Recently, Royal Caribbean completely revamped its main dining room menus. These new dining room menus were launched earlier this year and can now be found on all Royal Caribbean cruise ships. If you want to know what’s for dinner (and breakfast and lunch), we have copies of all these Royal Caribbean Main Dining room menus.
Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Menus 2023
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Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Breakfast Menu
Currently, the main dining room breakfast menu on Royal Caribbean has not changed. It still contains a number of classic breakfast options. Among the specialties are French Toast and the breakfast burrito, along with other standard options like cereal, eggs, and continental items.
The dining times on Royal Caribbean ships do vary slightly based on ship and itinerary.
For breakfast, the main dining room typically opens between 7 AM and 8 AM and stays open for about 90 minutes. So, it typically closes between 8:30 AM and 9:30 AM.
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Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Lunch Menus
On most itineraries, the main dining room hosts lunch on sea days and later port arrival days. On a typical 7-night cruise, this usually means lunch occurs twice in the main dining room.
Similar to breakfast, these options have not changed with this latest menu update. Thus, these menus still offer classics selections, with spaghetti Bolognese, the Royal Chicken sandwich, and steak frites on both days.
Likewise, sit-down lunch in the main dining room is available for an hour and a half on sea days and late port of call days. Typically, the main dining room is open for lunch from about 11:30 AM to 1 PM.
Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Dinner Menus
Unlike breakfast and lunch, the Royal Caribbean main dining room menus for dinner are considerably different from the previous version of menus.
Now, these new Royal Caribbean main dining room menus are themed. Each night, there is a new central focus across the starters, entrees, and desserts.
Welcome Aboard Dinner | A Taste of France | A Taste of Italy | A Taste of the Caribbean | A Taste of Mexico | The Royal Night | Bon Voyage
The rotation might change based on your itinerary, but all cruises should start with the Night 1 Welcome Aboard dinner.
For our 7-night Western Caribbean cruise, our remaining rotation included A Taste of France on Night 2, which was the first formal night. Then, the menus followed with a Taste of Italy on Night 3, Taste of the Caribbean on Night 4, and Taste of Mexico on Night 5.
Day 6 was our second formal night, so we had the Royal Dinner, featuring lobster tail and other typical formal night menu items.
Finally, Night 7 was the Bon Voyage dinner. Thankfully, these new menus did feature the wife’s favorite final meal, the Autumn Turkey Dinner.
Of note, the main dining room still offers two dining options, traditional dining or My Time Dining.
With traditional dining, there is an early seating around 5:30-6 PM and a late seating around 8-8:30 PM. Cruisers with traditional dinner have the same table assignment and waitstaff throughout the cruise.
With My Time Dining, cruisers can dine at a different time each night and/or with a different table configuration. Royal Caribbean does allow guests to pre-make reservations for each evening with My Time Dining. These guests will have a separate line from those without reservations when entering the dining room. Of course, cruisers can walk up to the host without reservations to request a table when hungry as well.
Dining hours for My Time Dining are typically around 6:45 PM to 9 PM each night.
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No More Classics on the Menu
As mentioned above, the new menus now feature themes. Although, this does not mean that all menu items align with the new name. For instance, while the Taste of the Caribbean menu offers a jerk seasoned pork chop, it also has a pesto tagliatelle dish.
Another big change is the removal of the nightly classics menu. While the rest of the menu always rotated, these standard selections used to stay the same all cruise.
Previously, the classics menu consisted of 6 starters, like Caesar Salad, shrimp cocktail, and escargot each night. Cruisers could opt for one of 4 classic entrees as well, including roasted chicken, a NY strip steak, and herb-crusted salmon. Finally, there were six classics for dessert, like apple blossom a la mode or the royal chocolate cake.
Those selections no longer exist on these new menus. Overall, this means that each night the menu is over 30% smaller, giving cruisers fewer options. Previously, the older menus offered 28 selections each evening– this included 10 starters, 9 entrees, and 9 desserts. Now, the menus include 6 starters, 7 entrees, and 6 desserts.
However, even though Royal removed the classics section, many of these dishes still appear on the new menus on various nights.
For instance, cruisers can enjoy shrimp cocktail on four evenings. Likewise, escargot is now available on three occasions: the Welcome Aboard, A Taste of France, and The Royal Night menus. Further, Spaghetti Bolognese was available three times.
Salmon was offered on three nights as well. With only a few other fish-centric dishes, it felt like there needed to be more seafood options though. Further, the cheese plate, one of our staple starters for the table, was gone from the menu completely.
Although, Harmony of the Seas did offer a grilled chicken option each evening. This option was a substitute for that evening’s featured poultry item, like chicken marsala or the autumn turkey dinner.
New Additions to the Royal Caribbean Main Dining Room Menus
While some items have been removed from the Royal Caribbean main dining room menus, there have been some new menu items added. Now, there is a featured vegetarian option each evening, like the spring pea and asparagus risotto or the stuffed red bell pepper.
Also, each evening features an Indian dish. This was a great addition for me. I enjoyed the aromatic chicken saag and the shrimp jalfrezi.
Many of the other menus items will be familiar to Royal cruisers, they are just on different nights/themed menus. The Welcome Aboard dinner still includes prime rib, and the second formal night (The Royal Night) still has the hallmark lobster tail. In 2023, additional lobster tails beyond the first one will cost $16.99 each.
While all these changes might sound like bad news, it really wasn’t in our opinion. When compared to our last Royal Caribbean cruise on Navigator of the Seas in December 2022, we actually thought the food preparation was much better.
For instance, the pork chop was a thick cut with plenty of spicy seasoning. The prime rib was perfectly roasted to a medium rare, served juicy and warm.
Further, we were big fans of the new themed approach, including the new Taste of Mexico and Taste of Caribbean options.
