2023.01 New York City and Caribbean Cruise (Part 6)

Onboard the buffet is on one of the upper decks.  It’s open almost constantly throughout the day serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Upon entering the staff will remind you to wash your hands “Washy, washy!”.  Overall, the buffet is fine.  If you want table services, that’s available at main dining for breakfast and dinner.  We tried breakfast on the first sailing day, however none of us found the food memorable, and we ended up electing to stick with the buffet breakfast for the rest of the journey.  In fairness to main dining breakfast, the French toast, as presented looked great.

For dinner, the majority of our meals were in the main dining room.  As we were a group of 7 we had an entire table for our party.  Some days, a few didn’t join us, and the staff were able to accommodate a less than full table.  Here’s a gallery of food we had at main dining:

Sadly, on the last night the main course that Little Miss received was substandard.  What was billed as a steak, was barely a minute steak.  I tried a bite and the quality was so bad, that we ended up visiting the buffet.  That was not the way we wanted to end our main dining experience on the cruise. 

Specialty Dining

Now we elected to have special dining several times during the cruise.  We didn’t try all of the restaurants onboard as there was an Italian style, however none of us were interested in trying it.  Here’s the restaurants we did try:

Chops Grille

We dined at Chops Grille twice, as none of us found anything at “Jamie’s Italian” appealing for us to try.  Overall, the food was good, service was better than main dining. Here’s a slideshow of some of the items we enjoyed at Chops:

Izumi

We had lunch at Izumi before arriving in San Juan. We found the food to be excellent.  Here’s a slideshow from that lunch:

Wonderland 

Now this dining experience was unique.  This meal uses a special cooking and preparation style that results in unique shapes, size and textures.

Here is a slideshow of the food.  For example, the tomato shaped item wasn’t a tomato.  It was a novelty to eat.

The standout by far were the dessert options.  They were the best of all options on board!

Not pictured was the gigantic chocolate dessert.  Find a video of it online, the presentation is almost as good as the taste of the dessert.  It was outstanding.

Explore other parts of this trip:

Part 1 – Air Canada Flight Toronto to New York City, LaGuardia

Part 2 – Millennium Hotel New York, One UN Plaza

Part 3 – Things to do in New York City

Part 4 – Caribbean Cruise Introduction

Part 5 – Things to do while Cruising

Part 6 – Cuisine onboard (this post!)

Part 7 – Port, Puerto Rico

Part 8 – Port, St. Maarten

Part 9 – Port, Antiqua and Barbuda

Part 10 – Port, St. Lucia

Part 11 – Port, St. Kitts and Nevis

Part 12 – Maple Leaf Lounge LaGuardia, flight New York to Toronto