Recently, Royal Caribbean has completely revamped their main dining menu. The new menus were launched earlier this year and are now available on all Royal Caribbean cruise ships. If you want to know what to eat at dinner (and breakfast and lunch), we have menus for the Royal Caribbean Main Dining room.
Royal Caribbean Main Room Dining Menus 2023
Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Breakfast Menu
Meanwhile, Royal Caribbean’s main dining menu remains unchanged. It also has several classic breakfast options. Some of the specialties include French Toast and breakfast burritos, as well as other options such as cereal, eggs, and continental items.
Dining times on Royal Caribbean ships vary slightly by ship and itinerary.
For breakfast, the main dining room opens between 7 AM and 8 AM and stays open for 90 minutes. Therefore, it usually closes between 8:30 AM and 9:30 AM.
Breakfast menu
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Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Menus Lunch
On most cruises, the main dining room serves lunch on cruise days and port days. On a typical 7-night cruise, this means that lunch is available twice in the main dining room.
As with breakfast, these options have not changed with the latest update. As such, the menu still offers classic options, with spaghetti Bolognese, a Royal Chicken sandwich, and seafood fries both days.
Likewise, a sit-down lunch in the main dining room is available for an hour and a half on cruise days and late port on call days. Usually, the main dining room is open for lunch from 11:30 AM to 1 PM.
Food 1 | Lunch 2
Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Dinner Menus
Unlike breakfast and lunch, Royal Caribbean’s main dining room menus are very different from past menus.
Now, the new Royal Caribbean menus are themed. Each night, there’s a new twist among the starters, entrees, and desserts.
Welcome to Dinner | A taste of France | Taste of Italy | Taste of the Caribbean | Taste of Mexico | Royal Night | good trip
The schedule may vary depending on your itinerary, but all tours must begin with a Night 1 Welcome Aboard dinner.
On our 7-night Western Caribbean cruise, our remaining rotation included A Taste of France on Night 2, which was the first official night. Then, the menus are followed by a Taste of Italy on Night 3, a Taste of the Caribbean on Night 4, and a Taste of Mexico on Night 5.
Day 6 was our second regular night, so we had the Royal Dinner, which consisted of lobster tail and other daily items.
Finally, Night 7 was the Bon Voyage dinner. Fortunately, the new menus included the last woman’s favorite meal, the Autumn Turkey Dinner.
Note, the main dining room still offers two dining options, traditional dining or My Time Dining.
With traditional dining, there is early seating around 5:30-6 PM and late seating around 8-8:30 PM. Dinner cruises have an equal share of the table and wait staff throughout.
With My Timed Dining, sailors can dine at a different time each night and/or with different table settings. Royal Caribbean allows guests to make reservations for each evening with My Time Dining. These guests will have a separate line from those who do not have a reservation when entering the dining room. Of course, travelers can go to the host without a reservation to ask for a table when they are hungry.
My Time Dining hours are usually around 6:45 PM to 9 PM each night.
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No More Classics on the Menu
As mentioned above, the new menus now have headers. Although, this does not mean that all menu items are compatible with the new name. For example, while the Taste of the Caribbean menu offers pork chops, it also has a pesto tagliatelle dish.
Another big change is the removal of the nightly game list. Although the entire menu rotates, the selections tend to be the same throughout the tour.
In the past, the classic starters were 6-course entrees, such as Caesar Salad, shrimp cocktail, and escargot every night. Cruisers can choose from one of four classics, including fried chicken, NY strip steak, and herb-crusted salmon. Finally, there were six desserts, such as apple blossoms a la mode or royal chocolate cake.
Those options are no longer available in the new menus. Overall, this means that every night the menu is smaller than 30%, giving travelers fewer options. In the past, the classic menu had 28 options each evening – this included 10 starters, 9 entrees, and 9 desserts. Now, the menu includes 6 starters, 7 entrees, and 6 desserts.
However, even though Royal has removed the old section, many of these dishes still appear on the new menus on various nights.
For example, surfers can enjoy shrimp for four nights. Likewise, escargot is now available in three menus: Welcome Aboard, A Taste of France, and The Royal Night menu. Furthermore, Spaghetti Bolognese was available three times.
Salmon was also served three nights. With so little other food available among fish, it seemed like there was a need for more seafood. In addition, the cheese plate, one of our main starters at the table, was completely off the menu.
Although, Harmony of the Seas serves fried chicken every night. This recipe was a great substitute for a chicken dinner, such as chicken marsala or an autumn turkey dinner.
New additions to Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Menus
While some items have been removed from Royal Caribbean’s main menu, there have been some new additions. Now, there is a vegetarian option every evening, such as spring peas and asparagus risotto or red bell pepper.
Also, every evening they have an Indian dish. This was a huge plus for me. I enjoyed the fragrant chicken saag and shrimp jalfrezi.
Most of the items on the Royal cruiser entry list, are limited to different night/theme lists. The Welcome Aboard dinner also features prime rib, and the second regular night (The Royal Night) still features the famous lobster tail. In 2023, additional lobster tails beyond the original will cost $16.99 each.
While all of this change may sound like bad news, it wasn’t in our minds. Compared to our last Royal Caribbean cruise on Navigator of the Seas in December 2022, we thought the meal plan was better.
For example, the pork chop was very expensive with lots of spices. The prime rib was perfectly grilled to rare, juicy and warm.
In addition, we were especially fond of the new theme, including the new Taste of Mexico and Taste of the Caribbean options.
Most of the time, we are not impressed with the great decorations in the dining room. However, of the new options, I liked the cup-caramel bar on the Welcome Aboard menu. The Italian hazelnut-chocolate cake was basically a lava cake with chopped nuts. Of course, you can never go wrong with a warm apple pie.
Finally, one of the stated reasons for the menu change was to make the dinner more convenient. With limited menu items, the galley can cook well prepared items that can be served quickly.
As good as this sounds, our table of 4 didn’t leave the main dining room for 90 minutes. Yes, we had three solid meals each night, and a few drinks. So, we may be atypical, but the dining room seems to run like any other Royal Caribbean cruise.
Overall, despite the limited selection, we enjoyed Royal Caribbean’s new menus, even Heidi’s. The new options offered some great, and very important, variety. The food was good, and the overall preparation was above what we expected from Royal Caribbean.
Although we’ve heard a lot of bad things, we have to disagree based on our recent experience from Harmony of the Seas. Of course, this could be related to the novelty of the menu; however, we encourage you to go on your next Royal Caribbean cruise with an open mind and try some of the new dining room options.
Comments
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