The Food on Our Virgin Voyages Resilient Lady Cruise

Here is a recap of what we ate on the ship. Being on the weight loss shot our appetites were not as big as previous cruises but we still managed to try a wide variety of the food offered on this ship.

There are no buffets on this ship and I’m not mad about it. They do have 24 hour breakfast and burgers. I love eggs and hash brown patties any time of day so if I was hungry late night I would have them fry me up some eggs.

Their fries are also delicious and always fresh. They are a thicker seasoned fry. Not a shoestring, not a wedge but perfectly girthy.

There is a variety of restaurants that are all included and a bunch of walk up eating options.

The Galley

This area houses the walk up all day breakfast, burger bar, bread / desserts, custom made salad bar and a rotating selection of foods. Beef Wellington, suckling pig, and other dishes that would change daily.

Pink Agave

Mexican restaurant: probably one of my favourite dining experiences. We ordered a bunch of shareables. Everything was really tasty, I really liked the corn soup that I actually didn’t take a photo of. We were sat next to a couple from Orillia (we met before on a tender) which definitely elevated our experience and made it a more social dinner. And then a lovely couple sat next to us from Austin, Texas and we enjoyed a brief convo with them also. my only criticism is that the bread pudding dessert didn’t live up to my standards of bread pudding … which can make or break a regular buffet.

Test Kitchen

This is a set menu restaurant that has three variations over the cruise. We had menu C which I’m assuming is the final menu of the week. I really enjoyed all the food, although I did swap out the eel for the eggplant. We were so full after but everything was really delicious. The favourite was the dessert and the chicken.

Gunbae

The Korean BBQ was a blast. The food was great and thankfully we were once again with two couples that were social and interesting. One of the couples actually live in Leslieville in Toronto. The other couple was from San Francisco. We had a lot of fun with everyone doing the drinking game to start. What is nice is that even though it is Korean BBQ, we didn’t have to cook anything. Our server did it all and brought us out a variety of food, all which was pretty delicious.

Extra Virgin

I mean, let’s first address that they really name their restaurants well to tie into the branding.

This was our last restaurant and we were nicely sat at a window seat.

We ordered a wide variety of appetizers because they all sounded so good! And i think my favourite was the chicken liver mousse. It was creamy and delicious. But everything else was really good. We had a charcuterie plate (Affetati Misti on the menu) which was nice but I really didn’t know what to do with it. It was missing some crackers or something to put the stuff on. We did have a basket of focaccia so maybe that was what it was for but we also don’t want to get filled up. I would skip that next time but everything else (including the mussels according to Brad) was delicious.

For the mains we each opted for a pasta dish, instead of ordering a meat dish. I had the carbonara and Brad had the Pappardelle al Ragu.

The Wake

The Wake is a “fine dining” steakhouse which is mainly for dinner but has brunch also on certain days.

This restaurant is the highlight for many people. Some people really enjoyed it and some people had off experiences. In my opinion, we are spoiled in Canada with the Keg. Keg steaks are always good and affordable so I wasn’t as blown away as some other sailors (they call us sailors on Virgin Voyages) were with the restaurant. The brunch was quite good, I had pork belly eggs Benedict and Brad had soft shell crab Benedict.

Lick Me Till… Ice Cream

I didn’t make that up, that is the name of the ice cream stand. I ate more ice cream on this vacation that I have ever had, but that is easy when the ice cream shop was open whenever we needed it.

Conclusion

My favourite bites were actually at the coffee house. The mini Walnut & Chocolate Banana bread was so delicious and perfect for a snack. I would grab one and a few macadamia chocolate cookies to have in the room for later. A fellow sailor who we had met on one of our tours suggested the almond croissant. She wasn’t wrong.

For restaurants, they were all good, with Extra Virgin edging out the others in my opinion. The Italian was consistently good from start to finish and nothing disappointed, and that Italian charcuterie was a choice.

I really enjoyed the dining format with restaurants included versus the dining room of other traditional cruises. The only downside could be the booking and getting a reservation when you want or if you have a larger group it could be more difficult to coordinate. It seems reservations become available during the day as people change their minds or if they can fit more people in. It’s also great that gratuities are included so when you are done you can just get up and go. Because you are working from a reservation your drinks (or menu upsells) are automatically charged so no need to wait to settle your tab.

Something else that I appreciate is the flexibility to show up in casual wear or more formal if that is your thing. Really anything goes when it comes to dining and it seems everyone comes at their own comfort level of dress and no one judges. Although I did laugh when a guy showed up to Test Kitchen with this shirt…