On replicas of the plates used in the Lincoln White House, guests at the captain's table are treated to dishes that would compare favorably with the fare at better restaurants. Chicken marsala topped with sautéed Alaskan snow crab is served here with roasted red potatoes and seasoned asparagus.

The dining room was in his stateroom. And that china was a replica of the china used in the Lincoln White House. When the aircraft carrier was commissioned back in 1989, the commissioning committee persuaded the Haviland china company to re-create the dishes it had designed for Abe and Mary Todd back in the 1860s. Inside the gold rim and the purple border, the presidential seal is reproduced in full-color detail. On the sideboard stands a hermetically sealed letter addressed to the secretary of the Navy. It was hand-written by President Lincoln at the start of the Civil War and donated to the ship by Malcolm Forbes.

At the captain's table, food and service match some of the best restaurants in Seattle. We started with shrimp bisque, and moved happily on through an asparagus salad followed by chicken piccata with shrimp mari-nari, champagne butter sauce and lightly seasoned sugar-snap peas. Dessert, if I remember correctly, was a chocolate cake with raspberry sauce, hardly typical Navy fare, but Captain Dupouy is an extraordinary host and the Abraham Lincoln is no typical ship.

With an overall length of 1,092 feet and width nearly that of a football field at the midsection, a ship like this is a floating village. At sea, roughly 5,500 men and women live on board, eating approximately four times a day; that adds up to around 20,000 meals a day.

Aboard the USS Lincoln, MS2 (SW) Bryant Anderson serves dessert to Capt. Douglas Dupouy, who makes sure his chefs are trained in the art of fine dining as well as the craft of stocking a ship that serves up to 20,000 meals a day.

How do they do it? "Generally we keep a 30-day supply on board," says supply officer Bob Struckman. "But I can't just say, 'Today we'll have hot dogs.' We run a five-week rotating menu that calls for about 550 food items." Computers help, too. "We calculate high and low limits based on what we've used in the past. On any given day, there's $2.5 million worth of food on board."

When I was growing up, my father used to wax nostalgic about his days in the Navy, and his descriptions of powdered eggs and beef hash over toast were so vivid I used to imagine I had eaten those things myself.

"We called it you-know-what on a shingle, but it was actually pretty good," says Pop. "A week, maybe four or five days out of port, though, we ran out of milk, eggs and lettuce and we started using powdered eggs and powdered milk. After 10 or 30 days of that, we were crazy for fresh food. The replenishment ship would come alongside every 10 days or so, but it didn't have fresh food."

On the Lincoln, Struckman says, food service has changed radically even since he started back in the '70s. "The quality of processed milk, for instance, has gone up tenfold." But some things haven't changed all that much. "We only have 12-day provisions for salad on the ship, and that runs out pretty quickly if we're out for any length of time."

	Signalman Third Class Gary Nolan enjoys a steaming bite of fried fish at lunch aboard the USS Lincoln. The fish is just one of about 550 food items used on a typical five-week rotating menu.

Perhaps what has changed most is the overall attitude about food. During the Korean War, when Pop was an officer serving in flight crews on the USS Boxer, USS Princeton and USS Essex, food was the last thing on his mind. He might have liked that beef on toast, but "carriers in the Essex class were geared for war; crew comfort was secondary. The men in charge of the mess worked hard to make the food as good as they could, but they didn't have much to work with. Those ships were built in a hurry during World War II; they stacked us up in bunks and hammocks and sent us through the line and we ate whatever they fed us."

In March, the Abraham Lincoln was given the Ney Award for outstanding food service. Named in honor of Capt. Edward F. Ney, head of the Subsistence Division of the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts during World War II, the awards were established in 1958 to improve and recognize the quality of food service in the Navy. But earning the award is more than an indication of serving good food. Every aspect of food service, from ordering and storage to presentation and nutritional awareness, is examined during an intense review period.

Shortly after the Abraham Lincoln received the Ney Award, I went back for lunch. Server Bryant Anderson and chef Shawn McCandless, who had done such a good job on the dinner, were with us again. This time lunch was a fresh garden salad and chicken marsala with sautéed Alaskan snow crab. A medley of berries topped fragrant marzipan cake. It was beautiful, and I was impressed all over again with the outstanding service and the ambiance of the dining room.

"You have to understand that we don't eat this way every day," explained Captain Dupouy. "I usually have soup or salad, and that's about it. I only eat in this room if I'm entertaining." Recently, he hosted Gen. Thomas Franks, and soon the secretary of the Navy will visit. Dupouy said he likes to establish a relationship with local chefs, which allows him to send his own chefs to our restaurants to learn more about fine dining. Each such occasion is an opportunity to improve the quality of food on board the ship, he noted, and that boils down to readiness of the fleet. As I polished off that marzipan cake, I couldn't help thinking that it's a great way to serve your country.

Greg Atkinson is executive chef at Canlis and chef at the Puget Sound Environmental Center. He is also author of "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (Sasquatch Books, 1999). Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.