New menus 2023 ?

[monakayk]

17 hours ago, TommyD3 said:

I have the complete set of 14 MDR menus offered on the Millennium Trans-Pacific cruise that ended about a week ago.They are posted in the order of the cruise - the first menu the first night, etc.

 

Thanks for posting these menus this is exactly what I wanted to see. I am also disappointed not to see more choices on the menus.😪

[saffy12]

3 hours ago, foodsvcmgr said:

Sad that there are no more actual rotating appetizers, only soups and salads plus the daily shrimp cocktail and escargot.

Even the entrees seem very repetitive.  When you used to have this many options, PLUS the daily baked chicken, salmon, and steak, now those 3 always included options are part of the regular selection.   I feel like they used to have a shellfish option every night, in addition to pork and another fish choice.  Now the options other than chicken and pork seem limited.  

 

I remember being disappointed on my last cruise (2017) that I never tried the daily steak, but there were too many other interesting options every day.  Looking at these menus, though, I'm leaning towards steak being the only choice I'd be interested in on about half those menus!   Granted, I don't like turkey, and chicken needs to be special for me to order it.  I try not to fill up on pasta - too many carbs!    I recognize those are my own limitations, but I still used to have plenty of options, and now they are very limited. 

Edited October 6, 2023 by saffy12

[gojengo]

Yesterday, I could no longer see the menus on the app for my April 2024 Beyond sailing.  I checked again just now and they're still not there. Is anyone able to see the menus? Or did they move them somewhere else on the app?

[chocolabmom]

My Beyond April 2024 cruise is not showing any menus in the app, either.

 

[micruiser2002]

28 minutes ago, gojengo said:

Yesterday, I could no longer see the menus on the app for my April 2024 Beyond sailing.  I checked again just now and they're still not there. Is anyone able to see the menus? Or did they move them somewhere else on the app?

You are better off looking at a current/upcoming sailing on your ship to see correct menus.  Anything out there too soon is not accurate.

 

[Islander500]

5 hours ago, hcat said:

It appears the buffet has slightly improved from what was previously posted.(had been down to  few open choices)  We use the buffet a few times for bkfst( waffles), maybe a lunch or two   and once per cruise for a  night off from regular dining.  To us  buffet dining is associated with short gambling cruises in the bahamas.

 

 The "new" mdr menus are of interest to most cruisers who are not assigned to BLU or Luminae and who associate cruising with  nice dinners ,  esp on Celebrity which received many culinary awards over the years!

 

Hoping  conversation  will also include BLU  and Luminae menus, the 4 mdr menus on E class and Specialty venues on various ships  The thread title is broad enough to cover it all..thanks to OP for starting it.

Based on my Summit cruise last week, you are correct; the Oceanview Buffet has definitely improved from what was reported a few months ago.  At least on Summit, there were many stations open at dinner and the freshly made stir-fry was thankfully back.

 

Ask me how I know?  The menu in BLU was so diminished in choice and quality we "dined" on the stir-fry in the Oceanview twice in 11 nights, plus ate a salad the evening before disembarkation (when the 4 entree choices in BLU were Tuna, Duck Confit, Meatloaf and Mushroom Risotto) so a total of 3 nights.  For point of comparison, we'd never chosen to skip BLU in over 20 cruises when we have paid the AQ price specifically to dine in BLU.  And that doesn't even include the 2 nights we just gave up and ordered from the MDR menu.

 

 

 

 

[happy cruzer]

If you want a menu with more choices, you can check out other lines.  Just sailed on Carnival (yes, gasp, lovely homeport cruise that we could drive to).  MDR was excellent with lots of good choices.  I know it is not Celebrity just pointing out that the folks that say all the lines are making the same cuts are not looking around.  And would be willing to bet others like HAL, Princess, Oceania, Virgin, Virgin Voyages, etc still have variety.  Looking at NCL's menus they too show more choices.

 

Celebrity and Royal are the ones that seem to have the fewer choices. 

 

 

[Islander500]

1 minute ago, happy cruzer said:

If you want a menu with more choices, you can check out other lines.  Just sailed on Carnival (yes, gasp, lovely homeport cruise that we could drive to).  MDR was excellent with lots of good choices.  I know it is not Celebrity just pointing out that the folks that say all the lines are making the same cuts are not looking around.  And would be willing to bet others like HAL, Princess, Oceania, Virgin, Virgin Voyages, etc still have variety.  Looking at NCL's menus they too show more choices.

