A subject close to my heart of course, as most of you will know, but whereas our trips on the Dawn and Sea Princess particularly, have often been long, although the food options are still varied, the majority are free.
The Royal being so much larger, still has free eating options, but it also has far more ‘pay a surcharge’ options – and on a 12 day cruise, we didn’t really have any desire to explore them anyway.
That means my observations are at best very limited and cannot be seen as comprehensive, but we do know that we are not alone in shunning pay options for anything other than a special occasion.
Some pay options are ‘pop ups’ in the Horizon Court. One of these was ‘Crab Shack’ at $20USD. I had a look but didn’t see anything that would tempt me to indulge. The pot with an Alaskan crab claw, mussels, squid, prawns and sweet corn was what it looked like and although it looked nice enough, not enough to tempt us to indulge. Paula is not a seafood fan anyway.
On another night, it was a fondue, but I missed seeing that one! Yet another night, it looked like an oriental noodle soup. You placed your order and the wait staff delivered it to your table.
We started off with the intention of eating in the dining room for the evening meal but as stated earlier, with a later dining time than we were comfortable with, shows where early seating was essential, and just two ancients on our table, although we changed to anytime dining, we never ate in the dining room again.
That of course meant we were focussed totally on the buffet and also the International Food area on deck 5 for lunch. Even now, I remember that shrimp and fennel salad as one of the real highlights.
Breakfast fare was really no different to the other ships other than they did seem to totally overcook the scrambled eggs and often, the sausages felt as though they'd been out there for a bit too long! Several times, I ate virtually nothing anyway, other than a banana.
Lunch, I don’t think we managed very often, but what we did eat was excellent with plenty of variety. The Atrium/Plaza lunch suited us very well, and as stated earlier, the shrimp (prawn!) salad and also the chicken salad were almost daily staples, with either an individual quiche or a meat pie.
On the Dawn & Sea Princess, there is almost a daily international speciality lunch, but on the Royal, possibly because we were in port most days, it was the evening meal that boasted the international food. This was usually very impressive as it was in addition to the standard fare and every day, there were two main roasts, rather than the usual one. When you think about it, due to the sheer volume of meals served, doing two roasts even on the smaller ships is no big deal.
One of the 'in things' in the UK and in one or two other places at the moment, is 'pulled pork'. This appeared two or three times in the buffet and I even added it to my soup on one occasion.
From memory (no pics) there was a Brazilian night, German, Oriental, Italian and American and possibly more. Whatever they had, there were many dishes to choose from.
We never had a problem finding seating and in fact, sections of the Horizon Court were almost deserted. Had the weather been warmer, I’m sure we would have eaten outside and I would imagine that in the Med or the Carribbean, the ship would really have come into its own.
As we didn’t eat in the dining room, we can’t really comment but traditionally, there are grumbles about slow breakfast service, which may well be justified. We generally prefer to grab a little bit of whatever looks attractive at any meal and choose our portion sizes. As a grazer, the buffet suits me very well indeed and it was never a problem with crowding or queuing.
As stated earlier, hardly a comprehensive coverage but certainly, we had no complaints about the food.
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