices are heard, and acted on.

18. Somefriends from home are visiting RF next week. What venue do you tell them is theone dining venue they should try? I knowit’s a hard question since all the RF dining venues are so good. The way we are designed, with the contents we have, they are made to fit everyone’s taste, especially in our Main Dining Room (MDR). Right now though I would tell them to try Qsine. Even I am sending my friends the videos (laughs), and my friends in the business are even saying ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ so I would definitely tell them to try Qsine. It’s only the third restaurant like this in the world, which is no small thing.

19. I guess you get the question, “What’s the best restaurant onboard, and what should I order?” as much as the Captain gets asked, “Who’s driving the ship?” It’s always is a difficult question when the guests ask me, as there is no right or wrong and simply a personal choice. My answer is always the same.‘They are all great, they are not comparable to each other, but the best thing is to try them all and you decide.

20. What’sthe best part of your job? The thing that makes you happy and motivates you to excellence? Which one keeps me going? Knowing from the feedback from the guests that we are making them happy. No guest should ever leave any of our restaurants unhappy. That is one thing that I feel has to happen with every guest we serve. I can’t say this is impossible, but we try our very best to make sure it never happens.

21. What else helps motivate you in your work? To me what makes me happy and proud is, like I mentioned, I work with 286 men and women in my department. Out of them, 22 are supervisors. Looking at the young people growing up into their careers. Training people, giving and getting promotions around me, that really makes me feel good. You remember when they came on the ship with that lost look, and then 3 or 4 years later you see that same person is now your assistant and has everything in control and knows what he is doing. Seeing people grow and help mentoring them makes me really,really proud.

22. What’s a typical day like for you? In ports, breakfast is the most important meal as everyone is in a rush to eat and get off the ship, so I need to be there and the day starts really early,visiting all the open venues to make sure that they are all open on time, that the people and food are all there, then I walk the closed venues afterward as we leave nothing to chance, not a formal inspection but a check to make sure all the venues are ready. Passing through the crew’s mess is also mandatory in my walks to make sure everything is good there.

23. Then after breakfast? After the rush is over then it goes to meetings, e-mails, follow-ups, checking comments from the previous day, what happened? The rest of day goes fast, and I basically go through the same thing at lunch in all the venues that are open. Port day/sea day all have slight differences, but I try and visit each one for each meal, and before long you have dinner to execute. In between, you might have tactics discussions to help fill up a dining venue. Find a way to help that restaurant be discovered by our guests.

24. Cooking on land, cooking at sea? What are the differences? None, really. It’s all planned out and provisioned well, during seven-day at sea embarkation, everything stays well.

25. Like an airline, you must find it challenging to provide specialty meals (for instance vegan, gluten free, low salt). How is that handled? Is it kind of play-it-by-ear on the individual chef’s part, or is there a grand cookbook or done by the chefs internally? We do have a special-order kitchen -- a small isolated space where cross contamination is prevented -- and all these special things are considered. It may be religious,it may be allergy, diet, it might be a preference or lifestyle. First option is the main menu. It’s good for vegetarians but might not be good for vegans, but if we are notified 24 hours in advance it can be modified. Then we have guests that prefer vegan food, but don’t really want to think about it in advance.

In that case, the chef who does special orders can step out of the kitchen, and they ask the questions [about] what they like. It can be difficult sometimes, because sometimes the guests aren’t sure what they want, so then we try and narrow it down. ‘Do you prefer Indian?Do you prefer Asian? Do you prefer Mediterranean? Do you like it spicy? Mild?This helps us narrow it down. Then, since we have a variety of chefs we can have them create something nice and tasty that meets the guest’s taste.

26. So how often does that happen, say, in the Main Dining Room (MDR)? So on an average night of 2,200-2,300 guests, most of the requests are simple ones like low sodium, no dairy, no nuts, or salt free. These are easy to modify using the same recipes on the existing menu. Most just pre-order, we show them the menu for the next day,they pre-order and it’s ready the next day when they arrive.

27. What percentage come in with requests/needs that require the complete special orders then? At the moment, I think we have a very small number.Only two vegans in the MDR, and they’ll be taken care of well. Usually though,it is a very small number on these special, special orders.

28. What about gluten free? Lately that has been more popular, so in that case we took other steps that helped us much. We started offering items on the menu labeled as gluten free, or no dairy, etc., and that’s helped us greatly. They don’t have to pre-order, and makes it easier for us and them. Dressings we make gluten free, soups we make gluten free, sauces for the dishes, we make them all gluten free.