 

Celebrity and Royal are the ones that seem to have the fewer choices. 

 

 

Thanks happy cruzer!  Someone actually posted new Carnival menus a few weeks ago and they did seem to have much more interesting and varied choices (gasp)😀

 

You are exactly right and we are indeed looking at alternatives as we've now experienced it ourselves. 

 

[cangelmd]

I’m responding to this post from a cabin on Summit, and I spent a month on the Silhouette this summer, eating in MDR and a few specialty restaurants.

The Summit buffet for dinner was good. No obvious cutbacks, it’s a smaller setup, but it is a smaller ship. Maybe there is one less salad station and one less drink station (Summit has stations distributing soft drinks), but the variety is there, with a theme each evening. We are a group of four, one person complained about food being cold, and I had one cold item, the rest of my hot food was hot. I only ate dinner at the buffet once on Silhouette during that month - everything that should have been hot, was cold and half the stations were closed (but it was an overnight port, and I suspect that affected staffing and the number of diners)

The Summit MDR now however is almost awful. Very limited and very repetitive. Most nights the only beef dish is the classics steak. Small unattractive scoops of mashed potatoes is the usual veggie, with poorly seasoned green beans. What on earth is so expensive about cheesecake that it came off the classics dessert menu??? Food is cold or near cold and staff is harried. Wine refilled maybe once.

If you didn’t know how nice it was even in July, you wouldn’t realize how different it is now, but the Celebrity food is no reason to cruise.

We had dinner last night in Sushi on 5, everyone was generally pleased, not the finest sushi, but ok. Why plain ginger salad is not an option is a mystery, but otherwise we were happy.

Edited October 6, 2023 by cangelmd

[Baynanno1]

5 hours ago, foodsvcmgr said:

Sad that there are no more actual rotating appetizers, only soups and salads plus the daily shrimp cocktail and escargot.

Neither of which I can eat due to allergies.

Not looking forward to Caesar Salad or French Onion Soup for 15 nights!

The entrees are not much better for me and we have more variety at home.

 

And before somebody tells me to stay home, I had expected the same or similar to what we experienced last December.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Baynanno1

[zitsky]

10 hours ago, Baggy178 said:

Perhaps it's just us down in Riff Raff Clas™ but those menus look perfectly fine to us.

Varied with lots of choice.

It's mass catering not fancy pants - what do you expect ?

I also don’t understand all the wailing having looked at these menus.  I’d expect Aqua or Luminae to be even better.  I’d like to try a lot of these entrees.

 

Maybe I’m not qualified to comment since I’ve never spent $1,000 on a meal.

[zitsky]

7 hours ago, Smmessineo said:

Several corrections to your assumptions. I'm not comparing Celebrity menus from many years ago, I'm comparing them from months ago. I sailed December 2022 on the Equinox. Ship was full, long after the return to sailing after COVID. 

And don't insult me  and imply  marketing has us hooked. The 8 cruises I have booked with them were at lower prices and better add-ons than offered now. I wouldn't book them in today's conditions. The 2 cruises I booked this past month are not with Celebrity. 

They are losing a lot of loyal cruisers and picking up new cruisers like you for their next era. 

 

I’m pretty new to Celebrity.  I get around and have a decent understanding of food and wine.  I guess my problem is I can’t tell the different between French escargot and American or how to tell the 1955 Dom Perignon from the 1963.  I don’t expect beluga caviar on a cruise ship.

 

Somehow even with all this angst, I think I will survive my next Celebrity cruise.  I’m feeling a lot better about things, seeing these menus.

[hcat]

11 minutes ago, Islander500 said:

It sounds like you are exactly who they are catering to. Enjoy your cruise!  

I think most of us are like  Zitsky....We've been on X since Mercury  Century days...mostly in AQ Class.. Just want decent  good tasting food, nicer presenation and attentive service!

[Cap_D]

10 hours ago, Islander500 said:

The "you didn't starve" argument is absurd.     

I didn't book another cruise on-board as I usually do so it definitely tells me something about my expectations and what I value. If I'm going to pay those prices, I expect better quality choices and food, not to be disappointed most evenings.  

