Meat & Fish Quality.

I eat more seafood than beef on cruises. Most of the time the fish is very good. It's frozen fish, so not as good as the fresh fish I can get on the North Carolina coast. But Princess usually prepares it well.

Expect good wedding banquet quality and that's pretty much what you'll get.

 

Sounds good enough for me.

Just off the Coral and found the MDR a disappointment compared to a few years ago. Specialty restaurants were excellent as well as the Crab Shack. Food in the MDR was never hot, even the soups. I agree it is like wedding/banquet food.

I'm amazed that any cruise lines are able to do as well with beef as they do. All the protein on board has been frozen, and for safety reasons there are no open flames in the kitchen [except the lady who has been specially trained to do creme brûlée!]. This information is per the Executive Chef on Celebrity Constellation, but I expect the safety rules apply to all ships.

Expect good wedding banquet quality and that's pretty much what you'll get.

 

Sounds good enough for me.

 

Here's how I have always thought of it, (or, rationalized it, if you will). Stay with me here. It will make sense in the end. I promise.

 

We always book a Mini-Suite. The Mrs. insists on a tub, and I won't deprive her. I insist on a large balcony where we can enjoy some special bottles of wine that we have pulled from the cellar. She will not deprive me. (She enjoys this part every bit as much as I do, so don't let her fool you.) If I can book a cruise where our fare comes out to about $250-$325 per day, I consider that a pretty good deal. That means a fare of around $875-$1150 per person for a 7 day cruise. That is usually doable. There are lots of sales going on right now where Mini-Suites can be had for $899-$999 per person. So let's say you book one of those.

 

Now, think about how much you would/should pay for a room at a resort with a gorgeous ocean view, with entertainment, guest speakers, pools, hot tubs, etc. all included in your rate. This is a purely subjective assessment, I know. Some people would say that the going rate for such a room should be $200 per day. Others would gladly pay more than double that. But just for grins and giggles, let's say that you would pay $250 for a waterfront room with all these extras at no cost. So lock in that price and set it aside. Now let's say that you have paid $300 per day for your 7 day cruise. That is $2,100, or $1,050 per person (before port fees and the like). As noted, very doable.

 

That means that you are paying $50 per couple, per day, for your food. That's $25 per person. That covers a buffet breakfast. International Cafe pastries. As many hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, pizza slices, Alfredo's pizzas and International Cafe snacks as you can possibly handle. The point being, that by the time dinner rolls around, you have more than eaten your $25 per day worth of food. So dinner is free!! How good are the meats and fish? How good do they have to be if you are getting them for free? It serves no purpose to compare your dinners with those on land. The latter you have to pay for. At sea, your dinners are free. So when you look at it that way, you will never have a cross word for your medallions ever again. And the greatest thing of all? If you are served something that you don't enjoy, have them take it away and bring you something else. That, too, will be free!

 

So there you have my rationalizations. And if you book a Balcony, an Ocean View or an Inside, you are doing even better. Your food is free by the time you have eaten your first Creme Donut from the IC in the morning. I know that this doesn't answer the original question, but I hope that it lends some perspective to the analysis.

Edited June 28, 2016 by JimmyVWine

Here's how I have always thought of it, (or, rationalized it, if you will)...

 

Your food is free by the time you have eaten your first Creme Donut from the IC in the morning. I know that this doesn't answer the original question, but I hope that it lends some perspective to the analysis.

 

You may be already received full value for your payment before you get to dinner, but the food IS NOT FREE -- it still comes with all the calories of any other food, and eating dinner somewhere prevents you from eating better food somewhere else. At my age there are only so many dinners left to enjoy, and I want to enjoy each and every one of them to the fullest extent possible. You may understand this analogy better if we switch to wine, as you say you bring your own good wine onboard -- you can only drink so many glasses of an evening, and every glass of plonk means one fewer glass of 90+. Cheers!

You may be already received full value for your payment before you get to dinner, but the food IS NOT FREE -- it still comes with all the calories of any other food, and eating dinner somewhere prevents you from eating better food somewhere else. At my age there are only so many dinners left to enjoy, and I want to enjoy each and every one of them to the fullest extent possible. You may understand this analogy better if we switch to wine, as you say you bring your own good wine onboard -- you can only drink so many glasses of an evening, and every glass of plonk means one fewer glass of 90+. Cheers!

I understand your point completely. One of my favorite wine rating notations is 'NWC", (Not Worth the Calories). But as it applies to mass market cruise line food, one has to decide to cruise or not cruise. One cannot achieve 90+ food (borrowing a wine rating convention) on a mass market cruise line day in and day out. Individual items? Sure. But not across the board all the time. As I lightheartedly tried to point out, the total cruise fare simply doesn't allow it. Capital Grill quality steaks and Le Bernadin quality fish simply cost too much.

 

And as to your apt wine analogy, if I am poured a subpar glass of wine and fear that the glass is going to supplant my ability to drink a better glass, then I dump the inferior wine down the drain and move on to the better stuff. So too on a cruise ship. You can always "dump" what is in front of you and move on to something else.