29. Howmany chefs are in the main MDR kitchen during dinner? 52 in the execution of the meals. We have black scarves, red scarves, blue scarves, and yellow scarves.

30. Whatdo the different color of scarves mean? Black scarves are the Sous Chefs, Executive Sous Chefs, and Executive Chefs, those men and women are basically the supervisors. Then you have the blue scarves, who would own a station (a fish station,beef station), then we have red scarves, which are 1st and 2nd cooks, and the yellow scarves, which are the 3rd and 4th cooks. Starting position is 4th cook.We have Executive Sous Chefs in the Main Dining Room, and Executive Sous Chef Specialty, and the Executive Sous Chef Oceanview Café. Then I have three headwaiters: One in Crew Restaurant, one in Room Service, and one in Oceanview Café.

31. What seem to be the hands-down favorite in crews dining room? Really depends on the nationality of the crew mix. Right now, the three main nationalities are Asian, Filipino,and Indian. So regional favorites from those countries are more popular.

32. Do you find larger groups or charters any different with dining needs? Not necessarily, because the charter rents the whole cruise, but they get the whole offer we have including the food.

33. What’s your favorite port that you’ve visited? My favorite port, that’s a tough one, I’ve been lucky and traveled to so many in the world. One of my favorites would be Singapore. It really left an impression on me, it’s an amazing place

34. Your favorite port you want to visit? There are actually three places in the world that I want to visit that I haven’t made it to yet: Australia, Hawaii, and India. I almost made it to all three but plans changed at the last minute, so they are all on my bucket list.

Thank you, sir.

This was one of a series of interviews I did for a friends publication of cruise travel. Just thought I would share for all that might be interested in the background and day to day life and responsibilities of these amazing Celebrity team members

So very interesting. Thank you for sharing!

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Excellent interview. I appreciate your sharing it with us.

Really enjoyed reading, thank you!

Thank you for sharing. A very interesting and informative read.

Very interesting interview. Thanks so much for sharing it!

Thank you for sharing the interview!

 

 

 

Restaurant Operations Manager LazoOrgandjiec

1. Where are you from? Background? I am originally from Macedonia. I went to a technology high school, started college in the food technology area and after 2 years of college, I started as a shift manager at a small chain of fast food restaurants. That chain grew to four restaurants, four bars, and one nightclub, so I became a manager of all these venues. I was managing 185 employees during the high season, but then the economy wasn’t doing so well and the business growth was slower. There were no weekends, holidays or days off, which I didn’t mind, but I felt like I could do more. I wanted a bigger challenge. There were no more opportunities for growth in the company so I started to look around.

2. How did you find your career with Celebrity? One of my friends was working on another cruise line and told me about his experiences. He explained that everyone started at the bottom, and they wouldn’t hire people as managers as they needed to learn all the parts of the business. This was about 1998, so I applied, they called back a few months later, said they would be visiting from the Miami office.

3. How did the interview go? It was like a 5-minute interview because 350 people showed up for one or two positions. All yes or no questions, as he had to be very efficient. He explained that working on a ship wasn’t easy, you would work hard, always had to be well-groomed, always had to be on time, you had to be good with people.So after he finished explaining, I said, ‘Stop searching, you have one in front of you. I like to work hard, I’m always on time and well-groomed, and I’m good with people.’ He laughed.

4. So you got the job? He said, ‘When can you go to the ship? I said, ‘I don’t know, give me a couple of hours and I can be ready (laughs). I’m ready, I can go anytime you like.’ He said I got the job, and two weeks later, I was on the ships.

5. Which ship did you start on? I started on Galaxy, she was one year old,and I started as Assistant Waiter. You shuffled between the Main Dining Room and Ocean View café, since back in those days there were no specialty dining venues.

6. How many people did you have in the dining/restaurantroom staff on Galaxy? If I remember right, about 130.

7. How many people you have on Reflection dining/restaurantroom staff? 286 people in total in my department.

8. It seems like Reflection (RF) is used as test platform for many new culinary ideas? It’s the flagship still, and has more venues than the other ones, so it’s the pilot for many things that happen. Sushi was launched here first, burgers were launched here first, now Qsine is launched here first. I’m proud and honored to be on RF the last two-and-a-half years, so I consider it my ship. Some think it’s the hardest ship to be on, with the most guests and venues, but I don’t think about working on other ships, as maybe it might be boring, I think.

9. Do you think people expect more because RF is the flagship? I think 50 percent of the people are happy right away when they enter the ship just to come onboard and see the beauty of Reflection.Then it’s up to us, and our staff, to complete the whole experience for them.

