The last time I was on a Royal Caribbean cruise on Quantum of the Seas this past winter, I tried their Chef’s Table, a private, premium, multi-course dining experience with a small group of other cruisers. I enjoyed it a lot, so when I went on a spring cruise on Navigator of the Seas, I booked it again.

Chef’s Table is an upgraded experience that comes with an additional US$118.00 supplement. Because I purchased the unlimited premium dining package add-on prior to sailing, my upcharge was lowered to $59.00 (consisting of a $50.00 base price and a $9.00 mandatory 18% gratuity). The extra fee isn’t cheap, especially considering that all your basic meals are already included in your standard fare, but if you compare the quality of the food and service to other fine dining establishments on land, it’s actually not bad.

Chef’s tasting menus like this are usually rotated by season. Because my previous cruise was during the winter and it’s spring now, I was looking forward to seeing how they changed up the menu. Unfortunately, the course list was exactly the same as it was on my previous cruise, which was a bit disappointing. Upon the conclusion of my meal, I did some research about how frequently they change up the menu, only to discover that… they don’t. Apparently this menu is highly standardized and remains the same, year-round and fleet-wide.

I feel like this is a huge missed opportunity to hook the foodies into spending more money every time they’re on a Royal Caribbean cruise. Yes, having delicious, high-quality food is probably the most important facet of attracting customers, but if they want to monetize food enthusiasts as repeat customers, I feel like adding in at least some kind of novelty value every season would be a big plus.

So, if you already read my blog post about my previous Chef’s Table experience, then this one will probably feel like déjà vu. Regardless, I still decided to do a full post about it again because there are still some thoughts I had throughout this meal about the limited differences it did end up having compared to the one I experienced on Quantum.

I don’t drink alcohol, so in lieu of the wine pairing, I requested a non-alcoholic pairing instead. On Quantum, they had a designated non-alcoholic pairing prepared, and when I brought it up, they even asked if anyone else at the table wanted to pass on the wine and make a substitution too.

However, this time on Navigator, it felt like the non-alcoholic pairing was an afterthought. The waiter’s facial expression made it look like he was incredibly confused that I didn’t drink alcohol, and at one point during the dinner, he even asked me “would you like another one?” as if I was supposed to be ordering the mocktails myself rather than there being a pairing.

On Quantum, the waiter immediately took away my wine glasses, but on Navigator, I had six empty, unused wine glasses sitting in front of me for over half the meal, and the waiter only thought to remove them after the first three of six courses were already done. Additionally, because this was a circular table, it felt a lot more cramped. The rectangular table that was used on Quantum had more efficient usage of space because there was very little unused space on the table, but on a circular table, the entire center of the table is unreachable, so you end up having all the wine glasses really close to each other and your eating area is just basically a pie slice.

The meal started with some bread.

At this point, I noticed that there were 13 people at the table—six couples, plus me solo. I started having a sneaking suspicion that the capacity of the table was supposed to be 12, but because I was a solo diner, they squeezed in another couple so that they didn’t end up with 11 in this session and “miss out” on a spot if there is no other solo diner who signs up. That would give a partial explanation of why we all felt so cramped and had so little space.

The reason I found this out? They ran out of bread. They prepared 12 portions of bread, even though there were 13 people. I got my own blossom of bread, but the man sitting next to me didn’t get one and had to share one with his wife. He ultimately got his portion… after course number four.

After an unusually long wait, we were served the first course, scallop carpaccio with yuzu vinaigrette and crispy quinoa. This was very consistent with the previous scallop carpaccio I had on Quantum; it was cut extremely thin, so I rolled them up into tubes with the quinoa and some vegetables inside so that it had more substance per chew.

After finishing my dish, I looked up and noticed that the woman across the table from me hadn’t received one. I wondered if this was another case of the kitchen only making 12 instead of 13, but after someone else also noticed and asked her about it, she said that she had an allergy and requested a substitution. Considering how long we had to wait to get our first course, I figured that it would be plenty of time to prepare her substitute dish as well and serve everyone at once. A while after everyone at the table finished their scallop, the woman finally got her alternative dish.

I also finally received my “first” drink of the non-alcoholic beverage pairing. I say that this is the “first” because the actual first one I got was supposed to be in substitution for the welcome champagne. This one was the first drink of the actual meal.

For the second course, we received smoked tomato soup with garlic focaccia croutons. As you can see from the photograph, it was just focaccia and not croutons.

The smoked tomato soup was served plain at first, and then the chef came out to add the cream and basil sauces into the soup.

