Please tell us about a specific meal you have enjoyed onboard a cruise or maybe a specific type of food you tend to enjoy on ships.

I have never seen crab legs on the menu and scallops not too often.

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Originally posted by Frosty 4:
I can truly say that we have yet to find the best meal on all the cruise we've been on. I have not had a bad meal however.

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I agree with the first part, but not the second.

My most memorable meals (in terms of food, quality, and service) have also been on shore at some very fine dining establishments. This is not to say I haven't enjoyed some amazing experiences onboard ship, but they just don't quite stack up to the best restaurants on shore.

Unfortunately I have had some bad meals onboard ship. Two ships really stand out, and I have to admit I remember the bad meals much more so then the best. First prize goes to QE2 and the Mauritania restaurant. The food, quality, service, preparation, etc. was all poor. Not just for one meal but several. The only good thing was the company! In some 65 cruises this was probably ranks as the worst. Mind you it was still edible, but not up to the standards you would expect on QE2. Second place goes to NORWEGIAN DREAM. Dismal service and food for almost 12 days straight. Again still edible, but poorly prepared and of low quality. Mostly surly staff to go with it.

Best experiences .... QE2 again makes the list. Funny how she ranks best and worst. Typical for this ship over the years I think. The food and service I experienced in Princess Grill earlier this year were second to none. Just exquisite. Tied with QE2 is SILVER CLOUD. Fantastic food, quality, and service to compliment elegant surroundings. The best part was the room service, best I've had at sea on or land. There are not too many places where you are assigned a waiter in your suite to serve your meal course by course. Truly decedent.

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Originally posted by Italianliners:
(not the american with burguers and sausages)

Italianliners

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Best meals experienced - Fred Olsen dining room buffet lunches -
Plenty of choice eg Lots of seafood - regular cold salmon, crab claws, prawns. Cold meats and poultry, cheese, olives.- Plus hot food if wishes - chops, meats and hot vegatables.

Worst meal eperienced - Barbeques (deck and beach) on Ocean village - poor quality sausages and burgers only. - but OV is the 'budget' end of cruising

Most unimaginative meals experienced - P&O buffet lunches - Limited choice to accompany salads, lack of seafoods and over emphasis on daily curries.

Would like to see - greater variety of breads, some meals reflecting the region one is in & more vegatables with evening meals.
AND, of course, self serve tea and coffee stations dotted about the ship ; + tea, fresh coffee and fruit juice (not mixers) on every 'bar list' throughout the bars opening hours.

Would like to see disappear - 'potato croquettes' and that ilk when used in place of proper spuds !

One meal I recall as being fairly spectacular was an Olsen special deck party (late buffett) where they seem seemed to serve every thing they had on the ship except breakfast cereal ! - Lobster, crab, steak, chicken, baked potatoes, salads, crepes, ice cream chocolate desserts fruits and most other things to be found at lunch or dinner.
(I think that this might have been a one-off after the number of complaints about that specific cruise though.)

Lux

[ 12-07-2006: Message edited by: Lux ]

The Sea Breeze had a terrific pate appetizer so I ordered another.

Rembrantderdam and Regal Empress were Courtyard Marriott quality. Chinese night and New York Deli on Rembrandterdam midnight buffet were excellent.

SSNorway: avoiding the buffet chaos and each day enjoying a different ethnic lunch in the Sports Bar.

French night on the Pacific Princess 1 required a second helping of frogs legs and escargot.

QE2 cuisine was just plain boring[one year after Ernie]

QM2: after the Princess takeover the food had become excellent. The Lotus had Asian food of a 3 star restaurant.

Oceania: lobster, prime rib in the specialty restaurants, and the roast beef at the buffet were stupendous.

I have to say that while I have never had an individual meal on a Celebrity ship that was the best ever I would judge them to be consistantly the best for food, never outstanding but always bloody good. Service in the Normandie (Summit) was outstanding.

Best steak on board Sea Princess when they just started Sterling Steak House when it was outside by the grill overlooking the pool - why they moved it inside I don't know because the food (then) and the ambience could not be beaten.

Best pizza, Fairwind albeit some time ago now.

Also highly rated Le Bistro on Norwegian Jewel.
East India Company menu on Birka Paradise, superb food, service and view.
Cosmopolitan restaurant tasting menu on Color Fantasy.
Quatre Saisons restaurant (now closed) on Pride of Hull.

Commendation - Summer Palace on Norwegian Pearl (great beef wellington).

Worst food. A tie. Dinner each night on Black Prince. Dinner on Birger Jarl. Quality was worse on Jarl but service was absolute rubbish on Black Prince.
Afternoon tea on Black Prince.

Underwhelmed - Todd English on QM2. Was good but not outstanding, mostly just bigger portions.
Dinner on Star Pisces - almost all options self-service.

I would disagree with that and suggest that cruise food is allot better than your standard land restaurants for the masses like McDonalds, KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut etc - all those brands attract plenty of business and none of them are nutritious and all of them are full of fat (subway included - if the portion is too big and fat content is low it is still stored as fat if not worked off).

For those above that attract the masses, when those people go on a mass market cruise line like Carnival - I would think the food is better.

I dont like calling P&O or Princess mass market but clearly all the food served on those lines to me was far superior to the mass market fast food chains.

I heard that the banana split aboard SAL during cruises calling at Mexico was out of the ordinary - see here.

[ 12-11-2006: Message edited by: Ernst ]