One of the concerns we’ve seen people mention about cruising with MSCMediterranean shipping company The world’s largest privately held shipping company. MSC have both cruise and shipping operations. is dining, including the quality of the food and the overall dining experience. You may have heard similar concerns and wonder if they are valid in 2023. This was our experience on a 7-night cruise onboard MSC Virtuosa in March this year.
Our cruise visited Rotterdam, Brugge, Hamburg and Le Havre, and we travelled in an Aurea deluxe balcony. That Aurea experience may have impacted the overall dining experience. However, it didn’t change our menu in the various dining venues on board.
Dining experience
For breakfast and lunch when Minuetto was the only main dining roomMain Dining Room MDR refers to the main dining venue or venues on board a ship. This is usually the large complimentary or included dining room or rooms on a ship. (MDRMain Dining Room MDR refers to the main dining venue or venues on board a ship. This is usually the large complimentary or included dining room or rooms on a ship.) open. Upon arrival, a server would welcome you and inquire about your language preference and the number of guests in your party. A server escorts you to a table and provides you with a paper menu. Another would ask if you wanted water or any drinks. Once you have looked over the menu, then someone will come to take your order. Food and drink service was usually pretty fast without a long wait.
In the evening, a server would welcome you and escort you directly to your assigned table, which remained the same each night. If you were an Aurea guest, the Maître dMaître d’hôtel The Maître d’hôtel, which is “Master of the house” in French. Normally shortened to Maître d. They are also known as the head waiter. This is the person in charge of the “front of house” of a formal restaurant. They are normally who you would talk with regarding any special requests around seating or dietary requirements in advance of being seated. You will normally find them at the front desk on entering a venue.’ would greet you instead and provide the waiter with your table number. We had a lovely window table in the Aurea section each evening we dined in the MDR.
Rushed dining and table spacing
Before our trip, we read comments about the rushed dining experience. Other comments noted that the tables in the main dining room were uncomfortably close. This is undoubtedly an area that the Aurea experience would have impacted. During our cruise, the MDR had two seatings in the evening. The first was at 17:30 ship time, and the second was at 19:45 in the Minuetto dining room. If your assigned MDR was Opera or Symphony, it was 18:00 and 20:30. If you had Aurea, my choice dining, you could arrive in Minuetto any time from 17:30 to 20:45.
Looking at those sitting times, you can see there was about 2 hours available to eat dinner. After that 2 hours, the team needed to prepare the dining room for the second sitting. You may have felt rushed if you typically take longer than 2 hours for dinner. As for table spacing, sometimes it did feel like you were sitting on top of other guests, even if you had a two-seat table. You can see how close they were in this photo from a lunchtime where the Aurea “my choice dining” does not apply.
Aurea dining room
Aurea cruisers typically have their dining room in Il Campo or a dedicated section in another MDR. For our cruise, it was a section of the Minuetto dining room reserved for Aurea guests. Due to “my choice dining”, we never felt rushed in that area, and the spacing between tables seemed more generous. Plus-sized cruisers may still want to check in with the Maître d to ensure your table is not too close to the table behind if you need a bit more space. One evening, a waiter serenaded us, passing around the tables and asking if there were any requests.
Food choice
Another area that has concerned people is the variety of food choices available. I’ll share some sample menus and meals we had in the MDR in a gallery. We have sailed with Princess Cruises several times and hold platinum status, so we often compare the two lines. Whilst the menu options at breakfast were plentiful on MSC, the dinner menu felt limited compared to Princess. We struggled to find something we fancied on the MDR menu a couple of times. We would use a different venue on those evenings, either the buffet or Masters of the sea.
This guide relates specifically to the MDR, not the Yacht club, which has a slightly different menu. If you are interested in the Yacht Club menu, stay tuned as we’re cruising YC in May. We didn’t see lobster or a rump/rib-eye/sirloin steak in the MDR on the evening menu, although I tried an upsell €18 T-bone steak option one evening. The meat was lovely, but the roast potatoes accompanying it were not very good. I could have asked for fries instead of the roasties, but we wanted to experience the menu as written, so you didn’t have to.
Gala night
The gala evening dinner, where you would usually see a lobster tail and similar premium dishes on Princess, was less inspiring on MSC. Tracy went with the Porcini mushroom risotto, and I went with the classic roast, duck a l’orange. The risotto was nice, and the duck, not so much as the duck and croquettes, was quite dry. I had a nice cheese plate to follow. Considering this was the gala or formal night, it didn’t feel that step up that a gala dinner normally would.
Breakfast
The breakfast menu felt quite comprehensive, and I didn’t notice any changes from one day to the next. My usual choices were the eggs benedict, a full breakfast or cold cuts. Tracy also tried the eggs florentine one morning. Breakfast food was always lovely and served both quickly and hot. The drinks were a different story. Drip coffee varied between ridiculously weak, looking like milk in the cup with hardly any colour. Or if you were unlucky enough to get the dregs of the jug ludicrously strong with a side helping of coffee dust at the bottom of your cup. I asked for a cappuccino instead of coffee which was always lovely if a little cold occasionally.
Any discussion of breakfast would not be complete without mentioning the juice. It was nice to see grapefruit juice listed. It is usually missed off the menu on Princess but has always been available when I’ve asked. On MSC, we both tried juice one morning, and it was enough to put us off it for the rest of the cruise. On Princess, the juice always seemed like proper fruit juice; however, it tasted more like squash on MSC. I’m not sure if it had been over-diluted or if there was a problem with the batch we were given, but it was unpleasant. It tasted more like a fake chemical grapefruit than fresh fruit. It may have been a one-off, but it took us half the day to shift the flavour from our mouths.
Lunch
When it came to lunch, there were usually a couple of salad choices, a burger or sandwich, sometimes a curry, and desserts. Each menu usually featured at least one vegan and a couple of vegetarian options. Some dishes we tried included the burger, a matured Cheddar cheese with piccalilli sandwich and some salads.
Dinner
The dinner menus could feel quite eclectic. You would usually always have a salad, pasta and a classic roast option. The always available selection included pasta, fish, chicken, beef or a curry. Each evening would feature a rotating choice of fresh bread rolls to accompany your meal.
The salads would often feature walnut prepared in one manner or another.
One evening I asked for the steak Diane. Unfortunately, it was overcooked, very tough and dry. Whilst the waiter offered to swap it, we didn’t fancy anything else on the menu by that point, so we left and had a burger in Masters of the sea instead.
Conclusion
There was usually something on the menu we fancied trying despite the sometimes limited selection. If not, there was always another venue or option available. We chose speciality dining at both Hola and Butchers’ cut.
The pub which did a cracking fish and chips, which was probably our favourite meal on the ship. They also did burgers and hotdogs.
The buffet is always another option, and has a broader selection of food. I’ll do another post covering other dining venues, as this post has already gone on too long.
I hope I’ve shown you a little of what the dining was like and what things are like in the MDR in 2023.
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