10. One of the Hotel Directors on the Millennium(ML) Class told me he prefers the ML class ships because he likes the challenge, since the ML class ships might not have all the dining venues and bells and whistles the Solstice (SO) class ships might have. His team needs to try harder than if they were on a SO class. Do you agree?Millennium Class ships don’t have all the things we might have, but they have their own soul, and their staff has to work hard to make an impression that will make their guests happy, and they do.

11. How many restaurants onboard RF? 12 in total.

12. If you had to trade jobs with anyone on board, who would it be and why? Whose joblooks pretty good on here? Mine(laughs). I really enjoy my work.

 

13. Favorite meal in the rotation? Right here in Murano, and I’m a meat person so the Chateaubriand would probably be my choice.

14. How many crew restaurants onboard RF, and do you oversee their operation as well? Yes, it’s one of the 12 on board.We also take care of the Aquaspa, guest room service, Oceanview Café, all the specialty dining, Luminae and Blue.

15. So how is the crew restaurant set up? it must be a challenge since many of the crew are on for many months at a time, instead of just a few weeks like the guests?Yes. I would like to say more about the crew mess: It functions as three restaurants matching almost what we have for the guests. We even named them that way. The first section is Qsine International, where we serve popular international food, curries, Asian food,food popular with our crew mixture. Then the second part is the bistro on I-95(major crew highway onboard on deck 2), hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, French fries, easy convenient food which always seem to be popular with the younger people, then we have the last section, which is Blue. We call it Blue Healthy:steamed vegetables, wheat pasta in tomato sauce, lighter fare like tuna and salad bar, and as things change it becomes more and more popular.

16. How often do you change up the crew menu? Well,like with everything on Celebrity we take feedback from our guests, but we also take feedback from the crew and we follow up on it.

17. So the crew is your best critic? Yes,we have our crew welfare meetings with representatives from different departments where we just discuss what the crew thinks about the food. They bring issues up, tell us what they want more or less of, and we follow up onit. Of course you can’t do miracles, but if it’s in the range of possibility to happen, we try our best to make it happen. It helps a lot that people know their voices are heard, and acted on.

18. Somefriends from home are visiting RF next week. What venue do you tell them is theone dining venue they should try? I knowit’s a hard question since all the RF dining venues are so good. The way we are designed, with the contents we have, they are made to fit everyone’s taste, especially in our Main Dining Room (MDR). Right now though I would tell them to try Qsine. Even I am sending my friends the videos (laughs), and my friends in the business are even saying ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ so I would definitely tell them to try Qsine. It’s only the third restaurant like this in the world, which is no small thing.

19. I guess you get the question, “What’s the best restaurant onboard, and what should I order?” as much as the Captain gets asked, “Who’s driving the ship?” It’s always is a difficult question when the guests ask me, as there is no right or wrong and simply a personal choice. My answer is always the same.‘They are all great, they are not comparable to each other, but the best thing is to try them all and you decide.

20. What’sthe best part of your job? The thing that makes you happy and motivates you to excellence? Which one keeps me going? Knowing from the feedback from the guests that we are making them happy. No guest should ever leave any of our restaurants unhappy. That is one thing that I feel has to happen with every guest we serve. I can’t say this is impossible, but we try our very best to make sure it never happens.

21. What else helps motivate you in your work? To me what makes me happy and proud is, like I mentioned, I work with 286 men and women in my department. Out of them, 22 are supervisors. Looking at the young people growing up into their careers. Training people, giving and getting promotions around me, that really makes me feel good. You remember when they came on the ship with that lost look, and then 3 or 4 years later you see that same person is now your assistant and has everything in control and knows what he is doing. Seeing people grow and help mentoring them makes me really,really proud.

22. What’s a typical day like for you? In ports, breakfast is the most important meal as everyone is in a rush to eat and get off the ship, so I need to be there and the day starts really early,visiting all the open venues to make sure that they are all open on time, that the people and food are all there, then I walk the closed venues afterward as we leave nothing to chance, not a formal inspection but a check to make sure all the venues are ready. Passing through the crew’s mess is also mandatory in my walks to make sure everything is good there.

23. Then after breakfast? After the rush is over then it goes to meetings, e-mails, follow-ups, checking comments from the previous day, what happened? The rest of day goes fast, and I basically go through the same thing at lunch in all the venues that are open. Port day/sea day all have slight differences, but I try and visit each one for each meal, and before long you have dinner to execute. In between, you might have tactics discussions to help fill up a dining venue. Find a way to help that restaurant be discovered by our guests.

