Royal Caribbean - Main Dining Vs Speciality

Main dining room new menus - what’s the food and service like?

We’ve done two Royal Caribbean cruises and ate in main dining rooms (MDR’s) most nights, the other nights we tried the speciality dining rooms. We always choose the later dining slot and we haven’t bothered with My Time Dining (MTD). As a family with very young children I can understand why many families choose the earlier dining slot - we personally choose to eat late and we like to have more time to explore ports or chill by the pool with the kids rather than go for an early dining slot.

With Royal Caribbean you always have the same waiters for your meals and across our cruises, they have always been superb. However, if you pick My Time Dining your waiting team would change - as you are seated depending on which section has availability when you go for dinner. I would imagine if you have allergies or dietary requirements these would need to explained every night on my time dining so you may want to consider this before choosing your dining option.

With a set dining time you also get to build a rapport with your team which is lovely as they make such an effort but my time can offer flexibility - a point to note is if you book your cruise late you can only be allocated the dining options available at the time so if this is a key part of your cruise, book early.

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Main dining food Vs Speciality Dining - what’s the difference?

MAIN DINING ROOM

The MDR menus were updated just before we travelled and they were all re themed. We liked the new menus and enjoyed every meal we ate in the MDR - the curries were excellent, steaks were great the wide range of starters were throughly enjoyed. Our eldest daughter ate from the adults menu everyday and enjoyed her food and our youngest often had her main and dessert from the adults menu. If we wanted something done differently or with a different side we just asked or if we wanted a starter without a dressing just ask - the staff are so accommodating.

Personally we thought the portion sizes were better on the new menu and we didn’t feel overly full - the saying is true bring the next size up in pants to travel home in!! So much food and it’s so hard to resist.

The kids menu was the same every night and it was a typical kids menu so ours chose to eat off the adults menu - they will eat anything they are most definitely not picky eaters. We will also eat a huge range of food so to pick from a handful of options each night was never an issue for us but for some it may not be ideal. The previous classics options were no longer on the menu and some people have missed them however we liked the choices available and we rarely ate off the classics menu on our first royal cruise.

All the evening menus appear on the app prior to sailing so you can identify nights you’re not as keen on the menu and pick a speciality restaurant instead or you can always try the buffet (the famous Windjammer). The Windjammer was superb - if you can’t find a good range of food to eat from in there you must be picky, it literally covers all combos of cereals, eggs, cooked breakfast, Indian curries for breakfast, avocado on toast, pancakes, waffles, fruit, salad - you name it they had it! We ate most breakfasts and lunches in there just due to the choice available however we didn’t venture in for tea as we prefer a table service meal on an evening.

Speciality dining -

The options are broad on the Anthem of the Seas and there was only one we haven’t eaten in now so here’s our short guide. You can get the full guide in the link further down this page.

Chops Grille

We’ve dined here twice and both times the food was superb as was the service, we all had starters the bacon was divine as were the crab cakes. For main courses most had steaks and I had lamb all were excellent. The sides were divine also and the all the meat was perfectly cooked. Our waiter was friendly but not intrusive which was great.

Would we go back? Absolutely it was a nice change from the MDR and in our opinion a lovely upgrade.

Wonderland

Again we are lucky enough to have done this restaurant on both cruises with RC. As the kids adored it so much the first time they wanted to go back - so off we went down the rabbit hole. This is a brilliantly themed restaurant down to the menus, the style of the restaurant, the food options and the theming extends to the cutlery and glassware.

Wonderland Menu - Royal Caribbean as at August 2023

The first time we went everything blew us away our server was unbelievable, the food was superb and we were impressed by the theming. The second time around everything was a little smaller, our server wasn’t as efficient and magical as the first time and one dessert was so spicy it was inedible which was a shame. We still tipped etc as normal but in comparison to the first time we left feeling underwhelmed.

Would we go back? Honestly part of the joy of this restaurant is the experience when you first do it, we wouldn’t go back and do this restaurant again on the Anthem but we would possibly consider it on another ship. The actual experience almost feels like once you’ve done it once and had an amazing experience that’s difficult to top the second time around but it’s absolutely worth it if you’ve never been.

Izumi

We couldn’t get in here the first time around its very small and was totally booked out. Clearly all the other cruisers knew something we didn’t - it was superb! You can pick a starter, two large plates and dessert. We all tried different things from different types of sushi, tempura and fire cracker spring rolls and the karage chicken.

Main courses were all excellent and the extra mocha ice cream for the kids resulted in smiley full kids! Our server was truly exceptional - by far the best service on the ship!

Would we go back?

100% it was worth every cent and the service was superb. He was amazing - noticed everything, waters running low it was topped up, checked the spice wasn’t too much for the kids, checked they were enjoying their meal and honestly it was truly top level!

The only one we haven’t tried was Jamies Italian - it always looked so quiet however the menu looked very nice.

To read more about speciality dining, the restaurants, price and full experience then please read our guide to Speciality dining on Royal Caribbean.

We loved the MDRs and enjoyed all of our food but it was lovely to have a few extra special treats as we love our food. We would cruise again with Royal and we would pay for speciality dining - in our opinion it’s worth the price upgrade.

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