Great Gatsby Dining Room on the Grandeur of the Seas

Back in August, I went on a cruise on the Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas. The trip provided some opportunities for short food adventures in Key West and Cozumel, but let's not forget the food on the ship. The Great Gatsby Dining Room was the main restaurant on the boat and I enjoyed the food here for the most part. Some dishes were really good, others not so much. For mass produced meals feeding about 1,000 people at a time, overall I thought the food was pretty good.

Day 1 Dinner: The first dinner in the dining room of the trip. I started with a smoked fish tapenade appetizer

My main course was a Potato and Cauliflower Curry, served with rice, roti, and a yogurt sauce. I wasn't expecting Indian food on a cruise ship, and it was really tasty! They had a variation on this dish every night as a vegetarian option.

Dessert:


Day 2 Dinner: Started with an appetizer of Escargot. How can anyone not like these little gastropods soaked in butter and parmesan cheese? This was not the only plate of snails I ate on the trip...

I also had a bowl of Oxtail Soup.

My main course was Shrimp Ravioli. This was my least favorite dinner on the cruise. It didn't necessarily taste bad, but it reminded me too much of something that could be bought in a supermarket's frozen food section...

Strawberry Cheesecake for dessert...


Day 3 Dinner: Roasted Garlic Soup came first.
I also had Scallop Risotto for an appetizer. Very tasty with huge scallops.

The Garlic Tiger Shrimp were served over rice with assorted vegetables.

Chocolate cake for dessert.


Day 4 Breakfast: The forth day of the cruise was the boring day at sea where there's no stopping in any port, so the entire day pretty much consists of moving from restaurant to restaurant to fill time. I ate breakfast in the Great Gatsby Dining Room rather than the buffet for the first time on the trip. Luckily, I was traveling with a large enough group to fill up a whole table in the restaurant for dinner. Because of this, the awkwardness of being seated with other random people on the ship was avoided for the most part, with the exception of this meal. I had the Smoked Salmon Benedict. Lox and runny eggs were served on an English muffin, topped with hollandaise sauce and asparagus. Hash browns were served on the side.


Day 4 Lunch: I also did lunch in the Great Gatsby Dining Room. They had a very nice salad bar set up where you selected your ingredients and a chef tossed the salad. I ended up with lots of fresh mozzarella and thinly sliced prosciutto in my salad.

They had a Greek Salad on the menu topped with Octopus salad. It sounded good, so I ordered a side of the marinated octopus. A little chewy, but still tasty.

And here's a lamb sandwich. Tasted just like pulled pork on a pita to me.


Day 4 Dinner: Caesar salad...

Shrimp Cocktail

Shrimp & Mahi Mahi Tempura

a slice of Key Lime Pie for dessert.

And that's it for the pictures of my fancy cruise food. Overall, I enjoyed the cruise food. I thought the majority of the food was good, although some of my fellow travelers disagreed. It was definitely better than the dining room food on the Carnival ship I traveled on a few years ago...