DCL Food - What to expect?

[FSU Girl]

I'm not a big fan of cruise food. I find the food in MDR to be mediocre at best. I do like the appetizers, but the main courses I find just awful. I love the food in Palo and think the food by the pools are pretty good, but definitely not gourmet. Even with not liking the majority of the food I ate an insane amount on my last cruise so you'll definitely not starve.

 

[CaLuCa]

I plan on writing up a little food review of our recent Wonder trip. That said, it might take me awhile, but here is what I realized...They are going for Presentation over Taste. The meals are lovely and instgram-worthy, but often the seasonings are off or simply the dish just didn't turn out well.

I pretend I'm a foodie...lived seven years in Charleston and some other great food meccas of the US. However, having 4 kids (3 in 2.5 years) really put a damper on our ability to eat out. I am blessed with an amazing palate (don't ask me to Name a Tune, but I can tell you pretty much each and every spice in a dish), and I taught myself how to cook (my mom believed in the crock pot/casseroles of the 70s and 80s...love live margarine and Tater Tot Casserole! ). I can cook most things, except Indian and African. My Asaian abilities are limited and pretty American influenced. I can cook a steak that Gordon Ramsay wouldn't send back. (I get half a grass fed cow about every 14-18 months...when we moved to Florida, I hauled one from Charleston so I'd have time to find a new farm without running out.) I believe in fresh, simple ingredients.

That said, it is extremely difficult to store, prepare and serve that much food to that many people and have stellar dishes. Don't get me wrong, there were some definite highlights...the brunch service on sea day in the MDR. A lovely sirloin over mixed greens with blue cheese. Why was it so good? Because the steak was prepared wonderfully and it was simple, good ingredients that didn't worry about being fancy. We also had the lemon pudding cake with lemon curd. Divine! The cake was a touch overdone, and I could have used more lemon curd, but fantastic.

Every other meal we had from Cabanas to MDR was hit or miss. The first morning in Cabanas, every thing I put in my mouth was extremely oversalted. To the point where I couldn't take another bite. I ended up with a bowl of oatmeal. I was highly disappointed as I really wanted some biscuits and gravy. I did try again the next day and it was on par with Bob Evans or the like. I found for the most part the apps and salads/soups in the MDRs were much better (save the brie, sausage, brioche, honey disaster on Pirate night, just a complete eggy mess with only eggs shining through). It seemed they were so intent on plating the beautiful main course that the taste went by the way side. My lamb was excellent, though.

Desserts seemed very manufactured. Again, this is due to the mass production of feeding so many people. I just went to the Arts Festival at Epcot this past weekend and had some real treats. I thought, "Gosh, this is way better than the vast majority of the things I had on the cruise." I grabbed a beautiful lemon Merangue from Cabanas lunch one day. The lemon was excellent, yet they had not allowed the sugar to fully dissolve into the merangue, so it was gritty and honestly overly sweet. I also really missed that beautiful Floating Island from Pirate night when we last cruised in 2012.

To me, the MDRs are banquet/wedding dinner quality. The cabanas is Bob Evans/Chili's.

Okay, gotta go pull out a pound cake from the oven and make macerated strawberries and whipped cream.

 

[lilsonicfan]

Doesn't exist for the standard restaurants on cruise lines like DCL and Royal. This is not an indictment of the cruise lines, but for a Chinese kid growing up in Toronto, whatever they put out is not going to match up to what I can get at home, so I don't expect it to .

I'm Chinese and from Vancouver, so I know what you mean. After a few days of cruise fare, I feel like I'd just love a bowl of rice or some preserved egg/pork congee!

 

[xavier2001]

We hate buffets too, last cruise I managed not to eat in a buffet at all the entire trip. The food is good, but not 5 star except for the upcharge restaurants. We have always been happy with it.

 

[Lisa F]

I plan on writing up a little food review of our recent Wonder trip. That said, it might take me awhile, but here is what I realized...They are going for Presentation over Taste. The meals are lovely and instgram-worthy, but often the seasonings are off or simply the dish just didn't turn out well.

