Menu Need an Overhaul on Royal Ships

[BrownOwl83]

Since we started cruising with Royal a few years ago the menus haven't changed at all in the main dining room and the food quality and quantity has gone downhill. My husband won't even order the scallops any longer as you can't even find them with all the butter on the plate. We are now booking specialty restaurants in order to get a decent meal especially when we are doing back-to-back cruises since Royal doesn't change the menu and when you're doing two back-to-back cruises it is extremely monotonous to have the same menu again. It's bad enough getting the same menu a few months down the road on another cruise but two weeks in a row is more than I can take. Does anyone know if the menus are better are on other cruise lines?

[mamabdw]

I could be completely wrong about this being standard across the industry, but I believe most lines keep pretty consistent menus. I went on two Carnival cruises (one in '08 the other in '10) on different ships and had more or less the same menus on both. The amount of planning that would go into changing the menus would require so much - in terms of what to offer, supply, etc. - that I don't expect changes over night. Changes may be in the works, but from sailing to sailing over the course of a year or two, I'm not surprised there isn't a ton of differences in offerings.

[jticarruthers]

I don't think its the menus so much as the quality of ingredients and the attention to preparation and serving.

 

I usually don't have a problem finding something that sounds good, but its a crapshoot on whether what arrives at the table resembles my expectations from reading it described on the menu.

 

This is definitely an area where I have seen change (and not the good kind) over the last 5+ years. Very rarely had issues with items being served cold or under/over cooked and when it happened there was always a "response" to make sure you were happy. On our last cruise it was the norm, we didn't see a baked potato on any night for example that could melt butter. On the couple of nights we complained not a word was said they were just replaced by more potatoes that couldn't melt butter. Steak quality was very poor and was regularly served raw or well done, in between like say anything from medium-rare to medium-well with was very hard to hit for some reason. Again sent back a couple of items from the table, and typically got the opposite end of the spectrum back but still nothing close to the "medium" that we all kept asking for (hoping for something close).

[Matt]

In general, food is a very subjective topic. Whether it's steak, cheesecake or Coca-Cola, you can find 50 people that hate it and 50 other people that love it.  Doesn't really mean anything.

 

Personally, I enjoy the complimentary food on RC. I'd say most of the MDR food falls somewhere between "acceptable/good to very good", with a few outlier dishes being "very good" or possibly "bad".

[DocLC]

I've generally had good experiences on Royal, but this year on the Serenade was unacceptable. The menu choices were limited--many items on the standard menus had been removed--and the quality was poor. It was the first cruise ever where there were nights where absolutely nothing on the menu was appealing. As a result, we ate in specialty restaurants half of the nights. This is also one of the reasons we bought the 5 night dining package on the Allure.

[nancyjwll]

My past experiences in cruising have been with Carnival and Norwegian.  I have sailed on 5 different Carnival ships and the menus were exactly the  same on each ship.  I am hoping the quality and variety of food on the Oasis will be an improvement over Carnival. 

[DocLC]

My past experiences in cruising have been with Carnival and Norwegian. I have sailed on 5 different Carnival ships and the menus were exactly the same on each ship. I am hoping the quality and variety of food on the Oasis will be an improvement over Carnival.

I didn't notice an appreciable difference between the two lines when it came to main dining room food quality, but that was before Carnival revamped their menus.