All seafood is frozen...none is "fresh"...although freezing does keep the quality quite nicely. It's a law...freezing kills parasites and there's no way to keep "fresh fish" fresh on a ship for a week or more!

Here's how I have always thought of it, (or, rationalized it, if you will). Stay with me here. It will make sense in the end. I promise.

 

We always book a Mini-Suite. The Mrs. insists on a tub, and I won't deprive her. I insist on a large balcony where we can enjoy some special bottles of wine that we have pulled from the cellar. She will not deprive me. (She enjoys this part every bit as much as I do, so don't let her fool you.) If I can book a cruise where our fare comes out to about $250-$325 per day, I consider that a pretty good deal. That means a fare of around $875-$1150 per person for a 7 day cruise. That is usually doable. There are lots of sales going on right now where Mini-Suites can be had for $899-$999 per person. So let's say you book one of those.

 

Now, think about how much you would/should pay for a room at a resort with a gorgeous ocean view, with entertainment, guest speakers, pools, hot tubs, etc. all included in your rate. This is a purely subjective assessment, I know. Some people would say that the going rate for such a room should be $200 per day. Others would gladly pay more than double that. But just for grins and giggles, let's say that you would pay $250 for a waterfront room with all these extras at no cost. So lock in that price and set it aside. Now let's say that you have paid $300 per day for your 7 day cruise. That is $2,100, or $1,050 per person (before port fees and the like). As noted, very doable.

 

That means that you are paying $50 per couple, per day, for your food. That's $25 per person. That covers a buffet breakfast. International Cafe pastries. As many hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, pizza slices, Alfredo's pizzas and International Cafe snacks as you can possibly handle. The point being, that by the time dinner rolls around, you have more than eaten your $25 per day worth of food. So dinner is free!! How good are the meats and fish? How good do they have to be if you are getting them for free? It serves no purpose to compare your dinners with those on land. The latter you have to pay for. At sea, your dinners are free. So when you look at it that way, you will never have a cross word for your medallions ever again. And the greatest thing of all? If you are served something that you don't enjoy, have them take it away and bring you something else. That, too, will be free!

 

So there you have my rationalizations. And if you book a Balcony, an Ocean View or an Inside, you are doing even better. Your food is free by the time you have eaten your first Creme Donut from the IC in the morning. I know that this doesn't answer the original question, but I hope that it lends some perspective to the analysis.

 

interesting assessment, we only eat breakfast in the cabin and dinner.. 2 meals a day, we still prefer to pay extra for the crown grill, so dinner is not free us. LOL

Having just returned from a Med cruise, I can say I'm still quite pleased at the quality. The lobster isn't as good as before, but everything else is.

 

 

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I understand your point completely. One of my favorite wine rating notations is 'NWC", (Not Worth the Calories). But as it applies to mass market cruise line food, one has to decide to cruise or not cruise. One cannot achieve 90+ food (borrowing a wine rating convention) on a mass market cruise line day in and day out. Individual items? Sure. But not across the board all the time. As I lightheartedly tried to point out, the total cruise fare simply doesn't allow it. Capital Grill quality steaks and Le Bernadin quality fish simply cost too much.

 

And as to your apt wine analogy, if I am poured a subpar glass of wine and fear that the glass is going to supplant my ability to drink a better glass, then I dump the inferior wine down the drain and move on to the better stuff. So too on a cruise ship. You can always "dump" what is in front of you and move on to something else.

 

All seafood is frozen...none is "fresh"...although freezing does keep the quality quite nicely. It's a law...freezing kills parasites and there's no way to keep "fresh fish" fresh on a ship for a week or more!

 

We had a Galley Tour on Celebrity Constellation a couple of weeks ago, and having seen the operation my conclusion is that they COULD do five-star restaurant quality if the line was committed to it. We were there in the height of the evening and there were no plates sitting under heat lamps -- the line chefs were turning out the dishes and they were being plated in the perfect rhythm for the waiters picking them up. So the shibboleth that the food can't be good because it isn't "cooked to order" -- is narrow-minded thinking based on the limitations of a small land restaurant. THEY can't cook anything ahead because their volume is too low and the food would dry out. But a cruise ship has enough volume -- at predictable times [thank you Traditional Diners!] -- that they can easily cook every item without regard to the orders, knowing that the flow will match a freshly cooked item to a waiter needing to pick it up. This actually makes the job easier for the line cooks, because they only have to worry about making the recipe on a consistent basis -- they don't also have to try to time out 8 widely varying cooking times for a large table.

 

So why isn't cruise food that good? Budgets (poor quality ingredients) and low aspirations (the clientele doesn't demand better). It can be done -- as I can attest from a Crystal cruise where the main dining room did deliver five-star food every night [the included wines and the service weren't five-star, but the food was]. And Celebrity comes close with the Luminae suites restaurant -- whose kitchen is a smaller version of their main dining room assembly line, actually located right next to it in the main galley. It will be interesting to see what Princess does with this new Club Class dining -- they can achieve five-star quality, it's just a matter of commitment to do so.