I pretend I'm a foodie...lived seven years in Charleston and some other great food meccas of the US. However, having 4 kids (3 in 2.5 years) really put a damper on our ability to eat out. I am blessed with an amazing palate (don't ask me to Name a Tune, but I can tell you pretty much each and every spice in a dish), and I taught myself how to cook (my mom believed in the crock pot/casseroles of the 70s and 80s...love live margarine and Tater Tot Casserole! ). I can cook most things, except Indian and African. My Asaian abilities are limited and pretty American influenced. I can cook a steak that Gordon Ramsay wouldn't send back. (I get half a grass fed cow about every 14-18 months...when we moved to Florida, I hauled one from Charleston so I'd have time to find a new farm without running out.) I believe in fresh, simple ingredients.

That said, it is extremely difficult to store, prepare and serve that much food to that many people and have stellar dishes. Don't get me wrong, there were some definite highlights...the brunch service on sea day in the MDR. A lovely sirloin over mixed greens with blue cheese. Why was it so good? Because the steak was prepared wonderfully and it was simple, good ingredients that didn't worry about being fancy. We also had the lemon pudding cake with lemon curd. Divine! The cake was a touch overdone, and I could have used more lemon curd, but fantastic.

Every other meal we had from Cabanas to MDR was hit or miss. The first morning in Cabanas, every thing I put in my mouth was extremely oversalted. To the point where I couldn't take another bite. I ended up with a bowl of oatmeal. I was highly disappointed as I really wanted some biscuits and gravy. I did try again the next day and it was on par with Bob Evans or the like. I found for the most part the apps and salads/soups in the MDRs were much better (save the brie, sausage, brioche, honey disaster on Pirate night, just a complete eggy mess with only eggs shining through). It seemed they were so intent on plating the beautiful main course that the taste went by the way side. My lamb was excellent, though.

Desserts seemed very manufactured. Again, this is due to the mass production of feeding so many people. I just went to the Arts Festival at Epcot this past weekend and had some real treats. I thought, "Gosh, this is way better than the vast majority of the things I had on the cruise." I grabbed a beautiful lemon Merangue from Cabanas lunch one day. The lemon was excellent, yet they had not allowed the sugar to fully dissolve into the merangue, so it was gritty and honestly overly sweet. I also really missed that beautiful Floating Island from Pirate night when we last cruised in 2012.

To me, the MDRs are banquet/wedding dinner quality. The cabanas is Bob Evans/Chili's.

Okay, gotta go pull out a pound cake from the oven and make macerated strawberries and whipped cream.

It's funny how different experiences can be across different ships/times. I am foodie-ish too and probably drive people crazy with all of my food photos on facebook and mostly cook at home because I can have it better and cheaper and exactly how I like it there. Me "throwing together chicken soup" is making a homemade stock in my instant pot in the morning.

And I found the food on the cruise to be way better than it had any right to be given the quantities they are preparing. Agree about the desserts but I am not really a dessert person anyway and appreciate a few bites of something sweet at the end of the meal and then I am pretty much done. But dug up this chateaubriand photo from the Dream and remember being shocked when my medium rare order came out medium rare... the green beans were cooked perfectly (and I reviewed those at Liberty Tree as tasting "too greenbean-y" on the same trip) and the mashed potatoes were good. The plate was simple but everything was cooked and seasoned just right. The chicken on pirate night was juicy and flavorful and that samosa was as good as anything I've ever had at an indian restaurant. I also have a memory of some kind of unexpected maybe thai? curry on cabanas buffet at lunch on our sea day that was surprising and delicious.

I agree hit and miss but for me there were way more hits than misses and I was shocked at how well prepared everything was on our Dream cruise.

