Surprisingly disappointed with the food on the Pearl

I'm not a picky eater by any stretch of the imagination, so all the comments I'd read prior to our cruise about NCL food not being very good I took with a grain of salt...thinking those people were just more "foodie" than my very average (or so I thought) pallet...but alas! I, too, was very disappointed in the food.

Now, to clarify, I did NOT eat in any of the cover-charge specialty restaurants. I figured I shouldn't need to pay extra to get tasty food. I am now wishing perhaps I had tried at least one so I would know the difference.

I did eat at both MDR's, O' Sheehans, Lotus, and the buffet though. I only had two meals that I actually wanted to repeat...the Turkey Sausage Lasagna in Summer Palace, and the Chicken Pot Pie at O' Sheehans. Everything else was forgettably bland, bland, bland. Even the desserts, though very pretty, were bland. It's like they forgot to add the sugar. Haha! (Perhaps I'm just used to over sugared Americanized desserts?) but I was so unsatisfied with every dessert I tried. They also kept putting out a pot of caramel sauce that was absolutely the worst tasting thing I've ever put in my mouth. I kid you not. It tasted like burnt caramel and ashes...zero sugar. It was ghastly. I tried a little tiny sample every time I saw it just to see if it was "fixed" lol One time I saw a poor woman pouring it all over her cheesecake and I felt like grabbing her arm to stop her...then figured she'd find out soon enough how gawd awful it is. Perhaps I'm crazy, but it seems to me that caramel sauce should taste yummy...like caramel. Silly me. lol

When I arrived home yesterday, on my birthday, my boys had bought a birthday cake for me. Oh my, it was DIVINE!! Just a silly store bought cake tasted 100x better than the myriad fancy desserts I had tried on the Pearl. That's kinda sad to me. And the Burger King burger we ate for lunch at the airport yesterday tasted Sooo wonderful after a week of bland. Again, very sad. I'm not a junk food junkie by any means, in fact just the opposite, but I do like flavor in my food. For me NCL Pearl did not deliver. Even the eggs over easy I ordered one morning tasted bland. How can they mess up fresh eggs? [emoji15] The French toast was decent though, as well as the pork sausage, so breakfast wasn't a total wash. [emoji16]And the pizza was decent, though nothing to write home about. On the last night they had salmon, I was so happy, but it was riddled with bones. Ewww. Another night they had salmon with BBQ sauce on it. Double Ewww. Oh my, I could go on, and on...but I will stop.

Regardless of all my food complaints, we had a wonderful time though!!! The staff and entertainment were excellent and made up for my food disappointments. And yes I'd even cruise NCL again...but I'd probably want to spring for the dining package. Just sayin' [emoji6]

Sorry you didn't like the food. Next time go ahead and try the specialty restaurants they are great. How was the Asian food? Was that bad too. We are going on the Pearl in Nov. and that was the only included restaurant we were going to try.

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the food. The last time I went on the Jewel, I wasn't all that crazy about the food, but I am hoping I will enjoy it more this time. On all the NCL cruises I have been on, I have been disappointed in the desserts. But yet I keep coming back. I think because I enjoy everything else. :)

I'm wondering if you had something wrong with your tastebuds? Maybe a tad of a bug? Lol. I never had much of any issues finding something tasty anywhere I went on any of the ships. (Have not been on the pearl) but can't imagine just one ship would be so drastically different.

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The Asian Restaurant was decent. My Kung Pao Chicken had no spice to it whatsoever whereas where I am from in California Kung Pao is always spicy. The egg rolls were decent, as was the fried rice. My DH had some orange beef dish that he thought was very good and some udon dish with octopus. That was actually one of his favorite meals. [emoji6]

I'm wondering if you had something wrong with your tastebuds? Maybe a tad of a bug? Lol. I never had much of any issues finding something tasty anywhere I went on any of the ships. (Have not been on the pearl) but can't imagine just one ship would be so drastically different.

 

 

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Haha!! Well my sister who has been on MANY cruises said the Pearls food was one of the worst she's had. So maybe it's a sister taste bud thing? [emoji3]

Thank you for your quick response. We will give it a try. I'm with you we are not fans of the dining room food either. So we just book the specialty ones and always have a great meal. To me cruises offer so much for what you pay, that the extra money for a very good dinner is worth it.

Sorry to hear you were meh about the food. I was on Pearl like 3 months back and I thought the food was aite. Then again, I ate specialty dining like 4 times during the week. As someone who has taken a lot of NCL cruises, I essentially know what to expect in the buffet (and more or less MDR) and the food really can be a hit or miss. The pizza and fries are my guilty pleasure despite the pizza is not anything out of this world lol

The Asian Restaurant was decent. My Kung Pao Chicken had no spice to it whatsoever whereas where I am from in California Kung Pao is always spicy. The egg rolls were decent, as was the fried rice. My DH had some orange beef dish that he thought was very good and some udon dish with octopus. That was actually one of his favorite meals. [emoji6]

When I was on the Jade and Breakaway, the spicy seafood udon came in a big looking bowl. But when I was on the Pearl, the udon came in a smaller bowl.

