Upper Crust: Tony Sets Sail With 3-Year Princess Cruise Contract

by Joe Bonadio

If there’s one thing that the modern ocean cruise experience is identified with, it has to be the food. For many travelers, the destination on cruises is often secondary these days: like the foodies that constantly crowd our sidewalks, cruisers are all about what’s on the menu. Recognizing this, the cruise lines have stepped lively in recent years, enlisting some of the world’s best chefs to craft their dining experiences. Seeing names like Marco Pierre White and Thomas Keller gracing their menus, you might say today’s cruise industry is experiencing a culinary golden age.

With so many of our top toques taking to the sea to ply their wares, it should come as no surprise that Tony Gemignani has chosen this moment to get into the game. This month, the pizza chef launched a three year contract with Princess Cruises, the world’s leading international cruise line.

If you’ve been paying any attention, you know that with the recent breakneck national expansion of his Slice House franchise, Tony has already got a pretty full plate. It’s a lot for one guy to take on, and I recently sat down with him to hear the details. Lightly edited for length and clarity, our conversation is below.

Joe Bonadio (JB): So I’ve been hearing a lot about your new project with Princess Cruises. Can you tell me a little about how it came to be?

Tony Gemignani (TG): Yes. Fred Mortati from Orlando Foods has been working with Princess for a while, and they were looking for a celebrity chef. They passed a few names back and forth, then Fred said, well I know Tony. He called me and asked if I’d be interested, and I said yeah, I’d love to talk to them. So I got on a call, and I met them at Pizza Expo. They came out to Pizza Rock, and I started talking to the chefs. Susie Heller, who was my co-author on The Pizza Bible, represented me in the deal, and we ended up doing a three-year celebrity chef contract, and I’ve developed a specialty menu that will be a part of all 16 ships in the fleet, serving at all Alfredo’s/Gigi’s Pizzerias. And that will be 17, once the Star Princess, Sun Princess’ sister ship, launches in October of 2025. Princess Cruises is part of Carnival, and they’re the biggest cruise line in the world.

So that was kind of the process. One of their chefs, Rudy Pflueger, came out to San Francisco; they brought the videographer from Princess, and we spent two days in the kitchen working on the pizzas that I thought would work well on their cruise liners. I made the Cal-Italia, which was an award-winning pizza I created for the Food Network. I did a version of my New Yorker, that’s another award-winner. I also did the Honey Pie, with the fried onions on it.

I also ended up making them a veggie pizza, a house-made pesto, and a new tomato sauce pie. Then all of a sudden they were adding five of my pizzas, not three. The plan had been to add three pizzas and do tomato sauce development, and it ended up being five pizzas.

So they took every pizza I did. I mean, they were good—the pizzas I made were all standouts.

One of the biggest challenges is the specific ingredients that I use: Grande Cheese, Stanislaus tomatoes, Ponti Balsamic vinegar, prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano di Reggiano. So I have to get those ingredients to them: they have a Seattle pickup, L.A. pickup, Florida pickup. So it was about finding the distributors that could handle specific producers and manufacturers, and making sure that the conduit worked for them.

It’s not like you say, Here’s my ingredients, go get them at a distributor. Cruise ships are different, and it doesn’t work that way. It has to get to the cruise ships, and there are a lot of different distribution channels that people aren’t used to. Sometimes you need a specific ingredient, and you need a lot of it…

JB: Yeah! We need 1.3 tons of Parmigiano Reggiano….(Laughter)

TG: Right. So that took a lot of time, introducing the distributors and getting those relationships set up.

JB: So that was a big part of the work for you.

TG: It was, a little bit. So the whole thing’s going to launch on the Sun Princess, a brand new state-of-the-art ship that they’ve been building for years. And it’s finally going to set sail….on Italian Heritage weekend.

JB: (Laughter) How convenient!

TG: Yeah, I know. I have to train on that ship, so it’s unlikely I’ll be here for Italian Heritage Day. Okay—I won’t. (Editor’s Note: He was not.)

What’s crazy about that, is that when this ship sets sail, every travel writer will be on board. It’s a special launch, so there will be movie stars, musicians and a bunch of other people. So I’ll be training prior to setting sail, and then I’ll probably be sailing with them for a four-day trip. I don’t know where it goes, the Bahamas or something.

JB: That sounds terrific.

TG: So for the next three years I’ve partnered with them, and it’s easily one of the best partnerships I’ve ever had.

JB: Congratulations, man. What has it been like to work with the Princess organization?

TG: The chefs have been great. But you have to remember, you’re not talking to one chef, you’re talking to chefs on board every ship. So it’s Alaska, Mexico, Hawaii. So there’s a great deal of training involved, and the person you trained trains the next person….it’s a lot. This is where training videos become so important.

The Sun Princess, it’s going to be a big launch. I’ve been to stadium openings, like the Raiders, the Warriors. I’ve been to the Sphere in Vegas for opening day. So now it’s the opening day of the Sun Princess, the newest ship on the seas. So it’s really a once in a lifetime chance to be there.

JB: Has this been similar to your experience in training remotely for the Slice Houses?

TG: It’s different when you’re training for Slice House, and when you’re working with a chef who is on Thomas Keller’s level. The chefs on board these ships are master chefs, Michelin-star chefs. And when you’re on these ships, you’re dealing with anybody and everybody from all over the world, it’s very different.

You don’t want to just do a pepperoni pizza for cruisers that are paying a premium. You get a lot of food on cruises, but this is an elevated menu, so you’ve got to pay a little extra for it.

So you’ve got to realize who you’re dealing with in the chef world, as you train. And then you’ve got to figure out who your demographic is on the ships, because the diversity on a ship is insane. East Coast, West Coast, overseas, you’ve got everything. So when that menu goes further and it’s headed to Australia or Japan, you want it to be special for everyone. So there was a lot of thinking about that. Do I bring in cup-and-char pepperoni? Do we make our own Hot Honey? Do I import soppressata from Italy? And I ended up doing all of the above.

But it’s exciting. My dad and my son are going to be able to come along with me on a cruise sometime next year, and that’s going to be great.

JB: I’m sure you’ll be treated very well. It sounds amazing.

TG: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. You know, when you’re with these master chefs on these cruise liners, what you do has to be great. You have to overdeliver.

JB: That’s the Michelin world.

TG: Right. Meanwhile, Chef Rudy, I f–king love the guy. He’s well known in the pastry world, and we hit it off. He loved the pizza, and like I said they ended up taking them all. They did have their own base dough, with Caputo flour, and that’s something I didn’t change. That does make it a little easier.

JB: They were already making some decent pizza?

TG: Yeah, the dough was great, and the pizza was good. But the recipes and the ingredients we elevated.

JB: So the launch is set for Italian Heritage weekend?

TG: Yeah, and I fly in a couple of days before.

JB: Where are they launching from?

TG: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. They’ve been really begging me to come. They’re telling me I can’t miss it, it’s just a one-of-a-kind experience.

JB: It’s just one Italian Heritage Day Tony, we’ll be okay without you. (Laughter)

TG: Yeah. It’s a shame though, I haven’t missed one in fifteen years.