Has Luminae evolved?

We were suite guests on Equinox first cruise with Luminae properly open. We found the service outstanding but the menu limited.

Has Luminae now evolved? Has the menu changed or is it still the same?

We were suite guests on Equinox first cruise with Luminae properly open. We found the service outstanding but the menu limited.

 

Has Luminae now evolved? Has the menu changed or is it still the same?

Based on our knowledge, it's still the same. No local food based on port as it was promised during Luminae announcement

It's wonderful. I remember reading your comments when it first opened because we had the Thanksgiving cruise booked and so many of us were trying to find out everything we could about Luminae. It made our cruise, honestly. We had the same team no matter what time we ate or where we sat. We ate in there sometimes three times a day. On port days they weren't open for lunch but Bistro on Five was and we could eat there free.

It wasn't a big deal though because we were gone at lunch on port days, except one.

There were 14 menus. We ate in Tuscan twice with our free meals, but we saw the menu in Luminae and it was different.

Not a huge menu but always something we liked. The descriptions were not always helpful but our server was so good at completely describing what they were. We also customized several things.

My only compliant if it's that is they aren't huge on green vegetables and salad. No problem, I designed my own salads and they brought them perfectly. For lunch twice I wanted just plain mixed greens and they put on grilled chicken, Craisins, goat cheese, chopped pecans, parmesan croutons and a great vinaigrette dressing- not a menu item, just out of my head. We got broccoli and green beans whenever we wanted it, and sautéed spinach. They were absolutely GREAT about our meals.

As far as I know, they aren't using locally-sourced food, but we had no issues and we are looking forward to our next cruise and Luminae.

Did you try their Bourbon and Peaches signature cocktail? It's fabulous! Wish I knew how to make it. I asked and they just wouldn't tell me :-(

We were on Eclipse. Twice I filled out those cards during the cruise and mentioned great things about specific people by name. The day before the cruise ended the sommelier Maggie came to me and said that because of my comment she was given an extra shift off work. And Rakesh our server (best we've ever had, land or sea) was given some phone calls home.

OK now I've gotten really excited for our next cruise!

Weren't Rakesh and Maggie awesome? We loved Navena and Natalie as well. And they would take care of us even if we weren't in Luminae if they saw us. Just a lovely experience all the way around which is a huge reason why we booked again the same cruise/same ship.

We are just off our first Celebrity sailing and found Luminae an important reason why we booked another cruise on the Reflection. simply put, the Celebrity Reflection Luminae Team kicked it up a couple of notches. Great team work. It was wonderful to watch. If the Bridge works that well, safe sailing.

Fyi..you are free to order off the MDR menu w/no fuss. Awesome experience.

J

Thank you all for the replies. So glad there are opportunities to 'extend' the menu either by asking for some MDR items or personalising by adding salads etc.

We will definitely try the bourbon and peach cocktail!

What was the choice of wines like in Luminae, within or near to the premium package price? Any recommendations? I know stock does vary from ship to ship but ideas would be valued.

Glad you enjoyed my 'sweet, suite life' report last year, Claudia! I had great fun writing it!

ClaudiaB: I too really liked the Bourbon and Peaches and, like you, asked but did not receive the recipe. I noticed the Luminae drink menu specified "Makers Mark, Peaches, Simple and Lemon" and using that info, I did some searching. Came up with the following recipe...haven't tried it, but will this weekend:

Combine 4 parts bourbon, 1.5 parts each lemon juice and simple syrup, and one part peach schnapps. Shake well, strain into glass, and add 2 parts club soda.

A "part" in the recipe could be a tablespoon, a jigger, whatever. Kind of sounds like the Bourbon and Peaches in Luminae, and if not, it still sounds pretty good.

ClaudiaB: I too really liked the Bourbon and Peaches and, like you, asked but did not receive the recipe. I noticed the Luminae drink menu specified "Makers Mark, Peaches, Simple and Lemon" and using that info, I did some searching. Came up with the following recipe...haven't tried it, but will this weekend:

 

Combine 4 parts bourbon, 1.5 parts each lemon juice and simple syrup, and one part peach schnapps. Shake well, strain into glass, and add 2 parts club soda.

 

A "part" in the recipe could be a tablespoon, a jigger, whatever. Kind of sounds like the Bourbon and Peaches in Luminae, and if not, it still sounds pretty good.

