Want a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings at home, but don't want the bother of cooking it all yourself?

The Fairmont Hamilton Princess has come up with a scheme to ease the pain of seasonal cooking for Island residents - and is offering a special pick up Christmas dinner service called “Gobble Gobble A Go Go”.

The Princess started offering this service for Thanksgiving, and, despite having no publicity or advertising had booking for three dozen turkeys on the day.

Now the service for Christmas is being launched, and at $30, Peter Finnegan, director of food and beverage at the hotel, says he thinks it will be a big hit.

“You couldn't go out in Bermuda and get a meal for $30,” he said. “And here you have a home cooked meal, with turkeys, stuffing, bread and cakes baked by professional chefs - and you can pick it up and take it home and it is very easy to pretend you did all the hard work yourself!”

The hotel is offering the four course-meal service and will provide turkeys cooked whole plus all the trimmings to be picked up either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

And Mr. Finnegan thinks that this could turn out to be a real money spinner for the hotel, who with professional kitchens and huge ovens, can turn out top quality meals in huge quantities.

But he said part of the success of the service is the ability of the person ordering to be able to claim the cooking as their own if they want to, and just transfer everything into their own dishes and platters at home.

“Let face it, not everyone wants to cook at Christmas, either because they do not have the room, cannot be bothered or don't know how to cook. We can cook four or five turkeys at a time, and we have top grade chefs making the meal. We are used to catering for groups of 500, so cooking for 12 for Christmas is not such a big deal.”

The service will be available at Christmas, with five days advance booking and the menu includes a choice of soup, salad, a choice of turkey, ham or prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, cassava pie, sage stuffing, green bean casserole and asparagus, followed by a choice eggnog cheesecake and pumpkin pie.

“We can change menus to suit everyone's taste. The most difficult is when we get an order for two - then we have to find a small turkey for them. But we try to accommodate everyone and do what we can to make this Christmas hassle free.”

Mr. Finnegan hopes that the scheme will be such a hit that the hotel will continue at other festive times to offer a similar service.