Nothing to sea here: Cruise dining goes inland for some spectacular new experiences

Mark Olive is talking through the ingredients he’s woven into a menu for the 150 people flying to Uluru for a special dinner. “We’re featuring foods from the area,” he says. “We’ve got bush tomatoes, warrigal greens, quandong, river mint and saltbush. Out here, you don’t get a lot of wattleseed. That’s more coastal. But the black wattleseed is something we’re using.”

Olive, a Bundjalung man from the NSW Northern Rivers region, has helped put Australian Indigenous cuisine on the global map through the SBS-TV food show The Chefs’ Line, his cooking series The Outback Cafe, and his recently opened restaurant Midden in the Sydney Opera House. On this trip he’s introducing the largely international contingent to ingredients such as lemon myrtle and ice plant.

He and the guests are in Uluru as part of SALT (Sea and Land Taste), a Silversea Cruises program that gives guests a chance to have more meaningful food and drink experiences.

You’re right to think that Uluru is not on the coast, so to get the diners to the Red Centre, Silversea chartered two planes from Darwin, where the ship is docked. Guests stay at the Sails in the Desert hotel and visit Uluru, experience art installation Field of Light and a show by First Nations performers.

Silversea was launched in 1994 as the first all-inclusive, luxury global cruise line, but this shore excursion is an extra cost. It’s proved popular regardless, prompting the company to introduce an Asian program earlier this year alongside its mature northern hemisphere offering.

This was the first Australian SALT event, but there are more planned.

SALT sees guests foraging for wild plants in Iceland, visiting Welsh vineyards, doing cooking classes in Northern Ireland and diving into Latvian food during a tour of a Riga market with a top chef. In Japan, guests watch artisans make Japanese knives, and in Singapore, they visit a private home with one of the country’s most impressive collections of Peranakan artefacts.

SALT was conceived by three-time James Beard Foundation Journalism Award winner Adam Sachs, the former editor-in-chief of US magazine Saveur. He also wrote for Bon Appetit.

The excursions complement the on-board programs, which include cooking classes, a bar and a restaurant whose drinks and dishes constantly change to reflect the ship’s specific location.

It’s ambitious, but Silversea’s travelling fleet executive chef, Anne-Mari Cornelius, says that, much like the land-based excursions, the evolving menus give guests a more genuine sense of place, as if they were travelling through the countryside rather than skirting the coast.

Sarah Norris travelled courtesy of Silversea.