Spicy Seafood Udon from Breakaway in big bowl

Udon from Pearl in a smaller bowl

Just to add another point of view...I have to say that the food on the Pearl did not disappoint me. My family ate at a variety of restaurants, including specialty. While I didn't love each dish, I certainly did enjoy something at each and every meal. Sometimes it was the appy, or maybe the dessert. Yes, there are good ones out there...the crepe station, for example. And the whipped cream! Heavenly and like crack, as has been stated on these boards numerous times. lol

I'm writing this to not contradict the OP (I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the Pearl's food), but to give another viewpoint in hopes that future Pearl cruisers will not worry so much.

Taste is really hard to quantify, since everyone's palate is different I guess. OP, sorry you felt the food was lacking. I was on the same cruise and found the food to be very good in general. We only ate at the free dining venues. The highlight for me was ordering a rare strip loin steak for dinner, and receiving a rare steak! Tender and delicious with a Cajun butter sauce. And I'd give anything to have more of the spinach and eggplant lasagna and the grilled cauliflower I had at the buffet one day. My only other cruising experience is on Disney cruise line and I found the food to be better on NCL because it wasn't as bland as DCL food.

The strawberry shortcake from O'Sheehans, YES PLEASE!

Navy, I guess we look at it differently. I am glad that families can take their kids on a cruise because it is so affordable. If they raised the prices to make the dining room food really elegant we would go back to the old days where only the rich could afford to take a cruise vacation. The way it is now you can book a room for around $200.00 or a suite for $1000's per person. If you book the basic room you get okay food if you can afford a suite you can afford the specialty restaurants. So it is the only way I can figure out that the cruise line can do it and young families, for example can afford to cruise and have a great time. So when you have ships that hold 4,000 people you have to make concessions to make it affordable for the vast majority and something has to give. I have never felt I was the victim of bait and switch but the victim of wanting a really great dinner and willing to pay $20.00 to have it. But to someone else it may be a waste of money and they are happy with the MDR.

For better food options the specialty restaurants would be the a good way to go. :)

Just to add another point of view...I have to say that the food on the Pearl did not disappoint me. My family ate at a variety of restaurants, including specialty. While I didn't love each dish, I certainly did enjoy something at each and every meal. Sometimes it was the appy, or maybe the dessert. Yes, there are good ones out there...the crepe station, for example. And the whipped cream! Heavenly and like crack, as has been stated on these boards numerous times. lol

 

I'm writing this to not contradict the OP (I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the Pearl's food), but to give another viewpoint in hopes that future Pearl cruisers will not worry so much.

Other viewpoints are more than welcome!! I had read prior to the cruise that some really enjoy the included complementary food, I had honestly thought I'd be one of them. It feels oddly disappointing that I cant rave about my meals and sad that I have to apparently pay extra money to get what used to be normal fare on a cruise. My last prior cruise was with Royal Caribbean probably 18-20 years ago and the food was delicious. But I know, things change. :(

I can say that they do provide A LOT of food in the buffet. Most was the same thing every day with a few special entrees and differing desserts. Oh and they had guacamole a few times which was actually decent so I'd fill up on guacamole and chips whenever I saw they had it. And yes, one day I got just a plate of fries for a snack, they were okay. They always had salad stuff which was good, but their ranch dressing was funny tasting and could ruin a finely built salad. lol They definitely need a better tasting ranch. I make homemade ranch myself, but there are some very good commercial ranch distributors out there.

Anyhow, It's not like I didn't eat, I totally did and came home 5 pounds heavier, I just would've liked it to taste yummy like cruise food should instead of mediocre. [emoji6]

I should've taken a picture of the first meal I got in the Indigo MDR. It was terrible!!! The baked potato was a hard shriveled thing with an 1/8 tsp at most of sour cream in it. It was like eating a dry uncooked potato. How hard is it to bake a potato? The meat (some kind of sliced rib strips) was cold, pink, with a chewy icky consistency and tasted terrible. I couldn't eat it. I tried.

My husband had shrimp and thought it was decent.

I just kept making bad food choices I guess, but should there even BE such bad choices as that? If I were a waiter I would never have served that hard shriveled up potato to anyone. I mean, cmon. [emoji15] It was baaaaaaad.

The highlight for me was ordering a rare strip loin steak for dinner, and receiving a rare steak! Tender and delicious with a Cajun butter sauce. !

