Celebrity Beyond: How does the food compare?
This last fall, our family went on our first Celebrity cruise. Until now, if we were cruising with the kids, we would exclusively be cruising with Royal Caribbean. One area that we were especially curious about comparing was the food. With Celebrity typically being marketed as a more elevated experience, we were curious how we would feel about what was being offered. Many people feel that Royal Caribbean’s food quality has diminished since the pandemic. My parents who have cruised on Celebrity before but not since the pandemic stated that they felt the complimentary food options and quality of food on board Celebrity were superior to those of Royal Caribbean. We were wondering if that was still true.
Like Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Beyond has a decently sized buffet with a good selection of offerings. Each day they had a different focus, such as Italian, Mediterranean or British. The food was always good, warm and tasted fresh. And, we found their pizza place in the back of the buffet. The pizza tasted slightly better and seemed fresher than what you might find at Sorrento’s. We do prefer the location, however, of the pizza place on Royal Caribbean where it is more centrally placed. Another area where we had lunch some days was the burger and hotdog place that was located on the pool deck between the Solarium and the main pool. While this was a nice alternative to the busy buffet, the food was okay. We had dinner in their main dining room most nights and we found the service and quality of food to be comparable to our experiences on Royal Caribbean. Perhaps some of the menu options were more upscale, but the escargot, for example, was just as tasty as we had experienced on Royal’s ships, not that we were complaining about that. If Celebrity has an edge over Royal Caribbean when it comes to complimentary food options, it is due to the fact that a Royal Caribbean cruise could have at least twice as many sailors as a Celebrity cruise. The smaller number of sailor simply allows for a more intimate experience.
We also ate in two of the specialty restaurants. We were disappointed to find that there was no Italian specialty restaurant on the Celebrity Beyond, but they definitely had some other unique options that we hope to try on future cruises. We ate lunch at their steak house as a way to celebrate our son’s 15th birthday. He got the lobster, which he really enjoyed. Most of us got steaks, which we all agreed were very tasty. Our younger son struggled to find something to eat as he doesn’t eat steak and there was no real kids menu. We all thought it was good but no better than the experience at Chops on Royal Caribbean. Chris and I had dinner at Raw On 5, their sushi restaurant, and had a really nice time. The food was really good and the ambiance and service made for an excellent evening (could have had something to do with the fact that we were away from our kiddos). Once again, we really liked the sushi restaurant, but we didn’t find any major pros over the sushi restaurant on board Royal Caribbean ships.
Regarding food, we found it surprisingly very comparable to Royal Caribbean. We only wish that Celebrity would have a few more kid friendly food options. We couldn’t find a single chicken tender on board the ship, which is, we feel, unusual. I really thought that Celebrity’s food would stand out more than it did. We do have our next Celebrity cruise booked and hope to try more of the specialty restaurants on that cruise. All in all, the food was good and we found no real “need” to pay for the specialty dining. We definitely found, however, that we prefer the food on Virgin Voyages over Royal Caribbean or Celebrity. Really, everything is better on Virgin ships but you gotta cruise with your kids sometimes, right?!