Amen.  No one would book reservations at a restaurant with the baseline being they "won't starve."  In 2023, for restaurant dining, one can look at the menu, read reviews, see pictures, and generally make informed decisions.  On Celebrity they make that difficult, and have run their food program into the ground.  The only reason why the ships are full are because of past reputation.  The menus aren't even contemporary in their preparations.  Scoops of mashed potatoes that appear as if they are from a 1960s hospital cafeteria are not normal for modern dining.  The local Applebees, Cheesecake Factory, Chili's and other chain restaurant menus are more interesting. The pandemic and supply chain issues are over, and any company that purchases as much food as Celebrity does that can't figure out how to have interesting menus, choice, and some semblance of quality should go out of business. 

Edited October 6, 2023 by Cap_D

[Cap_D]

4 hours ago, chocolabmom said:

My Beyond April 2024 cruise is not showing any menus in the app, either.

 

For Beyond in March 2024 the MDR menus had been kind of present a few weeks ago, as lunch was missing.  Now all gone.  Luminae is now also missing, and never showed lunch as an open time or menu for sea days.   We can add this to the list of poor customer service, and probably worse.

 

At least theoretically for the Edge Class MDRs gimmicks, there should be a handful of menu items themed to each dining room each day plus some classics.  But, it would not surprise me if they gut the gimmicks and utilize the same menu in each dining room.

[calicakes]

12 hours ago, diesel1973 said:

I have about 50 lbs. of salmon in my freezer from my 6 week fishing trip in Alaska.

I can guarantee that your salmon is much higher quality than the farmed salmon that X is serving.  Yours is wild which is full of Omega 3's.  The Farmed salmon has coloring added to make it pink.  Nope!!  Don't even get me started on the Tilapia ( Farmed in Asia, low quality control)

 

[calicakes]

I think by now we all know tastes/food choice is very subjective.  My town is full of chain restaurants and people flock to them.  I avoid them as much as possible.  I prefer farm to table, pasture raised eggs, pasture raised chicken.  Thus, I'm usually always disappointed on a cruise.  I even moved up to Oceania because of the " Finest food at sea" or something like that.  My first O cruise in Feb 2022 impressed me.  This recent one, not so much.  Powdered scrambled eggs on the buffet, veggies cooked to oblivion and then shoved between lasagna noodles on the last day( no ricotta either).  Loose polenta was turned into polenta triangles with a piece of sausage on top.  Lots of repurposing of leftovers.  

 

Every time I live blog and complain about the food, people tell me that maybe I shouldn't cruise.  I say there are other reasons besides food to cruise.  However, with rising prices, I'm beginning to think I should not take as many cruises.  In fact, I've cancelled a cruise on O and a cruise on X next year.  I did book a 4 day Virgin just to see what the food is like. 

[zitsky]

3 hours ago, Islander500 said:

It sounds like you are exactly who they are catering to. Enjoy your cruise!  

You know, most people can tell when they’re being insulted.

[Brad1185]

Those menus look really bad.  They look boring and very uninspired. Celebrity has really gone down hill from their early years. Wow what a difference.  Look at the appetizers pretty much soup or salad. 
 

When comparing our June Solstice cruise to our current Oceania cruise Celebrity is just sad.  What a difference.  

[jamscckmc]

Could they at least change up the potatoes? I like mashed potatoes but not 12 days in a row!

[Cruise Junky]

I’m assuming the Salmon is farmed? Has anyone had that confirmed? 

[Baynanno1]

1 hour ago, jamscckmc said:

Could they at least change up the potatoes? I like mashed potatoes but not 12 days in a row!

Or fifteen . . . I don't even eat them more than once a week at home!

[tigervixxxen]

On longer cruises they have to bring back axed dishes in order to fill out menus for the full sailing. So a typical 7 night cruise won’t have those kind of choices. 

[wineoclock]

2 hours ago, Baynanno1 said:

Or fifteen . . . I don't even eat them more than once a week at home!

I don’t eat them at all! I love most food but cannot abide mashed potatoes. Except for my mum’s and then not often! Edit: we are in an SV in June so have made several speciality reservations just in case! 
 

Menus have disappeared from our upcoming Beyond cruise on the 20th this month. I’m hoping lobster roll is still available in Luminae 😍

Edited October 7, 2023 by wineoclock

[LouChamp]

Aloha. Thank you for posting these menus. Have been blessed to sail Celebrity since its first ship and many many ships and cruises with them thereafter. These menus are sad. Very repetitive and nothing in general I cannot make at home. I know they want you to pay for specialty dining but unfortunately the menus are shameful.