Right Back to the Windjammer

When it's time for breakfast on a cruise, we usually don't head for the buffet, but instead go to the main dining room. (Remember our trip on the Carnival Glory when we had breakfast in the dining room every single day except the last day because the buffet was all there was?) On those ships, you pretty much had 2 options - the buffet or the dining room - and one was peaceful and one was chaotic, so we always chose a calm start to the day. (Also, you're paying and auto-tipping for service, so why not go for waiter service when you can?) The Quantum was a little different. 

View from our room before breakfast on our first morning at sea

On Quantum, there were 4 free options for breakfast (we refuse to count Coastal Kitchen as we were not permitted access because we were not special enough), but the issue was that they weren't all open very late in the morning. On the first sea day, we're often still getting adjusted to the ship and being on vacation, and are a bit slow to get up and move around. The Windjammer was generally open until 11, but Devinly Decadence (the healthier buffet) and Cafe 270 (lighter breakfast sandwiches and stuff) closed up at 10:30 am (9:30 am for Devinly on port days), while American Icon Grill (the closest option to the old main dining room) ended at an astonishingly early 9:30. On top of that, American Icon can only fit a little over 10% of the cruise passengers at any given time (for the size of our sailing), so there isn't exactly as much space as the old dining rooms.

Needless to say, for our first Quantum breakfast, it was right back to the Windjammer, the same spot where we had ended our day less than 12 hours earlier. We were looking forward to seeing what they had though, since we had seen some pics on Instagram before the trip which made it look like there was a lot of variety and also maybe some Asian breakfast options. We love more interesting breakfast choices.

Our breakfast plates looked pretty good, but were a mixed bag in terms of quality. On M's plate (above), she got: 

- turkey sausage (terrible and could not finish it)

- pork sausage (good but was soaking in a vat of oil on the buffet line)

- corned beef hash (good, just like out of the can)

- baked beans (also like out of the can, but nothing special)

- sauteed spinach with onion (good)

- hash brown triangle (good and nicely fried)

- Indian spiced eggs (fine but expected more, as they were basically scrambled eggs with not much spice at all)

- scrambled eggs with baby shrimp (fine, but a bit bland)

- fried rice (average, rice was hard and kind of bland), and 

- an Asian-style pan-fried fish (pretty good flavor and not dry). 

The turkey sausage was really awful and there were a few mediocre items, but at least there were a bunch of legitimately good things to eat for breakfast on that plate.

A also got a large portion of corned beef hash to go with some hash brown triangles, one pork sausage, one turkey sausage, some sauteed spinach, the same Asian-style pan-fried fish M got, and what he thought was a biscuit with sausage gravy.

The corned beef hash was good, but it didn't have that nice crisp you can get off a griddle. The hash browns were nice, but they were nothing special. The pork sausage was oily, but that was because he got one of the last ones that was sitting in the dish full of grease. The turkey sausage was rather flavorless, and A regretted getting it. The spinach and fish were very tasty. The fish was flaky and tender, and the spinach was cooked nicely. The "biscuit" with sausage gravy was a disaster. A saw that the sign said scones, but he thought that maybe it was just a mislabeled item. Nope. There was no buttery biscuit covered in gravy; it was a dense, flavorless brick of starch. The sausage gravy also had no flavor whatsoever. In the end, that was an incredibly disappointing selection.

Overall, our breakfast at the Windjammer wasn't terrible, but we hoped we would be able to get up earlier on future mornings so we could try all the other options as well.