I remember from Quantum that I really enjoyed the earthiness and smoky flavor of this soup, and this is actually one of the dishes that I thought Navigator did even better. The flavor was much more intense here, almost as if the Quantum version of soup was diluted. I still had some of the bread left from before, so when I ran out of focaccia, I dipped the bread into the soup to clean my bowl.

The third course was Maine lobster salad with hearts of palm, pineapple, cilantro, and vanilla dressing.

I liked the Quantum version of this a little bit better because the Quantum’s lobster was prepared in a more pure and simple way, while this one had a lot of sauce, some of which was already soaked into the vegetables. With that being said, liking the more plain version of lobster is just a personal preference (mostly because I just really like the flavor of lobster itself); everything about this dish was delicious, including the sauce.

My next mocktail was a pineapple and coconut drink. It looks like a fruit slushie and I think it visually looks extremely sweet, but in reality, it was actually quite moderate in sweetness. That meant that it was easier to discern the flavors of the fruits themselves, which I thought made the overall flavor profile of the drink much better.

Our fourth course was roasted branzino with grilled zucchini, peppers, lemon confit, and pesto.

This was another dish that was very consistent between Quantum and Navigator. The fish was cooked very well, and the vegetables and citrus complemented it well. I noticed that the sauce here was a bit stronger than the one served on Quantum, but that was fine, as a majority of it was pooled in the moat of the plate and diners could personally decide how much to use.

A significantly noticeable difference between the dining experience on Quantum and Navigator was the skill of the sommelier. On Quantum, it was easy to tell that the sommelier was experienced and confident in the way that he explained and served the wine, but on Navigator, the sommelier made some questionable choices that even I, as someone who never drinks alcohol, found to be quite obviously unusual.

I don’t know if this was just him being nervous, but he was very fidgety with the wine bottles. I believe a reasonable expectation you can have of your sommelier presenting the wine is to hold it steady with a folded liteau so that there is minimal body heat transfer, and so the diners can still see the label on the bottle. The sommelier for our dinner seemed to really like touching the bottle with his bare hands, and not just touch it, but really get in there and massage it like he was loosening some cramps.

For one of the wines—specifically, the Leviathan Red Blend California—the sommelier poured it into a decanter first. Remember the pineapple drink I had earlier? It had a little too much in the glass, so some of it overflowed and ended up forming a puddle on the table. Do you know where the sommelier decided to place the decanter on the table so that people could look at it (after cradling it and massaging it too, for a bit)? Directly on top of the puddle. A blind man literally had a statistically higher chance to place the decanter on a dry spot of the tablecloth than this sommelier.

Here is a picture of the sommelier serving the wine to my next-seat neighbor. Hmm, I wonder why he still has so much bread left. Oh wait…

The fifth course of the evening was filet mignon.

Prior to serving it, our waiter (who, if it wasn’t clear, is the same person as our sommelier) went around the table collecting doneness level preferences. Most people ordered their steak medium rare, while the other half ranged from medium to medium well. During this process, he told an elaborate story about how it is worth trying steak cooked medium rare, even if you usually like it more cooked, and he shared some anecdotes about how he is slowly convincing his wife to eat steak cooked closer and closer to medium rare.

He had started this quest by asking the person next to me, so by the time he had gone all around the table (and also finished telling his story), I was last in line to give my order. I asked for my filet mignon to be cooked rare. He asked “oh, so you want it still mooing?” This is obviously a joke, but with this guy, I literally could not tell. Just in case there was a miscommunication, I clarified, “no, I’d just like it regular rare, not blue rare” (because blue rare is often the doneness level at which you get “your steak is still alive” comments). The waiter then repeated his joke, asking, “yes, so you want it still mooing?” to which I replied “yes, that would be great.”

Fortunately, the steak came out properly rare, and it was delicious.

The filet mignon was served with a side of potato purée, asparagus, carrots, and baby tomatoes. The chef also came around and added some bordelaise sauce to the moat; I ended up barely using any sauce because the flavor of the steak and vegetables was so great on its own.

On Quantum, the filet mignon had a nice quirk where it was served with extra crispy potato chips pressed into the potato purée. I enjoyed that the Navigator version also came with a few potato chips on the side as well. The portion was small enough that it added a nice little diversity of flavor and texture without being considered too significant a component of the overall dish.

For our final beverage of the night, we got espressos—a regular salted caramel espresso for me, and an espresso martini for everyone else.

By this point, because the service had been so excruciatingly slow, we were about to hit the end of hour 4 of our dinner and it was almost 9 PM (we started at 5 PM). Because it was so late, most people didn’t dare take more than a sip or two of their espresso martinis out of concern that the caffeine would keep them up all night. Luckily, I have the blessing (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of being immune to caffeine, so I enjoyed my entire espresso. I thought it was extra great because I also really like salted caramel.

