Overall, the food on the ship was great. There are a few different dining options, see below for times and location specifics. No extra charges occur for dining at any of the locations, although reservations need to be made for the Chef's Table and Manfredi's. The reservations can be made prior to your departure depending on cabin class or made after boarding. If you haven't booked any of these prior to departure, I would recommend going to the Chef's Table or World Cafe on the day of boarding where you can make dinner reservations for the Chef's Table and Manfredi's. We made two reservations at the Chef's Table and two at Manfredi's upon boarding without any issue. Most of the places would be open for breakfast by 6:30 AM and open for dinner from 6:00-9:00 PM, with 24 hour room service available.
Beer and wine are included for both lunch and dinner. The beer
selections available are a wheat beer and a stout. The wine selection
is a house white, house red, and even sparkling wine (you'll have to request the sparkling wine as it typically won't be directly offered, but it is included at no extra charge). The house wines would change periodically and seemed to be of good quality to my unrefined palette, see picture below for an example of the house red. Also, if you want true wine pairings specific for your foods, I'd recommend the Chef's Table where you'll get four different glasses of wines, see below for more information. However, if you are really into wine, I'd recommend considering paying for the Silver Spirit Beverage package which gets you access to more wine options.
The dinner menus are available outside the restaurants on an interactive screen, as well as being available from your television menu.
The World Cafe is the traditional buffet area, although does have a few made-to-order options as well. There are two different sides of the serving area, slightly different on each side so I'd recommend checking them both out. The breakfast was always good, with the traditional eggs, sausage, etc which all appeared to be very good despite being on a buffet line. There are also made to order omelettes or other egg variations. The made-to-order egg station did get a bit busy around 8:00 AM, although other times never seemed to have a line. There is also a wide variety of fruits, with some excellent melon available, along with yogurt and cottage cheese. Finally, there is an area of breads, with a toaster available. Each morning they would also have either fresh donuts or sticky rolls in the bread section. Finally, Norwegian waffles are also available here, similar to the ones made in Mamsen's described below.
The World Cafe's lunch and dinner were fairly similar, both having an area for salad, main dishes with sides, and bread. Some days there had certain themes of the food based around the local cuisine, such as mostly Greek foods one lunch. Fish or seafood seems to frequently be an option as one of the main dishes. For dinner there is also always one section devoted to sushi and crab legs, with the sushi being fairly good in my opinion. You can also always ask the cooks to make tiger prawns or chicken breast on the grill for you, along with a few other alternating dishes such as steak or pasta. Finally for dessert, there is an excellent gelato area with different flavors every day (try the no-sugar added blueberry), along with typical cookies, cakes, etc.
The Restaurant is the main dining room. Honestly, this was where we had some of our favorite meals. The tables are set up for both groups and couples. We always sat at a two person table, although other tables are a bit closer than normal, so conversation with other tables is very easy if desired. The restaurant has one half of the menu which changes every day, a small section devoted to local foods, then a section which does not change including salmon, steak, etc. A few of our most memorable entrees included Chilean sea bass and a wonderful lamb shank. (Sorry, no pictures).
Manfredi's is an excellent Italian restaurant. We ate here twice and had a great meal each time. You'll start off with an Italian bread basket with dipping oil/vinegar along with Parmesan cheese pieces. See below for the menu. A few of the things I would recommend are the fried calamari and the bisetecca fiorentina.
The Chef's Table serves a different menu every 3 days revolving around a central theme each time. This was a lot of fun to try, although I didn't enjoy the actual food as much as the other options. We tried both the Asian menu and Indes spices menu. The Chef's Table is a 5 course fixed menu with an amuse bouche, first course, granita, main course, and dessert with a paired wine provided for each course except the granita. If you get the Silver Spirit Beverage, you'll get more specialized wine (along with long-stem glasses), but I found the provided wine to be excellent. The food itself was good (particularly the beef tenderloin in the Indes spices menu), but was often a bit too fancy for me, with lots of foam and other culinary tricks. Overall, I enjoyed the main restaurant more, possibly because I could always order exactly what I wanted, but the Chef's Table was certainly a fun experience.
Mamsen's is a small area in the Explorer's lounge that serves more traditional Norwegian food. For breakfast they have tasty Norwegian waffles, along with pickled fish and fruit. The brown goat cheese which comes with the waffles (see below) is some of the best cheese I've had, called Brunost Cheese, which is a traditional Norwegian goat cheese. You can also get a different smoothie made for you each morning.
For lunch, Mamsen's has mostly sandwich options, along with waffles and sweets. I'd recommend the open-faced gravlox sandwich.
The Pool Grill serves mostly burgers, hotdogs, etc for lunch. I only tried the Viking Burger (comes with cheese and bacon) which tasted great.
You can get tea or coffee on the first floor in the Viking Living Room on the first floor or from the World Cafe at any time. There is also a daily Teatime which I would recommend checking out if possible. It runs from 4:00-5:00 PM each afternoon in the Wintergarden on the top deck. In addition to a variety of teas, they also serve hot scones and plates of small finger foods.
Room service is available 24 hours a day, typically taking about 20-30 minutes to arrive at your door.
No comments:
Post a Comment