Quantum of the Seas is the newest ship in the Royal Caribbean fleet. One of the big changes that RC made when it came to the Quantum class of ships was to implement a new dining concept called Dynamic Dining, supposedly to appeal to millennials and other younger cruisers who aren't interested in traditional dining rooms found on cruise ships. Dynamic Dining breaks up the huge dining room into 4 separate "restaurant" venues, each focused on a different type of cuisine with menus that are fixed for the length of the cruise. Essentially it would be like being in a resort or town on land with 4 restaurants that you could visit. I'm not sure why this is supposed to be a "younger" thing but we weren't opposed to it in principle like some people were. It was different but different isn't always bad.
The world's first smartship... was sometimes not very smart
The four "complimentary" restaurant venues (not really free since they are part of the cruise fare, but no extra charges) were Silk (serving Asian food), American Icon Grill (focused on American classics), Chic ("contemporary" cuisine), and The Grande (the one restaurant on board that required formal dress). All 4 served dinner, but only American Icon also served breakfast and lunch.
If you were super special and had a suite of a certain level or were a Pinnacle member (the highest level in Royal's loyalty program), you also got complimentary access to Coastal Kitchen. The fact that the Coastal Kitchen venue was so limited really irked us, since its "Mediterranean meets California" menu sounded the best out of all the dining rooms and there was no way the 2 of us were going to pay for a giant suite just to get access. That meant we would never get to try it, which was disappointing.
One of the central areas on the ship near the (pay) Izumi Japanese restaurant
In addition to the complimentary restaurants, there were also a bunch of pay restaurants. Some had a cover charge (pay a set fee and then order as much as you want) and others were a la carte. We were celebrating a special occasion on the cruise, so we did do one of the "specialty" restaurants, but otherwise we had no interest in forking over more money to get more variety in our restaurant choices. We were paying enough money for the cruise, so why would we pay for all of our meals on top of that?
The pay venues included Jamie's Italian (Italian from Jamie Oliver, the one specialty restaurant we did go to), Izumi (Japanese), Wonderland Imaginative Cuisine (modernist), Chops Grille (steakhouse), and Devinly Decadence (spa-type cuisine, which was thankfully free for breakfast). There was also some Chef's Table, a "private epicurean experience" (according to the website), which we skipped, but heard was just a special table in Chops Grille. In addition to Jamie's, Izumi looked pretty good and the menu for Devinly Decadence was mouthwatering, but we chose not to do any other pay restaurants on principle.
The beautifully eclectic dining room at Wonderland
On top of all the sit-down complimentary and specialty restaurants, there was also the (free) buffet, which Royal Caribbean calls the Windjammer Marketplace, open for every meal. They also had other more casual spots (usually without waiter service), which included Sorrento's (pizza, including made-to-order, free), Cafe Promenade (sandwiches and sweets, free), Johnny Rockets (the same as the chain outside, pay), Seaplex Dog House (hot dogs and sausages, free), The Cafe at Two70 (sandwiches, salads, soups, free), La Patisserie (desserts and Starbucks coffee, pay), and Michael's Genuine Pub (bar snacks and beer (but perplexingly no sports on the TV), pay). Sounds like a ton of options, but somehow after 12 days, it didn't really feel like it.
Our room TV with its interactive message center and calendar ... which broke one very frustrating night
Since this was supposed to be a new "smart ship," there was an emphasis on technology all over the ship, and that included electronic reservations for dinners onboard. Reservations absurdly opened many months before the cruise and quickly disappeared as people kept booking, which annoyed us because how were we supposed to know what we wanted to eat on any given night 6 months in advance? In any event, we did make reservations for all our dinners except 2 before we went, and made those others onboard during the cruise (with some difficulty, unlike some people who claim to have gone on with no reservations and had no problems - we were not so lucky). The technology wasn't without its glitches generally. Reservations vanished before the cruise multiple times, which was extremely frustrating after all the time A spent making them and dealing with their crappy interface. We showed up in places where we had reservations and were told we didn't. But as aggravating as their IT was, I guess it could have been worse.
Our goal on the trip was to try every free venue at least once, and we did succeed at that. Since (a) our cruise went for 12 days, (b) the only meals we ate off-ship were 1 dinner and 4 lunches, and (c) we were avoiding pay venues except for 1 dinner, that meant a lot of venues got repeated over the course of our cruise. For that reason, it seems to make sense to group all of our visits to each venue together. We prefer recapping our trips in chronological order so we'll sort of do that but also include any subsequent visits to each restaurant in those posts, since we did repeat several dishes. Now that we've gotten all the details out of the way, we can start talking about the food!
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