The espressos were served in conjunction with the sixth and final course, The World.

In theme with the slow service, they brought out our orbs of chocolate first, and then our waiter disappeared for a while. They were gone for long enough (and also did not give clear enough instructions) that the woman sitting two seats away from me started cracking open her chocolate orb with her fork. I had to stop her and told her to wait a bit longer, because there was a surprise coming.

The surprise, of course, is that the waiter comes out with some warm caramel sauce and pours it over your desserts to melt the outside chocolate shell and reveal the inside.

Inside was peanut butter ganache, Valrhona chocolate mousse, and salted caramel gelato.

On Quantum, I wasn’t able to eat much of this because it was so overwhelmingly sweet that it registered on my taste buds as bitter. However, I’m happy to report that the Navigator version was not excessively sweet. I was quite excited that I was able to taste all the ingredients this time, and in celebration, I finished the entire thing.

This was also time for celebrations. Two couples were celebrating anniversaries, so they each got a small slice of chocolate cake with a candle.

On Quantum, the Chef’s Table took place in a private room all the way in the back of Chops Grille. On Navigator, the Chef’s Table is actually inside the main dining room on the center floor. I wouldn’t say either arrangement was better or worse; it was just different. I guess this version on the Navigator is better if you’re the type who wants to brag to others that you’re having a nice meal, while the more private Quantum version is better if you don’t want to hear the quiet chatter and clinking of utensils on dishes from other regular diners.

Here are some photos I took from the perspective of our dining table.

This is what the Chef’s Table dining table looked like. While taking this photograph, I did not notice that one of the couples from the dinner was still there taking pictures, so that was amusing to notice after-the-fact while I was organizing my photographs. The couple there was very kind (as was everyone else at the table); I ran into this particular couple a few days later on the pool deck when I was out for a walk, and we had a great chat about their cruising adventures.

If you want to go on a fun scavenger hunt, you can zoom into the table to see where my seat was. It’s quite easy to figure out if you know that I am the only one who finished my entire dessert and drank my entire espresso.

Here’s another view of the Chef’s Table, but from the opposite side of the dining area.

After my second Chef’s Table, my assessment of the experience remains mostly the same as before. The thing that makes it special is the interactions and conversations you have with the other diners. There were some more shy diners this time compared to my dinner on Quantum, but after the alcohol got flowing, they got a whole lot more chatty.

If you want a high-class and elegant dining experience during your cruise away from the regular bustle of the main dining room or buffet, then I would recommend this experience for people who don’t have children to bring with them and have the budget or financial flexibility for the supplemental charge. My recommendation here still stands, even with the inconsistent service I experienced on Navigator compared to Quantum.

After what I would consider a fairly successful first-ever cruise experience for me on Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas, I continued keeping an eye out on various cruise lines’ websites to check for opportunities to book a second cruise. Eventually, I ended up managing to catch a great deal on Royal Caribbean’s website for a 7-night cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán, and Puerto Vallarta.

The base fare for a solo cruiser in an interior cabin was $1,156.00, but it came with a $347.00 discount as part of a sale, another $226.00 discount on top of that for a different promotion, and an additional $81.00 discount even on top of that for being a Nevada resident. (Apparently the resident discount applies to short-notice bookings for residents of states neighboring the port, which is a way to incentivize nearby people to book the cruise assuming that traveling the relatively short distance won’t be too much of a hassle for them.) With $155.82 added on for taxes, fees, and port expenses, my total base fare for this trip was US$657.82. I bought a bunch of add-ons so the grand total was closer to a thousand dollars, but for the base price, $657.82 is insanely low.

I’m a bit behind on blogging right now, and I’ve actually been back from this cruise already for one week. However, I’m taking a brief break from traveling and have a bit more time now, so I’ll be catching up soon. I used this extra free time to go through and organize my cruise photos, and I’ve decided to split it up into four blog posts (this one being the first one).

To start, here is a rundown of (most of) the food I ate on the cruise.

Like last time, I purchased a premium dining package add-on that allowed me to eat at any specialty restaurant for no extra charge (apart from the extra charge of actually purchasing the add-on, that is). Normally, all meals are included in your fare, but if you get this add-on, you get to go to more private and higher-quality on-board restaurants instead of the buffet or main dining room. This cost me $214.62 extra for the 7-night cruise, which is broken down into $181.93 for the package and $32.69 for a mandatory 18% prepaid gratuity.