Also if you are interested in getting into Indian food - google two sleevers. She had sleeve surgery and many (but not all) of her recipes are keto (but naturally that way and could be served over rice) and instant pot or air fryer but can be adapted to conventional cooking methods (oven and stovetop.) She is spot on with spices and short cuts.... I love indian food and have made about a half dozen different creamy tomato curry chicken dish recipes (butter chicken and tikka masala which are different but similar) and her butter chicken definitely has the best flavor for minimal effort. IF you are interested in Indian, check it out. My "not a fan of Indian food" boyfriend devours it when I make it. Aarti Sequiera's chicken tikka masala edges it out but it is a LOT more work.

sorry for the OT!

 

[darnheather]

I did not send the steaks back. I had an 18m old who screamed through every meal and a server that wasn't very good. He always seemed like he had way too much going on. We would barely see him, and he couldn't manage to bring things that I did ask for. Like a side of fruit so that my toddler would stop screaming. I definitely did not want to prolong dinner by sending my meal back. I now know that I should have spoken to the head waiter about the service and the food, but at the time I had no idea and I didn't want to make a fuss.

I didn't realize there was a cuisine of the day, I'll have to check that out next time . But even the breakfast stuff can be hit or miss.

I'm sorry you had that experience. Next time speak to the head server or asked to be moved.

 

[MsMamaBear]

I wasn't a fan of the food in the main dining room. I went because it was our first Disney cruise. I told my sister next time, I'm skipping it and going to Cabanas. I enjoyed their lunch and the variety they had better than the dining room.

 

[Dug720]

I wasn't a fan of the food in the main dining room. I went because it was our first Disney cruise. I told my sister next time, I'm skipping it and going to Cabanas. I enjoyed their lunch and the variety they had better than the dining room.

Cabanas is not open the first or last night or the cruise. It is also not a buffet on the nights it is open (unless there is something really weird like a super late port day) - it is a seated meal where you order from a menu made up of things from the MDR menus.

 

[Numtini]

The food offers the illusion of exoticism, but the reality of catering to mid-American tastes with an eye more afraid of offending than interested in pleasing. So the ginger teriyaki dusted beef tenderloin on wasabi mashed potato is basically just a steak and mash. I tasted little ginger or wasabi. On the other hand, it was a perfectly pleasant steak. We did 7 days on the Fantasy last year and 5 days on the Magic last week. I felt like the Fantasy was very hit or miss in terms of how well prepared the food was. I got the impression the kitchen had issues, mainly from noticing our server opening a cover and simply looking defeated, then rushing off, presumably to the kitchen. On the other side, our cruise last week had everything perfectly prepared, including properly cooked beef, medium rare as we requested. Flavors were stronger, even if still trending towards least common denominator American. Given that they're cooking for 1000 to 2000 people at a time, I was perfectly satisfied and looked forward to dinner every night. But no, this isn't a culinary experience. The restaurants themselves, particularly Animator's Palate and Rapunzel's on the Magic are experiences because of the shows and I think they're worth going to.

 

[cougar87]

At a "Anyone Can Cook" seminar on The Dream last year the chef stated they make all the bread and pastries on the ship fresh except for the donuts. They all seemed very tasty to me, but in all fairness I do not eat bread at home so I especially loved it.

 

[xavier2001]

I wasn't a fan of the food in the main dining room. I went because it was our first Disney cruise. I told my sister next time, I'm skipping it and going to Cabanas. I enjoyed their lunch and the variety they had better than the dining room.

I think it’s a matter of personal preference, I have never been impressed with the breakfast/lunch offerings at Cabanas, and very much prefer the sit down meals. Last cruise i did not step foot in Cabanas once. To each their own.

 

[sukhakuli]

The food is OK, not as good as WDW/DL. I feel like there are too many seafood and lamb meals. I can't eat seafood (allergy) and don't care for lamb. I basically got a steak every night. The texture of the steaks is funny - it's mealy or something.

But, there is plenty of food, which is good for kids with bottomless pit stomachs. My kids loved the pizza and ice cream by the pool for lunch. We hardly ever went to the buffet, but the food there is typical buffet fare, and that's not necessarily bad.

 

[lizzyb]

Food is good, is it amazing, no. I would say that it is better than any buffet on land that I have been to.

