All restaurants on board are included in the price of the cruise. We are therefore far from the exorbitant prices of American companies such as Norwegian or Celebrity.
There is no “main restaurant” and the buffet (The Galley) is a kind of food court where various themed stations are offered. You can come and choose your dish, wait for a waiter to come and ask for your order or order directly via a QR code placed on the tables and which directs your smartphone to an ordering site. Sushi, toast, hamburger, pasta, salads, daily specials, desserts… or lunch boxes to eat in or take away… the choice is wide.
There are plenty of snacks to be had all day long all over the ship: a pizzeria, fridges with self-service boxes, pastries, cakes, sweets (the dark chocolate chips with pecans are to die for), and also fruit! Phew.
The Sun Club Café (on the upper deck) or the Dock (at the rear of the ship) offer simple but succulent menus served throughout the day.
The other restaurants all have special themes but are all included. Reservations are required and there is a limit of one reservation per voyage per restaurant for cruises of 5 nights or less. Some of these restaurants offer brunch at noon and are also worth a visit (reservations for these brunches do not count towards the previous limit).
The Pink Agave is Mexican inspired and I found the food to be better than on my previous cruise, during which I did not find this restaurant memorable. An improvement therefore, which made me return a second time during these 2 weeks.
The Extra Virgin is Italian inspired. The service that I found average on my first cruise is still average. The food is equivalent. Still good, without being amazing either.
The Razzle Dazzle was vegan-inspired. I write “was” because it is probably the restaurant that has changed the most since my previous cruise. The menu has been heavily revamped and only a few dishes have remained vegan-inspired, offering more variety, probably requested by passengers. Next to the essential hamburger, a meat-free alternative (replaced by soy patties that really imitate ground beef) deserves to be commended because it is really good.
The service was not very good the first time, it was not better this time, the waiters always seemed to be completely disinterested in the customers and their requests, in addition to being unpleasant.
The Korean-inspired Gumbae remains as festive as the first time (too much for my taste!). The quantity of food is still excessive, the server once again suggesting not to choose one of the options on the menu (seafood, meat or vegetables) but to let yourself go and have a little of everything. None of the 6 guests around the barbecue were able to finish their dishes.
The culinary experience remains interesting, however, for the discovery of Korean cuisine.
The Test Kitchen is the ship’s gourmet restaurant, with a 6-course menu, with only the choice of the dish from 2 options. I was able to taste 2 different menus from this restaurant, I don’t think there are others.
No real changes, except for small changes on the margins. The most striking, however, is certainly the portions, sometimes greatly reduced. Still as good, but with less of the surprise effect with these unchanged menus.
One of the dishes that had marked me, among other things because everything was very good, was a dessert based on blue cheese, very soft, really surprising and original that I really liked. Well the comparison between its version of my first cruise and this one shows the turn taken by Virgin Voyages which had to do “cost cutting” as they say…
Overall reduced by half! What a shame.
Finally, The Wake, which was my second favorite restaurant on board, after the Test Kitchen, takes first place this time. A mix of a steak house and a seafood restaurant, with a superb view of the ship’s wake, it is an excellent restaurant for meat and seafood lovers.
Their brunch is worth the detour on its own…
There are a few extras if you want to upgrade your meal even further (like huge chunks of meat worthy of Asterix and Obelix, or the seafood platter for 2).
Next page, the rest of the ship and the conclusion!
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