Food on the Spirit

[nycruiser1975]

I have been reading many reviews on different boards about the food on the spirit. Is the food that bad on the ship? I am a little disappointed to hear that, if it is true. We spend so much $ and no good food, but have to pay more $ to get better quality of food:( . Please help. I am a newbie and still learning.

[Don Haynes]

Recently NCL changed the menus a bit in the main dining rooms, more than likely in an attempt to lower some costs. Frankly I liked and enjoyed the interesting new food in the main dining rooms. I think some people expect too much, expecting to dine at an American bar and grill when the main dining rooms are continental....

 

Yes, the choicest cuts of meat are at the speciality surcharge restaurants. If you enjoy prime rib, rib-eyes, tenderloin, and sirloin, you'll enjoy the main dining rooms. If however, you prefer a filet or porterhouse T-bone, dine in the speciality surcharge restaurants.

 

Someone in the past week posted a link to the Dawn's menues from a recent cruise. If you look for it, it will probably show up in the first 5-10 pages of this forum. The best advice I can give you is to look for and see the menues yourself.....

[pratzert]

We sailed the Spirit last August and no one in our group had any real "complaints" about the food. Some choices were just better ( or worse) than other choices.

 

We ate breakfast at the Buffet most mornings and found it fine. Fresh fruits, eggs/omelets to order. It was like eating at a Golden Corral at home with many items to choose from. When we ate at the main dining rooms for breakfast or dinner, we enjoyed it as well. Generally the food in the main dining rooms was served hotter than at the buffet.

 

If you don't like what you have at first, you can always ask for something else.

 

The best food ever.... No.... but let me say, I gained about 10 pounds during our cruise, so it must have fairly tasty.

 

I certainly would not hesitate to sail the Spirit because of the food.

 

Tim

[Last Mango]

Breakfast in Windows is great; although some days the service was slow. Breakfast buffet was okay; pretty much the same things every day. The crispest bacon you'll ever eat.

 

Lunch and dinner at Windows were good. Servings are small. A couple times my hubby just asked for an extra order of the meat/fish when he placed his order. Desserts at Windows were excellent.

 

I believe the menu at the Garden Room is the same as Windows but we only went to the Garden Room once. We found it to be crowded and noisey.

 

Buffet lunches and dinners were what I expect from any buffet. Cold desserts were boring! For a hot dessert, it seemed to rotate between a variety of bread puddings and cobblers. I love bread pudding so that worked out okay for me. The stir-fry was one of the best dishes.

 

Cagney's was excellent. They make the caesar salad right at your table. The t-bone is definetly the steak to order. We had cherries jubilee as it was the dessert of the day....fantastic.

 

Sho-gun was also very good. However, they're scale of what is hot and what is not, is not to be trusted. My hubby ordered something that was supposed to be hot and it had no heat at all.

 

Several days they also served fish & chips in the pub. Small orders again, so order 2....pretty much everyone was.

[intrepid_guy]

I was also on the 11 day SPIRIT that LastMango was on. I thought the food was very good to occasionally great. There was only one thing I can remember not liking enough to not eat it, it was "strawberry cheesecake". Now, I had cheesecake several times on the ship and it was GREAT, but this one instance it was a cheesecake layer on top of a spongy cake (like Wonder Bread) with a weird strawberry gel in it... not so good. I ate dinner every night with 5 to 9 other people and never heard a complaint about the food! Of course it is subjective, but I never had a complaint. Oh, also, room service was good as well, especially the grilled cheese and the cole slaw! Yum.

 

~Intrepid

[SSBN602]

I also just returned from the 1/29 Spirit cruise.We dined in Shogun once Cagneys twice,Le Bistro once ,and La Trattoria once.I found all of these restaurants good but not significantly better than the main dining rooms(Garden or Windows)exactly the same menu different view and atmosphere.Breakfast in the buffet could be a little frenetic at times,due to the traffic patterns. Windows sit down breakfast was at times slow but if you dont have a shore excursion what else do you have to do anyway,isn't cruising about relaxing?Overall I found the food to be good to very good and probably next time would eat in fewer speciality restaurants .THe tea time finger sandwiches from around 3 -4 in the afternoon were also a nice respite especially after a shore excursion and before a late dinner.