 

[Cruising Engineer]

We find the food in the MDR very good. Enjoy the variety and trying something new.
I'm not a foodie and actually hate cooking, (the time, mess, pots and pans, bowls, this-n-thats filling up the sink for 15 minutes of eating time) not very productive, no value engineering to cooking. So when someone hands me a menu I'm appreciative.

 

[hnthomps]

The food is fine. Given the constraints of feeding thousands of people at sea, and appealing to the lowest-common-denominator taste level (children), as well as a diverse group of passengers, they do well. Palo and Remy are better, but also fundamentally...fine. Like, do not go in thinking Palo or Remy will compare to fine dining at home, just know that they will be better than the MDRs. (I am not saying they are bad! but neither can compare to fine dining on land, or even medium dining in my foodie-city. How could they given the constraints).

We found the food on board the ships to be much better than the quick serve food at WDW, for example, which we found uniformly terrible last week.

They will also customize things, bring you things from off menu...they're much more flexible than I expected. I try to read through the menu descriptions to think about how the food is likely to have been prepared, and go for whatever is most likely to taste like its freshest ingredient. Some of the sauces are way too sweet, for example, so I avoid that. And so on.

The upside is that my kids love the food on DCL. Mostly because we are way more relaxed about what counts as the second vegetable of a meal (french fries), and don't push them as hard. But even they get sick of the kids menu and order off the grown up menu from time to time.

 

[TCups4Me]

I agree with the description of wedding food or seminar food. It’s mediocre with a pretty presentation. We first sailed on the Wonder and disliked the dining rooms because of the food and the high pressure sales pitch from the staff for tips. 15 years later, we sailed on the Dream (this month) and felt the same about the dining room.

Ate there once and opted for chicken fingers and burgers or Cabanas after that. Castaway Cay, comfy stateroom, and cleanliness is why I would go back.

Our head server wouldn’t bring us drinks because that was the “beverage server’s” job. But that guy was scarcely to be seen. Then my son’s meal came 15 minutes before the rest of the family. And then came the sales pitch. Ugh. Spare me the Dining rooms! They are painful.

 

[cadien]

Our head server wouldn’t bring us drinks because that was the “beverage server’s” job. But that guy was scarcely to be seen. Then my son’s meal came 15 minutes before the rest of the family. And then came the sales pitch. Ugh. Spare me the Dining rooms! They are painful.

I was really annoyed by the beverage division of labor on our cruise as well. But bringing the kids' meals out early is a feature, not a bug. Many families prefer it that way. And that way they're done eating when the kids club counselors come to pick them up.

 

[serenitynow]

I was really annoyed by the beverage division of labor on our cruise as well. But bringing the kids' meals out early is a feature, not a bug. Many families prefer it that way. And that way they're done eating when the kids club counselors come to pick them up.

On our last cruise, the kids club counselors didn’t come for the kids with early dining, just late dining.

 

[Numtini]

Our head server wouldn’t bring us drinks because that was the “beverage server’s” job. But that guy was scarcely to be seen. Then my son’s meal came 15 minutes before the rest of the family. And then came the sales pitch. Ugh. Spare me the Dining rooms! They are painful.

Interesting. We noticed this on the Fantasy, though it was not a refusal, it was just an obvious division of labor. However, last week we were on the Magic and there was no such division. Everyone worked together as a team. At one point, our Head Server did the ketchup Mickey for our daughter. I have no idea whether this is a ship policy or a server team policy, but we thought the service was far better on the Magic as a result. The servers also seemed much less stressed.

No sales pitches either. (I assume you're talking about the gimmick cups?) It is standard for the kids meal to come early, at or just before the first round of appetizers. I think the notion is that while an adult may choose not to order two courses of appetizers and wait, a kid won't have the patience to watch other people eat.

 

[lilsonicfan]

On our last cruise, the kids club counselors didn’t come for the kids with early dining, just late dining.

I might be wrong but I think the only ship where the kids club staff come down for early dining as well as late is the Fantasy.