Royal Caribbean Investing Millions to Enhance Onboard Complimentary Dining

At a time when many cruise lines have invested their culinary efforts in specialty dining venues, that require an additional charge, Royal Caribbean has delivered the WOW once again with its announcement of a multi-million dollar upgrade to the food served in its main dining rooms fleetwide.

Their new investment focuses on more choices for guests with dietary restrictions, dishes that better reflect the international flavors of their ship's destinations, and super presentation. The enhancements to their culinary program emphasize Royal Caribbean's commitment to providing their guests with the freshest, high quality ingredients available.

"In today's food-aware culture, the palates of our guests have evolved and they have come to expect, not only a variety of choices, but cuisine of the highest quality made with the freshest of ingredients," said Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, executive vice president-operations for Royal Caribbean. "In recent years, we have introduced many new specialty dining concepts and in this next evolution we are expanding the options in our main dining room with even more variety, allowing us to cater to our international guests while offering them the highest quality dining on land or at sea."

Menus will be revamped with more variety but still offer selections that are available every night, such as aged Manhattan steak, escargot bourguignon, shrimp cocktail and creme brulee. To incorporate more authentic international flavor for a growing global clientele, they have added fresh entrees like rack of lamb, surf-and-turf, premium beef sliders and daily entre dinner salads. New desserts like a hot blueberry peach crumble, carrot cake, and sticky bread-and-butter pudding will compliment the menu offerings.

Realizing the demand for heart-healthy, lactose-free and gluten-free options, Royal Caribbean teamed up with a registered and licensed dietitian and nutrician consultant to assess and improve the lines current gluten-free and lactose-free program, and also create and produce modern, delicious offerings for guests with dietary restrictions. One of those features are new menu icons, making vegetarian, low-calorie, gluten-free and lactose-free choices easy to identify. Also available will be fresh daily gluten-free bread, available on request in all venues, including specialty restaurants.

The presentation of their items was another important focus in this enhancement with comprehensive training including a sous chef certification program with the American Culinary Federation and a new waitstaff-training curriculum targeting the new menus, standards training, and allergen and dietary programs.

Royal Caribbean said in their announcement that they have continuously evolved the onboard dining experience over the last decade, with the most complete and innovative dining options on the high seas including introducing more than 20 new dining concepts onboard the Oasis-class ships such as Izumi Asian cuisine, Giovannis Table, Park Caf and The Cupcake Cupboard. These venues are being introduced to all the other ships in the fleet during an extensive revitalization program that will be conducted through 2014 and beyond.