Typically, we are not impressed with main dining room desserts. However, of the new options, I did like the peanut-caramel bar on the Welcome Aboard menu. The Italian hazelnut-chocolate cake was essentially a lava cake with sliced hazelnuts. Of course, you can’t go wrong with the warm apple cobbler either.
Finally, one of the announced reasons for these menu changes was to make dinner more efficient. With fewer menu items, the galley can cook up better prepared items that can be served quickly.
While this sounds good in theory, our table of 4 was never out of the main dining room in under 90 minutes. Yes, we did eat solid three course meals each night, with a few rounds of drinks. So, we might be atypical, but the dining room seemed to function like any other Royal Caribbean cruise.
Overall, while there were fewer options, we did enjoy the new Royal Caribbean main dining room menus, even Heidi who is a picky eater. The new selections offered some great, and much needed, diversity. Food quality was improved, and the overall preparation was a notch above what we have come to expect from Royal Caribbean.
While we have heard much negative feedback, we have to disagree based on our recent experience from Harmony of the Seas. Of course, this could be partially related to the novelty of the menu items; however, we suggest you go into your next Royal Caribbean cruise with an open mind and test out some of the new main dining room menu options.
Comments
Have you tried the new Royal Caribbean main dining room menus yet? Do you agree with our assessment of these new offerings? Drop us an anchor below to share your thoughts on these recent dining changes.
13 comments
Joan Bull
Very disappointing in new menus
Just trying to cut back to make a buck.
We can have Italian, Mexican at home
The meals are too spicy to us older cruisers
Need to change. Not acceptable.
Have 40 cruises with RC and will be changing
Joan Bull
As Diamond Club Members and 41 cruises
The new menu is a joke. I can have Italian at
Carrabba. It’s all about recouping the monies
From COVID. Cutting back to make a buck.
And not to mention they now give us 4 drinks
Not 5 on our sea pass card. What next?
Very disgusting. I hope others agree
Andrew
Sounds like Royal has joined the airline industry in a “race to the bottom.” So disappointing. How about raising prices a few dollars a night and keeping a higher level of service? There are really no other options for long distance travel than flying. There are plenty of other options for vacations besides cruising. Unfortunately we already have our next two cruises booked with Royal. I read someone’s comment that they are going to try Celebrity. Although we have enough points to “transfer” to Celebrity, we won’t be doing that since it is owned by Royal.
WILLIAM SHEPARD
We went on royal Caribbean symphony of the seas in January 2023. They did not tell us they had change the menu. We have been on the same ship in July of the previous year. We were a gas that they were charging for the second tiny tiny lobster. We got shrimp cocktail once in the seven days. We don’t particularly care for spicy food so they had jerky and spicy things on the menu. I felt the menu was similar to what I would cook at home and every day meal not on a fancy cruise I was very disappointed, and we have no longer booked any trips with them after 27 years of cruising we have stopped working with Royal Caribbean the other thing they did we asked for a large table. They put us at a table with a family with seven children we’re in our 70s, we asked for a table with adults and they put us by our self. Finally, on the third day we were put in a table of what we call rejected adults who had the same experience. Most of these cruisers had been cruising for 40 some years and were high on the perks list . Many of them said it would be their last trip on Royal Caribbean. I did book a trip on Celebrity this past week for January and did investigate the menu prior to the booking so let’s see how this goes. We also did a princess cruise last winter and they have stopped letting you sit at the same table every night. It’s first come first serve every night and wait in line, which wasn’t too good. The entertainment and Royal Caribbean was better than Princess but it was repetitious . There were some nights on the cruise ship, symphony that there was nothing to do.
Kitt J
We tried the new menus. Ours was a 5 night cruise, so the Royal dinner was not offered – so no lobster. The French and Italian night was good, but the Mexican and Caribbean nights were too spicy for us older guests – and without the standard offered each night, we were really disappointed with those two nights dining.
Maria
I totally agree. Not having those additional options really limits you if you don’t like any of the “theme” dishes. We just came back from a 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Harmony and for two nights, Mexican and Caribbean themes we had to eat in the Windjammer. Dishes were too spicy. I hope some changes are made or we may have to rethink our loyalty to Royal Caribbean.
Anne-Lisbeth Sebrell
If you are gluten-free and a vegan, is there anything to eat on the menus?
Regina harper
I hate the new menus and I am diamond member and have recently went on carinval and they accomdate gluten free had so many options including French toast
Carmen
I’ve been on Royal and Carnival, among others. I liked the options much better on Carnival than Royal.
Oliver Max
I dislike the new menus very much. There is no question that the new menus are done to reduce costs now to speed up service. Also Royal has removed the vegan menu. My wife is a vegetarian not a vegan but enjoyed reading the menu to have additional options every night. Now they have one or two vegan options at most but she doesn’t always like them. As Royal’s ships get bigger and bigger the options get fewer and the service goes down
Dianne
Sorry..the new menu was terrible!!
Len Morgan
We have sailed on Royal with the NEW menu. There have been a lot of cutbacks in the name of efficiency. To cut waste a table of two gets two pats of butter and three rolls. While the staff is ready to get more when asked the service does suffer. MY Time Dinning does interupt the flow of service. There was a constant push to rate then 10 0ut of 10, every night. Portions also seem smaller. The whole idea is to make service similar to larger ships, who due to number of passengers can not provide the ROYAL service we have come to know. Room stewards have more rooms and thus service was cut in half (once a day). Refrigerators have been replaced with coolers. Lights only work when you are in the room. While this may save energy, returning to a hot room is an issue. Everything is on the app, I miss the Compass, the digital app takes added effort.
Debbie
Agreed. New menu was not very good. Always enjoy the food on Royal. Not so much with this menu change. Probably will not be going on this cruise line again