QE2 Food & Service

[dougnewmanatsea]

I am (relatively) new to Cunard so I can't comment on "decline" however I thought the food in Caronia this past January was pretty good - not great, just pretty good.

 

In the past year, I have had better food on HAL and Celebrity than on Cunard though all three were fine. I would say that Cunard's buffets were slightly better than Celebrity's but HAL's were much better than any others. Dining room food was better on HAL and Celebrity than Cunard (QE2 Caronia Restaurant).

 

The menu selections on QE2 were more limited than most other lines... QE2 had only three choices of main course each evening whereas on Celebrity it was five and on HAL eleven (I kid you not). The beef and lamb - which featured very prominently on the menus - were of notably good quality but the rest of the food was decidedly unmemorable. It was fine, just not "special".

 

The Lido is OK... As a buffet, it serves its purpose. Yes, it is just a glorified cafeteria/canteen but it is an awful lot better than most buffets I have seen on most ships. Not as good as HAL but still decent. As inelegant as this style of dining may be, it is nonetheless very useful in the event that one needs to rush to make a shore excursion or the like. On a crossing I would be disinclined to use it, I think I had one breakfast and maybe two or three lunches there.

 

While I found the food to be satisfactory, the service I experienced in Caronia was abysmal. I am sure this is not typical but nonetheless that was my experience. It basically comes down to the fact that we had an awful steward/waiter. On his day off, the service improved dramatically! I never was able to figure out if the service was deliberatly bad or if he was just no good at what he did! In any event, it was awful - far and away the worst service I have ever had on a ship. I am relatively forgiving but this was simply inexcusably bad. I think it is fair to say that it is the only time I have had genuinely bad service on a ship.

 

I would have considered complaining but did not as we had already had a run-in with the Restaurant Manager which may or may not have been a legitimate miscommunication. At any rate, the situation between him and us was rather tenuous and as we were only on for six days I decided not to escalate things further and to leave it to my dinner companions to complain if they saw fit. (They didn't.) Had we been booked for a longer voyage, I do n ot think I would have had any choice but to bring it to the attention of the Restaurant Manager and, if all else failed, to the Hotel Manager if necessary.

 

Needless to say, I was very unimpressed by the Caronia Restaurant and am glad we did not pay much extra to dine there. I am smitten with single-seating dining, but the food is apparently the same between Caronia and Mauretania, and the service in Mauretania cannot possibly be worse than I experienced in Caronia (though I am sure it is very atypical). Honestly, the whole thing was rather amusing, in a "Fawlty Towers" sort of way, but after a week or two I am sure the humor would be gone!