Silk

Our first dinner on board the Quantum, and our first experience with their new "dynamic dining," was at Silk, the pan-Asian complimentary restaurant. Normally, we're not big fans of pan-Asian restaurants and prefer to go to restaurants for the cuisine the chefs actually specialize in, but we were hopeful about this one since the menu we saw online before the cruise sounded so good. We wanted to try everything.

It was the first night and the service from the start was not the best. It took a while to place our orders, since the waiter we got didn't seem to comprehend what having food allergies and intolerances meant. (For example, if someone says, "I can't eat x. What dishes should I avoid?" the answer is not to suggest to that person to eat one specific appetizer, unless that is the only dish on the entire menu that person can eat, which it was not. It took several tries to get an answer to that one.) Even though one significant feature of dynamic dining is that the menus don't change over the entire length of the cruise, and remain pretty much the same from cruise to cruise, the staff just seemed clueless about what their restaurant was serving, after a month of serving the same thing every day. It wasn't an auspicious beginning, but we were hoping that things would improve from there.

The first food we got to try at Silk was a basket of wonton chips that came with a sweet chili dipping sauce. These were good and a nice surprise since they weren't on the menu and we hadn't read about them before. They were deep fried, but a little different from some Chinese restaurants since they didn't have the big bubbles on them and were a bit less greasy. Normally, we would try to get multiple baskets of these (if we were at an a la carte restaurant on land), but we had tons of food coming and needed to save some space.

The appetizers at Silk are all served family style in the center of the table (other than the soups, which are more suited for a single person). We read about that before the cruise, so this was one restaurant where we definitely didn't want to share a table. In addition to any dietary restrictions, we knew we were going to order enough on the menu for our party of 4, and wanted to make sure everyone got to try everything. Who knows how sharing would go with complete strangers? Would there be enough for each person to have one? They didn't ask us to share a table during this dinner, so we never had to worry about that.

M's mom got the chicken egg drop soup, which came with scallions and crispy noodles. The "crispy noodles" were a little weird. They seemed like soggy wonton chips and didn't really add anything to the soup. M thinks they actually made the soup worse, since the texture seemed out of place in such a light and smooth soup, and they were completely flavorless after stewing for so long. Since the soups aren't really shared appetizers, we don't have much more to say on this one right now.

The other appetizers we got were:

Szechuan pork short ribs with tamarind glaze - A found these cooked to the point of being tough. There also wasn't much meat on the bones so it wasn't all that satisfying of a dish. The flavors were okay, but the poor cooking on the meat really ruined this. M wasn't really that interested in these, but tried a small bite of meat. She liked the sauce and the piece she got didn't seem too tough, but it was pretty small. There were also some scallions on the side here, which were nice.

Vietnamese tacos with steamed bun, pork belly, hoisin, and topped with fresh vegetables - We were excited for these. M loves tacos, so she figured this would be her no-brainer favorite appetizer. Wrong! The bun was sticky and hard to swallow, the pork belly was hard to bite and chew and had almost no meat to it, and the whole thing was relatively flavorless. If you're going to throw a big piece of fat in a taco with some garnishes, at least give it some flavor and make a bun that isn't going to stick to the roof of your mouth. We were so disappointed in these.

Thai fried chicken wings with sesame-peanut satay - A is a huge fan of wings, and he was looking forward to trying these. At the end of the day, they were just okay. The sauce came out nicely, but the wings were overly fried and ended up being more fried skin than meat. It was another disappointment in his eyes. M isn't a huge wings person, but picked the meat out of one of them. She liked the sauce, although it didn't taste too much like satay sauces that she'd had before.

Green papaya salad with pea shoots, coriander, peanuts - This was the most bizarre dish of the night for us. We've had plenty of green papaya salads at Thai restaurants and what arrived was most definitely not a green papaya salad. For starters, the papaya was orange and not green. We've never gotten a papaya salad in a Thai restaurant with orange papaya and we've been to plenty of authentic Thai restaurants around the country. They mentioned pea shoots but we thought we saw arugula, in addition to the cilantro, peanuts, red peppers, and grape tomatoes. It just seemed like a light Asian-style salad with (orange) papaya. Judged on that level, this was actually one of the better appetizers and M's favorite.

Shrimp shumai with lemon ponzu - These reminded us of the shu mai you can buy at an Asian grocery store in the frozen section and then steam at home. They had thin skins and a kind of mushy inside (in the best way) like a shrimp paste. We liked these and they had nice flavor. It's just sad that one of the better appetizers was something we could find in our local grocery store freezers.

For the entrees, M's dad got the Asian style duck, which came with wok-seared vegetables, scallion pancakes, and hoisin sauce. We didn't try the duck or the vegetables, but M's dad offered M some of the scallion pancake. She didn't know this was supposed to be a scallion pancake (until re-reading the menu for this post) and had assumed it was some sort of greasy roti. It was really thin and floppy and full of oil and grease. It also had no flavor. M isn't sure how this could be considered a scallion pancake in anyone's book. Were there even any scallions in it?

