Cheap All Inclusive Holidays

Nowadays, most cruise ships have a wide variety of dining venues where you can eat everything from a simple Pizza Magherita to four-star French food.  Many cruise lines have hired celebrity chefs to serve as consultants, develop special menus, and oversee their specialty restaurants.

Food is available at practically any time of the day or night, and the larger cruise ships have several extra restaurants, as well as room service.

Since most repositioning cruises don’t go to a lot of ports, food is more of a focus on these cruises than on other voyages.  And often cooking demonstrations, wine tasting seminars, and other special events are held during days at sea.

For breakfast, you can go to the buffet, where there’s usually a nice selection of fruit, pastries, breakfast meats, cereals, and often pancakes or waffles.  But since you won’t be in a hurry to go ashore or catch a tender, you can also have a leisurely breakfast in the dining room where they’ll make you Eggs Benedict and a cappuccino to order.

At lunch, you can return to the buffet, for salads, hot and cold dishes, sandwich fixings, and desserts.  Most ships also have a pool-side grill where you can get a burger, hot dog or grilled chicken breast.  Lunch in the main dining room and alternative venues is more like what you’d fine in a restaurant ashore.   Often served in courses, lunch here can be as simple or elaborate as you’d like.

If you enjoy being waited on and chatting with other passengers, the restaurants are your best bet.

Dinner is not the five-course, fixed-seating affair it once was.  Today, most luxury cruise lines and many middle-of-the-road ships provide there passengers with more flexible dining options.   In most cases, dining in the main dining room at a set time with the same table mates is still available for those who favor that arrangement.

There, you’ll find a continental menu that features entrees like Beef Wellington, lobster tails, or grilled salmon.  Italian restaurants and steak houses offer more variety, though many of these restaurants charge a modest reservation fee.   And some ships even have wine cellars for private dinner where food is paired with fine wines.

On many cruise ships, desserts – especially the soufflés – are a real highlight.  So be sure to leave room.