Also like last time, I purchased The Key for $181.93 (this is separate from the dining package, and it is just a coincidence that they share the same base price, which was due to a pretty steep discount on The Key). The main perk of this is the fact that it includes on-board Internet access, but it also comes with a special welcome lunch and departure breakfast.

The welcome lunch on Quantum of the Seas was great—I had a nice, private window seat and enjoyed some delicious fish. The welcome lunch on Navigator of the Seas, however, was a bit… different. Instead of giving everyone a private table, they randomly grouped some strangers into larger parties. For example, rather than giving me a solo table, I was put in a group of nine at what is basically a really big family dining table. This is fine for something like the Chef’s Table where you’re intentionally opting into it, but it seemed weird for a regular meal like this.

Regardless, thanks to a handful of chatty people at our table, it wasn’t too bad. I got to know some new people, and many of them were intrigued at my mobile lifestyle of traveling non-stop and living out of hotel rooms most of the time.

As the main entrée of my lunch, I ordered some branzino with asparagus. Similar to last time, the fish came out looking sort of sad, but taste- and texture-wise, it was great.

For dinner on embarkation day, I dined at Izumi Sushi. I intentionally scheduled sushi night to be the first night because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get seasickness, so I figured that it would be best to try and get ahead of it and eat a lot of ginger from the sushi restaurant as a preventative measure.

As my appetizer, I had crispy rice spicy tuna, which was made from creamy tuna, masago, spicy aïoli, chili garlic oil, hot crispy rice, and jalapeño.

For my first main course, I ordered a poke bowl with seasoned tuna, salmon, avocado, sea salt, sesame chili oil, onions, scallions, masago, seaweed salad, and sushi rice.

I comboed that with my second main course, the assorted sashimi with salmon, yellowtail, and shrimp. It looked like getting the sashimi was much better value than getting the assorted nigiri in terms of portion size. Because the poke bowl came with plenty of sushi rice already, I fished some out and combined it with the assorted sashimi to have some build-your-own nigiri.

For dessert, I had assorted mochi ice cream. It usually comes with one piece each of mango, strawberry, and chocolate, but I requested for the chocolate to be replaced with a second piece of mango. It’s not that I dislike chocolate, but rather, I just find more consistency in liking fruity flavors instead.

This is what the entrance of Izumi looked like.

This is a shot of the interior of Izumi. I had a fairly late dining time, so it was pretty empty by the time I was there.

Next on my rotation was Jamie’s Italian. I dined there twice—one time for lunch, and one time for dinner on a different day.

On the day that I went for lunch, I started my meal with their ultimate garlic bread, which is made from warm artisan buttermilk buns, herby garlic butter, Parmesan, and rosemary.

For my main entrée, I ordered truffle tagliatelle.

I remembered from Quantum of the Seas that this pasta dish was borderline-inedibly salty, so for this one, I put in a special request with the waitress to minimize the amount of excess salt that was added to this dish. She passed along my preference to the chef, and it was very well honored; this came out at the perfect saltiness level, and it tasted great.

For dessert, I got some ice cream topped with fruits and caramel popcorn.

Jamie’s Italian was located inside the Windjammer Buffet in its own dining room along the edge of the ship. This meant that I got to enjoy a great view of the ocean through the floor-to-ceiling windows while dining.

On the day that I went to Jamie’s for dinner, I started with some crispy squid with a side of lemon and garlic mayo sauce.

For my main course, I had lasagne made from slow-cooked beef and pork, topped with herbs, baked in a Béchamel sauce with tomatoes, mozzarella, and Parmesan. I’m usually not the biggest fan of eating a ton of cheese, but the cheese in this dish wasn’t unpleasantly pungent like some other cheeses are. This was also specially made with low sodium, which made me like it more than I expected.

For dessert, I had a banana split with one scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, topped with caramel popcorn and a caramel drizzle. This was incredibly delicious and possibly the best dessert I had on the ship. The caramel was torched in a way such that, combined with the banana, it tasted like a fruity crème brûlée.

Next is the big one: Hooked Seafood. Seafood is my favorite type of food, so I spent three of my dinners dining at Hooked.

Each dinner started with some cheesy bread.

The first night at Hooked, I selected fresh-shucked oysters with mignonettes as my appetizer.

That was followed by The Captain’s Platter as my main entrée, consisting of a four-ounce lobster tail, grilled halibut filet, and three jumbo shrimp. This was accompanied by some melted butter as the dipping sauce and some seasonal vegetables as the side dish.

Afterwards, I opted for a lemon tart for dessert.

The second night at Hooked, I started with some mussels steamed in a garlic white wine sauce.