My brother in law ordered the strip steak with Cajun butter one night and said it was delicious. That's the night I got the turkey sausage lasagna that was very tasty. So the next night we went back to the MDR and we both ordered the strip steak. Him for a second go-round and me for a first. It was super tough and tasteless!...his was too!! He said it wasn't nearly as good as it was the night before. I could only eat half of mine because my jaw was sore from chewing. Neither of us ordered it again.

Wow, I think I was just doomed to experience bad food. lol

I did not try the strawberry shortcake at O'Sheehans but I did get the brownie cheesecake which was probably the best dessert I had that week. It would've been even better if they had good caramel sauce on it instead of what NCL thinks is caramel sauce though. [emoji16]

I think in some ways this is one of the things that shows the ships are just getting way too big. You can't cook for 4000+ people in a reasonable amount of time and have something that everybody will enjoy.

Just look at my wife and I for example. I like things really sweet, she doesn't. We could eat off the exact same plate and one of us would like a dish, the other wouldn't.

I think the wait staff should catch things that they don't, but I think it happens because of the huge numbers of people and food they're having to get out.

I also wonder if sometimes it is an expectation vs reality situation (excluding the times the food truly is bad and never should have seen the table). It's not that the food was bad, but that one was expecting more and so now disappointed.

That said, I don't eat in the speciality restaurants for the most part. I usually do one per cruise just for the fun of it. I've enjoyed the food I've eaten, but there's not really been anything to write home about, but I'm ok with that.

Norwegian isn't known for having good desserts. I am not a bread pudding fan, however, they are known for their bread pudding and that's the ONLY dessert (IMO) that really tasted any good.

Norwegian isn't known for having good desserts. I am not a bread pudding fan, however, they are known for their bread pudding and that's the ONLY dessert (IMO) that really tasted any good.

Yes, the bread pudding wasn't bad but they served it with their awful caramel sauce so the first time I had it I poured a spoon of "caramel" on it. Took it to the table looking forward to a big bite of yumminess and just about gagged. Lol No one believed how awful the sauce was until I made them all taste it. [emoji13] Needless to say I did not eat that bowl and went and got another one, walked to the ice cream station instead and squirted bottled ice cream caramel sauce on it. Muuuch better. [emoji6]

I'm not a picky eater by any stretch of the imagination, so all the comments I'd read prior to our cruise about NCL food not being very good I took with a grain of salt...thinking those people were just more "foodie" than my very average (or so I thought) pallet...but alas! I, too, was very disappointed in the food.

 

Now, to clarify, I did NOT eat in any of the cover-charge specialty restaurants. I figured I shouldn't need to pay extra to get tasty food. I am now wishing perhaps I had tried at least one so I would know the difference.

 

I did eat at both MDR's, O' Sheehans, Lotus, and the buffet though. I only had two meals that I actually wanted to repeat...the Turkey Sausage Lasagna in Summer Palace, and the Chicken Pot Pie at O' Sheehans. Everything else was forgettably bland, bland, bland. Even the desserts, though very pretty, were bland. It's like they forgot to add the sugar. Haha! (Perhaps I'm just used to over sugared Americanized desserts?) but I was so unsatisfied with every dessert I tried. They also kept putting out a pot of caramel sauce that was absolutely the worst tasting thing I've ever put in my mouth. I kid you not. It tasted like burnt caramel and ashes...zero sugar. It was ghastly. I tried a little tiny sample every time I saw it just to see if it was "fixed" lol One time I saw a poor woman pouring it all over her cheesecake and I felt like grabbing her arm to stop her...then figured she'd find out soon enough how gawd awful it is. Perhaps I'm crazy, but it seems to me that caramel sauce should taste yummy...like caramel. Silly me. lol

 

Bland is not a term I would use, though I find most "included" food offerings to be not much better than low level chain restaurants in the US. As much salt as they dump in everything I'm not sure bland is right so much as there is not spice or "zing" to it.

 

I agree about the desserts. IMO the head pastry chef for NCL is European and the dessert recipes are designed to a European palate which is much less sweet than a US palate.

 

When I arrived home yesterday, on my birthday, my boys had bought a birthday cake for me. Oh my, it was DIVINE!! Just a silly store bought cake tasted 100x better than the myriad fancy desserts I had tried on the Pearl. That's kinda sad to me. And the Burger King burger we ate for lunch at the airport yesterday tasted Sooo wonderful after a week of bland. Again, very sad. I'm not a junk food junkie by any means, in fact just the opposite, but I do like flavor in my food. For me NCL Pearl did not deliver. Even the eggs over easy I ordered one morning tasted bland. How can they mess up fresh eggs? [emoji15] The French toast was decent though, as well as the pork sausage, so breakfast wasn't a total wash. [emoji16]And the pizza was decent, though nothing to write home about. On the last night they had salmon, I was so happy, but it was riddled with bones. Ewww. Another night they had salmon with BBQ sauce on it. Double Ewww. Oh my, I could go on, and on...but I will stop.

