With every season, our offerings on the dinner cruise menu change to reflect the weather and what’s fresh at the local markets.  Recently Chef Udo Belew invited us for a tasting of his new ideas for the late fall/winter entrees.  The inspiration behind these recipes came from colder temperatures and the colorful harvest bounty of the fall.

 

For the meat entrée, we were treated to Boneless Braised Short Ribs and Black Mission Fig Demi.  This dish is served with a sumptuous Mascarpone Potato Puree and Roasted Root Vegetables for a healthy dose of vitamins during the cold season!

The seafood option (irresistible for fish lovers like myself) featured a Black and White Seared Albacore, with a Black Bean Gratin, Spicy Roasted Tomato Sauce and a Savory Tuile.  (Tuile is a thin, crisp cookie that is bent into a fancy shape while it’s cooling).  It’s a beautiful production, as you can see from the pictures!

And for the vegetarian entrée, Chef Udo created Hand-made Wild Mushroom Ravioli, that were served with a Tomato-Basil Infused Consommé.  The pasta is fresh, full of rich flavor and topped with Asiago cheese for an incredible winter dining experience. 

This new menu is replacing the current entrée choices as of November 1^st.  Thank you, Chef Udo, for a delicious afternoon of tasting!

With the launching of our new Lake Washington Dining Cruises and Cruise Tours, we knew we had to improve our customer service in the area of online ticketing.  Our sales, marketing and IT team evaluated a number of “plug-and-play” online ticketing systems; looked at systems used by our competitors; evaluated our third party system, which served us in 2009; looked at all the new technology available to develop our own “ticketing module”.  We found it all lacking.  We found most online ticketing systems not to be “user friendly”. Being “user friendly” was our Goal Number 1!

 

So we decided to launch our own effort to develop a “state of the art” online ticketing system to graft onto our website. We climbed on this bucking bronco in January. What an undertaking  for a small company!

 

First, we put a team of our Waterways people together to shepherd the project to completion…or abandonment!  Then we asked a group of customers to tell us what “The Module” needed to do to make the buying process as good as Chef Udo’s food on our Sunset Dinner Cruise and as good as our crew’s service.  We developed three pages of criteria of what we wanted “The Module” to accomplish.

 

We asked our long-time web developer Montana Banana and IT Manager Spain McMillen at Sound Event how we could meet the lofty goal we set for ourselves.  They said they were up to the task.  Katya Turnbow, our Director of Marketing volunteered to “herd the cats.”   We set a budget and a schedule and off we went into the murky world of software development.   Well, we exceeded our budget by a bit.  It took much longer than we expected.  We discovered what creativity in the IT world is all about.   The good news is that we got what we asked for – a great ticket purchasing machine and an easy-to-use experience for our customers.

 

On June 15th we launched our updated website and “The Module”, which is now called “Waterways Websales“.  If you purchased tickets recently, let us know what you think about the process!  After all, our Number 1 Goal was to make it “user friendly”!  We look forward to hearing your feedback!

The loss of life in the Fremont apartment fire on Saturday morning is hard to bear… In our small company, this tragedy means losing one of our own employees and their family members.   Eyerusalem Gebregiorgis, who joined Waterways in April as a dining steward, perished in the fire, together with her nieces and nephews.  Her sister, Helen Gebregiorgis, is also our dining steward, lost three children.  We mourn the loss of Eyerusalem, Joseph, Yaseen, Nisreen and Nyella. 

We want to help the family in this difficult time.  A memorial fund is being set up in the name of the family and we are accepting donations (food, clothing, toiletries) at The Lakeside Event Center between 9 am and 5 pm.

Cash donations are also being accepted at the Red Door, 3401 Evanston Ave. N., in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. 

The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for our new Lake Washington Dining Cruises from Southport Pier & Promenade in Renton was on a gorgeous sunny day, perfect for the celebration!  Mayor of Renton Dennis Law cut the ribbon, assisted by our CEO Hilton Smith and Captain Larry Fisher.  We are excited for this new operation on the south end of Lake Washington - having been in the events business since 1994 in Seattle, it is great to have this opportunity to bring  our fine dining cruise experience to new guests and new location.    After the ceremony on the dock, guests were treated to a Happy Hour Cruise aboard The Emerald Star.  We are ready for the summer of cruising and fun on the water!