 

[PS -- Crystal has fresh fish for their Nobu restaurant, and reviewers who have tried his land restaurant say the sushi and miso cod on Crystal are equal to the quality in LA.]

Edited June 29, 2016 by Host Jazzbeau

One thing that pops up regularly in Princess reviews is that the beef dishes are lackluster (or worse) with the exception of the steakhouse. Do you agree? How do other meats compare- both in quality and how well they're cooked?

 

Beef in the MDR can be hit and miss. But for the $$$'s paid, IMO Crown Grill is probably one of the best deals for specialty dining amongst the mainstream cruise lines.

Edited June 29, 2016 by dns65

All seafood is frozen...none is "fresh"...although freezing does keep the quality quite nicely. It's a law...freezing kills parasites and there's no way to keep "fresh fish" fresh on a ship for a week or more!

 

 

A generation ago many kept their Friday night fish in their bathtubs on Thursday nights. Maybe Princess can do the same.

 

 

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...they can easily cook every item without regard to the orders, ...

This is the very antithesis of five-star cooking. It is assembly line cooking. What you suggest might be doable for mains, but the timing of the mains and sides requires more precision than that. (Which is why if I were grading the food on Princess, I would actually grade the sides much lower than the mains. They all taste pre-cooked and slapped on the plate as opposed to cooked to order with the timing set to match the completion of the main.)

 

So why isn't cruise food that good? Budgets

Aren't we now saying the same thing? As noted earlier, by the time dinner rolls around, you are eating for free. Your cruise fare has already been absorbed by your room fare and all other meals. There is nothing left in the budget for higher grade ingredients, which brings me to...

 

-- as I can attest from a Crystal cruise where the main dining room did deliver five-star food every night

And did you pay $250-$300 per couple, per day for that cruise? A quick search showed that while I will be in the Caribbean in November paying $300 per day for two people on Princess, if I move over to Crystal, I would be paying $640 per day for two people. I would hope that the extra $300+ per day would buy me something. In a perfect world, would I rather be on Crystal? Sure. But the world, like me, is not perfect.

Edited June 29, 2016 by JimmyVWine

All seafood is frozen...none is "fresh"...although freezing does keep the quality quite nicely. It's a law...freezing kills parasites and there's no way to keep "fresh fish" fresh on a ship for a week or more!

 

One guidebook snarked about cruise ship fish: "The 'Catch of the Day' clearly had no contact with the sea for some time..." :D

The stories of the menu slipping, it is all personal perception and nothing else.

We're off the Caribbean Princess (21 day B2B from Houston) in April and honestly I found the food on that cruise to be the most consistent of any cruise and the other lines we've been on.

Was every dish my fave and I was all DELISH? No. But not one of the dishes were made with what I would germ "inferior" cuts of meat.

From MDR to the buffet to the Crown, everything was consistently appetizing.

Most of those w complaints don't seem to handle change well IMO.

On our Alaska 10 day on the Grand, 05/31, the beef in the MDR was soso. The prime rib was tough, tough, tough. The next night one of the best Ribeyes I've ever had in a MDR. I'm a fish eater primarily. The fish dishes were good. The Barramundi( eel) is awesome.
In the Crown, my wife got a ribeye and lobster tail. Both awesome. I had a rack of lamb and Chilean sea bass. Both dinners to die for.
What I like about the Crown is you can order 2 entrees as 1, with no extra charge.

[quote name='Viesczy']The stories of the menu slipping, it is all personal perception and nothing else.

We're off the Caribbean Princess (21 day B2B from Houston) in April and honestly I found the food on that cruise to be the most consistent of any cruise and the other lines we've been on.

Was every dish my fave and I was all DELISH? No. But not one of the dishes were made with what I would germ "inferior" cuts of meat.

From MDR to the buffet to the Crown, everything was consistently appetizing.

Most of those w complaints don't seem to handle change well IMO.[/QUOTE]

To say folks who complain don't deal with change well is insulting, I'm sorry to say. There is a big difference with the current menu having items like a hamburger and other comfort foods in the MDR... for dinner... compared to what has been offered in the past. The Crown Grill menu is more on a par with old time menus. So we eat in the Crown Grill and enjoy it. Hamburgers are good but not the same and I think that is what folks are saying.

[quote name='Yehootu']On our Alaska 10 day on the Grand, 05/31, the beef in the MDR was soso. [COLOR="Red"]The prime rib was tough, tough, tough. The next night one of the best Ribeyes I've ever had in a MDR. [/COLOR]I'm a fish eater primarily. The fish dishes were good. The Barramundi( eel) is awesome.
In the Crown, my wife got a ribeye and lobster tail. Both awesome. I had a rack of lamb and Chilean sea bass. Both dinners to die for.
What I like about the Crown is you can order 2 entrees as 1, with no extra charge.[/QUOTE]

That happened to me several times. I've gotten great prime rib on one trip & subsequently ordered a large piece on the next cruise only to get a something that was terrible. You just never know sometimes in the main DR.