For my main entrée, I ordered a grilled salmon filet. I got this because I figured the portion size of the fish would be larger, but it was about the same as what was served in The Captain’s Platter. The platter didn’t have an additional upcharge, so it seems like it is just categorically better, considering that you get to select the type of filet you want anyway, and you get the “bonus” lobster tail and shrimp as well.

For my side, I got some lobster mac and cheese. It was quite greasy and didn’t really have much lobster in it, so I would’ve probably been better off trying the coleslaw or corn on the cob instead.

For dessert, I got a cherry tart topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For my third and final night at Hooked Seafood, which was also the final dinner I had on the cruise ship before debarkation day, I ordered some baked oysters as my appetizer—half Rockefeller and half leeks and white wine. I’m glad I got to try this for the sake of variety, but I much preferred the fresh oysters and drunken mussels instead.

My main course this day was the surf and turf, which came with a lobster tail and steak. I’m still working on improving my heart health and minimizing my consumption of saturated fat, so I’ve been avoiding red meats where possible. With that being said, I figured that, even though filet mignon isn’t as low in saturated fat as cuts like the round, it’s lean enough that I could enjoy a surf and turf for one of the days.

For my final dessert at Hooked, I got a coconut cream pie, made from coconut custard and topped with whipped cream and toasted coconut. It also came with a few dollops of caramel and a few dots of chocolate sauce.

This is what the interior of Hooked Seafood looked like.

And finally, the last specialty restaurant I went to, which rounds out all the available options, was Chops Grille, Royal Caribbean’s popular American-style steakhouse.

Upon being seated, I was brought some bread: one piece of onion bread, and one piece of pretzel bread. It came with a side of butter, but I opted to just have the bread on its own because I didn’t feel like clogging my arteries that day.

For my appetizer, I ordered a pan-seared crab cake topped with fresh herbs and served alongside some chipotle aïoli.

For my main entrée, I ordered a hand-cut nine-ounce filet mignon cooked rare. According to the menu, their filet is sourced from the Midwest. I requested the sauce on the side in the moat of the plate and only used a very small portion of it, considering that I like the actual flavor of the beef and don’t want strong sauces to overwhelm or detract from the flavor.

For my sides to go along with the steak, I asked for half portions each of Yukon gold mashed potatoes and grilled jumbo asparagus.

To conclude my meal at Chops, I got some key lime pie as dessert.

And finally, the last thing I ate on the ship before disembarking was an Eggs Benedict with crab cake and avocado, along with a side of hash browns. This was part of the special à la carte breakfast that came with The Key, and luckily, I had a private dining experience this time and didn’t have to share a large family-style table with strangers.

Overall, I’d say that I liked the food on Navigator of the Seas a little bit more than the food on Quantum of the Seas. However, that comes with a few caveats. I enjoyed the Italian food on Navigator more because I learned from my mistakes on Quantum and asked for the sodium reduction. Additionally, I just really like seafood, so the fact that there was a dedicated seafood restaurant this time basically by default made me like Navigator’s food more. I did enjoy the creativity of Wonderland on Quantum of the Seas, but that was somewhat gimmicky and didn’t contribute as much to the overall perception of core food quality.

There are three things not pictured in this blog post:

The first is the food from Café Promenade. This is the late-night option for people who want something to eat after the buffets and main dining rooms are closed, and I usually only came here when I had intensive workouts at the fitness center and needed some extra calories before ending my night. I usually just got some pastries or pizza from here, and they weren’t particularly notable or special (the pizza tasted like generic grocery store frozen pizza).

The second is Johnny Rockets. Navigator of the Seas has a Johnny Rockets Express on the pool deck that usually sells burgers à la carte for an extra charge, but because of my premium dining package, I was able to redeem one combo (a burger, fries, and beverage) for free every day. I only went here a couple of times, and I guess I ended up forgetting to take a picture of my burger every time. The burgers and fries here were the equivalent of what you’d find at a decent fast food restaurant on land. It was worth it for me because it was inclusive in my dining package, but otherwise, it’s around a $15 additional supplement, which I think is way too high for the circumstances (specifically, the fact that you can get other good food elsewhere on the ship for no extra charge).

And finally, the third is the Chef’s Table. I had it last time on Quantum of the Seas and enjoyed the experience enough that I booked it again for Navigator of the Seas. It usually costs an extra $118 per person, but with my unlimited dining package, I was able to get it for a discounted $59 upcharge (composed of a $50 base price and a $9 mandatory 18% gratuity). I will have a dedicated blog post on the Chef’s Table coming up soon.