24. Cooking on land, cooking at sea? What are the differences? None, really. It’s all planned out and provisioned well, during seven-day at sea embarkation, everything stays well.

25. Like an airline, you must find it challenging to provide specialty meals (for instance vegan, gluten free, low salt). How is that handled? Is it kind of play-it-by-ear on the individual chef’s part, or is there a grand cookbook or done by the chefs internally? We do have a special-order kitchen -- a small isolated space where cross contamination is prevented -- and all these special things are considered. It may be religious,it may be allergy, diet, it might be a preference or lifestyle. First option is the main menu. It’s good for vegetarians but might not be good for vegans, but if we are notified 24 hours in advance it can be modified. Then we have guests that prefer vegan food, but don’t really want to think about it in advance.

In that case, the chef who does special orders can step out of the kitchen, and they ask the questions [about] what they like. It can be difficult sometimes, because sometimes the guests aren’t sure what they want, so then we try and narrow it down. ‘Do you prefer Indian?Do you prefer Asian? Do you prefer Mediterranean? Do you like it spicy? Mild?This helps us narrow it down. Then, since we have a variety of chefs we can have them create something nice and tasty that meets the guest’s taste.

26. So how often does that happen, say, in the Main Dining Room (MDR)? So on an average night of 2,200-2,300 guests, most of the requests are simple ones like low sodium, no dairy, no nuts, or salt free. These are easy to modify using the same recipes on the existing menu. Most just pre-order, we show them the menu for the next day,they pre-order and it’s ready the next day when they arrive.

27. What percentage come in with requests/needs that require the complete special orders then? At the moment, I think we have a very small number.Only two vegans in the MDR, and they’ll be taken care of well. Usually though,it is a very small number on these special, special orders.

28. What about gluten free? Lately that has been more popular, so in that case we took other steps that helped us much. We started offering items on the menu labeled as gluten free, or no dairy, etc., and that’s helped us greatly. They don’t have to pre-order, and makes it easier for us and them. Dressings we make gluten free, soups we make gluten free, sauces for the dishes, we make them all gluten free.

29. Howmany chefs are in the main MDR kitchen during dinner? 52 in the execution of the meals. We have black scarves, red scarves, blue scarves, and yellow scarves.

30. Whatdo the different color of scarves mean? Black scarves are the Sous Chefs, Executive Sous Chefs, and Executive Chefs, those men and women are basically the supervisors. Then you have the blue scarves, who would own a station (a fish station,beef station), then we have red scarves, which are 1st and 2nd cooks, and the yellow scarves, which are the 3rd and 4th cooks. Starting position is 4th cook.We have Executive Sous Chefs in the Main Dining Room, and Executive Sous Chef Specialty, and the Executive Sous Chef Oceanview Café. Then I have three headwaiters: One in Crew Restaurant, one in Room Service, and one in Oceanview Café.

31. What seem to be the hands-down favorite in crews dining room? Really depends on the nationality of the crew mix. Right now, the three main nationalities are Asian, Filipino,and Indian. So regional favorites from those countries are more popular.

32. Do you find larger groups or charters any different with dining needs? Not necessarily, because the charter rents the whole cruise, but they get the whole offer we have including the food.

33. What’s your favorite port that you’ve visited? My favorite port, that’s a tough one, I’ve been lucky and traveled to so many in the world. One of my favorites would be Singapore. It really left an impression on me, it’s an amazing place

34. Your favorite port you want to visit? There are actually three places in the world that I want to visit that I haven’t made it to yet: Australia, Hawaii, and India. I almost made it to all three but plans changed at the last minute, so they are all on my bucket list.

Thank you, sir.

Sounds great because I’ll be on RF June 8th

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Very interesting. I will be on RF in a couple of weeks. Thank you for sharing.

When was this interview held?

"now Qsine is launched here first" – Qsine is old hat, being replaced.

When was this interview held?

 

"now Qsine is launched here first" – Qsine is old hat, being replaced.

It was done in April of 2018

Yes, that's what he is talking about the replacement of the old Qsine with the new Le Petit Chef

A very nice interview!

I had no idea the crew had such a wide selection of food options as well, but that's good. I've wanted to do a behind the scenes tour but have never actually booked one.

Thank you for posting this, Johnny. I found it really interesting.

Glad you enjoyed, I'll try and get the ones with the Staff Captain and Engineer done this week

Very interesting interview, and I'm glad that in his bucket list is Hawaii.

I loved this! Thanks for sharing!!