My Cruise Adventures

The Food

After my recent disappointment on Celebrity, I wasn't sure what to expect on Royal Caribbean. Well, I am happy to report that the food was excellent in all respects.

The Windjammer Cafe is the name of their buffet. We ate most breakfasts and lunches there, and were never disappointed. The breakfast stations had all the regular selections, with multiple stations for the standard eggs/meat/potatoes, so there were seldom any crowds. There was one area in the center at the back that would produce eggs and omlettes to order. Their bacon was crisp, as was the hash brown potatoes. One oddity I noticed was that the drink stations were not self-service. They had orange and apple juice, and you could get many flavors of tea. Sadly, there was no pineapple or cranbery juice, and while there was a machine to squeeze fresh orange juice, they charged for it and I never saw anyone get any.

Lunch was very diverse. It seemed they always had an Asian/Indian area with various currys and stir-frys, a good salad bar, pizza, and burgers. They also had several stations with miscellaneous food that was seldom repeated. The available drinks were iced tea and lemonade. If you asked the wait staff, you could get milk.

We ate in the main dining room every night, but would occasionally go to the buffet right before it closed at 9 PM to get the daily chilled soup. They had a fairly wide selection of food, but nothing that was offered in the main dining room except the soups. They had sushi every night in the Asian/Indian area. Two flavors of ice cream were offered, with toppings.

After 9 PM, you could get pizza in Sorrentos on the Promenade, and the coffee shop on the Promenade offered small sandwiches and pastries until quite late. I think the pizza shop was open until 3 AM but I never stayed up that late to find out. They always had cheeze and pepperoni, and two others that changed daily. Room service is available 24 hours a day, with a service charge added between midnight and 5 AM. Sadly, their selection was quite limited. They did not have anything from the buffet or main dining room, and could not improvise. So, I was unable to get a BLT or club sandwich.

The main dining room offered excellent food, with minor differences from other cruise lines. For instance, most lines offered an appetizer course, followed by a soup or salad course. Royal Caribbean merged the starters into one menu, with only two or three each of appetizer/soup/salad. Since the selections offered something for everyone, we had no problems with this. And as usual, you could certainly order more than one item. Several times I ordered both an appetizer and a soup or salad.

The main courses were somewhat limited - not the five or six offered on other lines, but only three or four. Again, however, there was something for everyone. We had beef on several occasions and every time it was cooked exactly as ordered and very tender. We also ordered other entrees such as the cheeze tortelloni and potato gnocchi. Their lobster offering on the second formal night included both a full tail as well as shrimp. Surprisingly, they never offered beef wellington or baked alaska.

Unlike other cruise lines, Royal Caribbean did not have theme nights. I did manage to take photos of most dinner menus. Click on the link to bring up a high resolution image of the menu.

Night 1 - Night 2 - Night 5 - Night 6 - Night 7