A got the chicken tikka masala, which was accompanied by coconut jasmine rice with mango chutney. A was really excited about this dish when he saw it on the menu online as he figured that, since the ship came from England, the Indian cuisine might actually be pretty solid. This definitely didn't disappoint. The chicken was a touch on the salty side, but the overall flavor was really nice. It had a subtle heat to the sauce, and the chicken wasn't too dry. The mango chutney was really sweet, but when paired with the chicken in small doses it all mellowed out nicely. The rice was really the star of the show. It had a really nice and soft coconut flavor to it, and the mild sweetness made it really tasty. M really liked this dish too and had a bit of buyer's (orderer's?) remorse, since this was so much better than hers.

M and her mom both got the sake-glazed salmon which came with bok choy and tamari-marinated shiitake. After trying the salmon and the vegetables, M thought it was pretty good, but that there was something missing. She tried some of A's coconut rice (since we share and try everything), and that was it - rice! She immediately flagged down the waiter to get a bowl of the coconut rice, which definitely rounded out the salmon dish a bit more. The rice was also the best thing she ate all night. As for the parts of the dish actually on the menu, the salmon was pretty good and not too dry (except a few spots). The pieces of bok choy were a little big, but fine. The mushrooms were marinated in tamari, but tasted a little more sour than we had expected from that. The rice definitely improved all of this, so if Royal Caribbean is reading this, I'd suggest adding some rice to this dish to balance it out better.

There were 5 desserts on the menu, but between all of us, we only tried 2 (and M's mom got a dairy-free sorbet). A got the Indian pudding which had pistachio and rose infusions. A knew he wanted to get this as soon as he read the menu. Rose and pistachio are two really wonderful flavors, and it really seemed like they would go well together. The weird fried wonton shaving things really confused A when he first saw it come out, and when he tried one on its own, he only tasted fried/oil. He took them off, and opted to eat the pudding on its own. Yet again A found himself disappointed. The whole pudding tasted heavily of chemicals and had none of the aromatic or perfume-like flavor of rose. There were some pistachio bits that added some texture but not much flavor. M tried a bit of this but did not like it at all. To her, it tasted artificial as well. M was also confused by the fried wonton slivers on top. They didn't add much except an odd texture, and she thought the pudding could have been much better if they were replaced with some shredded coconut or something like that.

M and her dad both got the strawberry matcha pound cake which came with yuzu sorbet (the one M's mom also got). The presentation of this was really nice with cubes of green and red and small scoop of sorbet on the side. (As a side note, M really liked the design of the non-white dishes at Silk, even though that matters not at all to the experience.)

For whatever reason, M thought this dessert was going to be strawberry and matcha mixed together in a pound cake with sorbet on the side. It wasn't. It was matcha pound cake with similarly sized cubes of strawberry mousse. The matcha cake was fine, but the strawberry mousse was too heavy and there was so much of it. M couldn't finish it, since it was too rich. Thank goodness for the light and tasty yuzu sorbet. Once M finished as much of the dessert as she was going to, she was pretty sure that she was going to pass out in a food coma before the show that night (and she did). Although she was glad she tried this to satisfy her curiosity, she had no interest in getting it again.

A didn't try much of this dessert, but thought the matcha pound cake wasn't that bad. It had a very light matcha flavor to it, but overall it was okay. The mousse, as M mentioned, was really rich and heavy. M ate most of the yuzu sorbet already (as it was the one part she actually liked), but A was able to at least get a small spoon of it.

When we left Silk to get ready for our show that night (Mamma Mia!), we saw large crowds of people gathered around the check-in desks, like we did most of the first few nights (and some others). Some were making reservations, some were trying to go in with reservations, and some had no reservations and wanted to walk in for dinner. There weren't any separate lines, and honestly it was a bit of a mess. We've heard that they've since changed this and tried to make lines for each function on later sailings, which would be an improvement on the chaos.

We weren't that thrilled by our dinner at Silk and weren't that excited that we had another Silk dinner in our future (since we had booked all the restaurants twice). There were all the issues with ordering because of food allergies and dietary restrictions, on top of the fact that our waiter seemed completely clueless. (We'll be writing up our overall assessments of dynamic dining and our cruise experience once we finish the restaurants, and we're sure we'll be expanding on some of this then. Hopefully that will be before Quantum leaves Cape Liberty for China!) We weren't expecting perfection, but we were expecting better than what we got. 

On top of the service issues, the food was overall less than mediocre. The only dishes that we would consider good and worthy of another order were probably the papaya salad, shu mai, chicken tikka masala (especially the rice), the wonton chips (for M), and maybe the salmon (but only with the coconut rice). Considering our group tried 6/8 appetizers, 3/7 entrees, and 2/5 desserts in a single meal (60% of the savory menu!) and we didn't come up with much more than that, that's a bit sad. It was another reason we weren't looking forward to our second dinner very much, although we hoped maybe these were just first night issues (sounds a lot like our previous Windjammer review) and that it would be better in the future. Either way, we were excited to get out of there and head over to the Royal Theater for a great show!