 

Eggs were probably not messed up but I suspect that you add salt and pepper at home during cooking and they don't on the ship. Adding after the fact just doesn't taste the same. They also probably use a different type of "grease" for the pan than you use at home. This is not saying that you are not right, just trying to provide a "why".

 

The salmon issue happens when you use inexpensive cuts of frozen fish, and the barbecue sauce would not be my favorite either.

Regardless of all my food complaints, we had a wonderful time though!!! The staff and entertainment were excellent and made up for my food disappointments. And yes I'd even cruise NCL again...but I'd probably want to spring for the dining package. Just sayin' [emoji6]

Some thoughts are above.

Next time try Cagney's and Moderno.

Don't forget they have to cook for the masses, and a lot more people prefer "bland" food to food with even a little "kick". Sorta stinks, but that is how it is.

Taste is really hard to quantify, since everyone's palate is different I guess. OP, sorry you felt the food was lacking. I was on the same cruise and found the food to be very good in general. We only ate at the free dining venues. The highlight for me was ordering a rare strip loin steak for dinner, and receiving a rare steak! Tender and delicious with a Cajun butter sauce. And I'd give anything to have more of the spinach and eggplant lasagna and the grilled cauliflower I had at the buffet one day. My only other cruising experience is on Disney cruise line and I found the food to be better on NCL because it wasn't as bland as DCL food.

The strawberry shortcake from O'Sheehans, YES PLEASE!

Not to criticize, but to point out a difference. IMO if you have to put any sauce on a steak, then the steak is low quality, and probably not prepared correctly. A good steak should be eaten rare to med rare with nothing but salt and pepper and melt in your mouth. If it can't be eaten like that it is simply not a quality piece of beef.

Not to criticize, but to point out a difference. IMO if you have to put any sauce on a steak, then the steak is low quality, and probably not prepared correctly. A good steak should be eaten rare to med rare with nothing but salt and pepper and melt in your mouth. If it can't be eaten like that it is simply not a quality piece of beef.

When I was in college, I would always put A1 sauce on my steak until my cousin told me "If you need to put sauce on your steak, your steak is low quality."

I thought I read that they were rolling out new menus fleet wide. Has this happened yet?

While I enjoy most of NCL cruise offerings the MDR food IMHO is bottom of the barrel. Surprisingly we feel the buffet is one of the best. We also very much enjoy the specialties. For my family we always factor in the cost of the UDP with the cruise cost because we know the MDR food is not for us. This is not to say there are not good dishes in the MDR, but we prefer to go into the meal knowing we will be happy. Obviously with food opinions differ VASTLY, but I think everyone can agree that cruise ship desserts are terrible. I do not know what it is, but as sea you can NOT taste the sugar in them. There are a few exceptions (Oreo Cheesecake at Cagney's is very good) but for the most part I skip the pre-plated desserts. The hand scooped Ice Cream in the buffet is always a nice sweet treat when you need one on a cruise. Next time do the specialties. They are very good.

6&8

My brother in law ordered the strip steak with Cajun butter one night and said it was delicious. That's the night I got the turkey sausage lasagna that was very tasty. So the next night we went back to the MDR and we both ordered the strip steak. Him for a second go-round and me for a first. It was super tough and tasteless!...his was too!! He said it wasn't nearly as good as it was the night before. I could only eat half of mine because my jaw was sore from chewing. Neither of us ordered it again.

 

Wow, I think I was just doomed to experience bad food. lol

 

I did not try the strawberry shortcake at O'Sheehans but I did get the brownie cheesecake which was probably the best dessert I had that week. It would've been even better if they had good caramel sauce on it instead of what NCL thinks is caramel sauce though. [emoji16]

My sister ordered the brownie cheesecake at O'Sheehans, and while she enjoyed it, we were both scratching our heads over the sauce on top of it. We both thought it tasted like a rum sauce and were perplexed by the mini marshmallows.

If that was supposed to be a caramel sauce I agree that it was not what caramel sauce is!

We had the same problem on our cruise last week. Everything wasn't horrible but there wasn't much that was appealing to us. Could have been also we were not feeling well for the cruise. The Asian restaurant was bad all the meat was way over cooked and dry.

I didn't go hungry but I was pretty underwhelmed by the new menu choices.

The best was the specialty we did cagneys for the first time and the Italian and they were both great!

I thought I read that they were rolling out new menus fleet wide. Has this happened yet?

No, they are currently testing the menus on Gem and if I'm not mistaken, menus should be available on Escape in little over a month from now and fleetwide by January.