An American Breakfast

On the first of our return sea days, we decided to go for a leisurely sit-down breakfast at American Icon Grill, the only non-buffet breakfast location on the ship. It was pretty crowded since it seemed most people had the same idea. On most cruises we've been on, we've usually gone for the sit-down breakfast most days, with this cruise being the exception, so we were excited to try what sounded like a good menu.

To start with, we both got cereal with sliced banana and milk. M got Cheerios and A got frosted flakes. M had thought about getting the "Seattle granola with seasonal fruit salad topped with natural yogurt," but when the server said the seasonal fruit was predominantly melon, she passed.

M chose the Southwest huevos rancheros for her breakfast entree, which was described on the menu as "fried eggs, tomatoes, avocado, jalapeños, sour cream, and salsa picante." M was expecting those ingredients to be combined into something resembling every huevos rancheros plate she'd seen before and even made at home, but what arrived was exactly what the description said. Slices of tomatoes, avocado (3 pieces), and jalapeños with a dollop of sour cream, a drizzled circle of salsa, and some fried eggs on top. This was the strangest version of huevos rancheros she had ever seen. Probably should have been called fried eggs with vegetables instead. It wasn't great and she wouldn't get this again.

A got the eggs benedict, toasted English muffins with country ham, hollandaise sauce, and poached eggs. He found this odd. The hollandaise sauce was foamy, thick, and congealed, and not an actual sauce. The ham had no flavor. We had read a lot of message board posts prior to our cruise to get a feel for what people thought, and one thing that kept coming up was people complaining about the lack of eggs benedict on the menu. They would go on and on about how it was a staple of cruise breakfasts and that the Royal Caribbean version was so good. After having ordered and tasted this, A was confused as to what people were complaining about with it not being on the menu and also why they thought it was good. This was easily one of, if not the, worst eggs benedict he had ever eaten.

We didn't particularly like our breakfast at American Icon and had no plans to return on any other sea day. We thought it would be pretty easy to get a good meal with standard breakfast stuff like huevos rancheros and eggs benedict, but we were wrong. Maybe we should have picked the "bodega breakfast" (bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich) or the old bagel and lox standby, and it would have been better, but no guarantee.