Cruising - Food and Beverages

Revised on 01/31/26

Food and Beverages on the ship.

One of the important pleasures for many when cruising is the food served onboard. Often, one can have dishes that one might never find in restaurants where one lives.  For example, on one recent cruise, I enjoyed Baked Alaska on the final day of the cruise.  Even now, I find that the chefs on cruise ships still have goodies in their menus that make me salivate at the thought of eating them.

Restaurant Types:

There are several types of dining venues on the average mass market ocean-going cruise ship:

• Buffets (Complementary)
• Lido Deck Grills (Complementary)
• Main Dining Rooms (Complementary)
• Specialty Restaurants (Extra Charge)
  
  

Buffets:

(Buffet area of Queen Mary 2 - Courtesy of Cunard)

On most ships, the ship's buffet is located on the Lido deck near the ship's pool.  When one enters the buffet area, one will often find restaurant staff encouraging people to "Washi-Washi" (wash hands to prevent disease spread).  Once in the buffet, one will see a large variety of foods for self-service dining.  One will almost always see fruits, salad fixings, soups, meat dishes, and desserts - all you can or want to eat.

Often one will see grilled foods (burgers, hot dogs, etc.) here, as well as pizza.  Both the grilled foods and pizza vary in quality depending on the ship and cruise line's standards.  For example, Cunard's Queen Mary 2 has some of the best burgers I've had on any ship, but the worst pizza ever. The opposite is true on MSC, where the pizza is great, but the burgers are forgettable.

Although the old cruise ship tradition of the Midnight Buffet still persists in legend, I have not found this on post-pandemic cruises.  Yet, it is the place where one can still find late night food on most mainstream cruise lines' ships.  However, one will only find an abbreviated late night menu,  So, if one wants to sate one's hunger, be sure that a dining venue is open when you want something to eat.


Lido Deck Grills: 

I have found that many cruise ships will often have grilled food available near the pools on the Lido deck on warm, dry days.  Some ships even have a dedicated grill area near the pool, where burgers and hot dogs can be found throughout the day. These grills are not meant to replace the indoor buffet.  Instead, they are meant to complement it, by providing a place where people enjoying the pool can grab a poolside place to get a bite to eat without having to cover up for dining in the buffet area.

Main Dining Rooms:

It's hard to generalize the main dining room experience between cruise lines, as complementary "sit-down" dining varies quite a bit between cruise lines.  Cruise lines will often assign suite passengers to maximally luxurious restaurants, while other passengers in other cabin classes are assigned to less luxurious dining rooms.

Cruise lines such as NCL have "Freestyle" dining, where passengers can walk into any of the complimentary dining rooms and get served when they want within dining hours. (Note: One may have to wait if the room is crowded at the time.)  Others, like Cunard, ask that the cruiser make reservations for dinner, so to help the restaurant staff balance their workload and table availability.  And still others, like MSC, assign both dining areas and dining times to cruisers.

In many cases, solo cruisers (and others who request it) will be assigned to "shared tables", where random cruisers are seated to dine at a shared table, in order to make the dining experience more enjoyable.

For the most part, for most cruisers, the main dining room is like a large wedding reception venue, where people get to have their evening meals with restaurant level service.  

Specialty Dining Venues:

Most ships have restaurants serving special menus (Steaks, Seafood, French Cuisine, Italian Cuisine, Hibachi Grill, etc.) to cruisers who are willing to pay a few extra dollars for a meal.  Service in these venues tend to be a little better than in the complimentary dining venues, as there is a greater staff to diner ratio in the venue, Of these venues, Steakhouses, Italian Dining, Seafood restaurants tend to be the most common types encountered.  

Beverages (Complementary and Extra Cost):

Every good meal needs a beverage or two to go with it.  Most cruise lines only include juice, coffee, tea and tap water included as part of the base fare.  Other beverages, such as: specialty coffees, specialty juices, and Alcoholic drinks are available for an extra charge.  These beverages are usually covered by individual serving sales or by the sale of beverage packages. 

Beverage packages are big money makers for most Cruise lines, as few people can (or should) drink enough to beat the Cruise lines at their own game.  I find them valuable, as I don't want to find extra charges on my account when I leave the ship.  Instead, I prefer to have as much of an "all inclusive" fare as possible when I pay for a cruise.  Yet, some beverage packages (or fare types) do provide great value for a cruiser.  Given the number of Diet Cokes/Diet Pepsis I drink each day, I break even when I buy a soda package.  On cruise lines such as Princess and MSC, I break even on fare types which include alcoholic beverages and soft drinks.  So, one should know the economic benefits of a beverage package before deciding to purchase one.

Please note that the terms and conditions of each beverage package will vary by cruise line, as well as the beverages that are included in the base cruise fare.  One should compute how many drinks in each category one usually consumes and compute whether purchasing a beverage package is a worthwhile deal.