Thanks! That was one amazing drink! Can't wait to try it!

Thank you all for the replies. So glad there are opportunities to 'extend' the menu either by asking for some MDR items or personalising by adding salads etc.

I can confirm that the menus are unchanged from when Luminae opened. I was the person who posted the scans of the menus from our cruise on Millennium which was the second cruise after the restaurant opened. I took these scans with us and checked each day that they were the same.

Often we found that there items on the menu we wanted to try that we had not noticed the first time round! What had changed occasionally was the balance/quantities - particularly where the original portions size was ridiculously large.

I still not believe that the menus are as limited as they at first seem. There was only one day when I could not immediately see anything that caught my eye. All I did was apologise for taking so long to decide and our waiter immediately went to get the MDR menu. As I chose something from the Everyday MDR Menu, I think it was more me on that day than the menus!

My husband it more difficult! He does want potatoes everyday! Virtually every day he ordered a main item from the Luminae menu but had it with fries and a tomato and onion salad. He also ordered the New York Strip more often than it appeared on the Luminae menu.

We also found that you could have other items from the Luminae menus on any day if you gave them notice [some things take longer to prepare such as pate].

We will definitely try the bourbon and peach cocktail!

I had read so much about this that I was really keen to try it but I was disappointed. Just not for me.

What was the choice of wines like in Luminae, within or near to the premium package price? Any recommendations? I know stock does vary from ship to ship but ideas would be valued.

Our wonderful sommelier worked wonders with us. We were able to order wines from elsewhere on the ship that were not sold by the glass "by the glass" on the premium beverage package provided we "bought" five glasses by paying the surcharge for five glasses when the bottles were opened. She then kept track of the bottles for us, advised us when we should be finishing a bottle because it had been opened too long, sent it to other restaurants for us, etc.

I have to stress that we did not "demand" this. We rather explained that we really wanted to drink certain wines and obviously would prefer to get the benefit of our premium beverage package and found the Luminae wine list not to our taste.

Maggie was, as I said, wonderful. We have never found the premium beverage package really work for us before. Obviously, we hope that this flexibility is the "norm" now in Luminae but realise that we may just have been lucky this time.

We are on the Silhouette at the moment, having spent the previous two weeks on the Eclipse all in Suites. We also did a cruise that gave us access to Luminae in September on the Eclipse. Menus are the same and the Eclipse presentation has remained constant.

We are finding that some of the dishes on the Silhouette, while described as the same dish, look totally different and the quantities have changed. I quite often have the smoked salmon at breakfast while my wife has cereal. On the Eclipse on both cruises it was a dainty dish with 3 small rolls of salmon on top of a small piece of bread. I ordered it this week and it was huge, there were two giant rolls of salmon with two slices rolled together.

On each cruise, the sommeliers do seem to have some latitude for wines out with the by the glass package which is quite refreshing to see.

Thanks for the comments. We will need to develop a good relationship with the Solstice Luminae sommelier!

We do plan to dine in all the speciality restaurants but do also want to try Luminae again! Our strategy last time was to look at the Luminae menu after breakfast then decide where to go in the evening...as we tend to dine quite early we never had a problem getting a table in any of the restaurants.

Perhaps if anyone has recently had a premium package and dined in Solstice Luminae they could reply about how flexible the sommelier was.

I'm resurrecting this year-old thread as I'm curious if Celebrity is sourcing any local food items (such as fish) in Luminae. We will be enjoying Luminae in the next few weeks along the Pacific Coast (San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, etc) where certainly fresh fish is available. In the link below, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo is quoted two years ago saying that "soon" locally-sourced items would be available.

By any chance has "soon" arrived yet?!? :-)

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=47042575&postcount=2

I'm resurrecting this year-old thread as I'm curious if Celebrity is sourcing any local food items (such as fish) in Luminae. We will be enjoying Luminae in the next few weeks along the Pacific Coast (San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, etc) where certainly fresh fish is available. In the link below, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo is quoted two years ago saying that "soon" locally-sourced items would be available.

 

By any chance has "soon" arrived yet?!? :-)

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=47042575&postcount=2

Not on Constellation last month. The weird thing was that there was LOTS of fresh fish available after our stop in Oman. In Ocean View only.

I was the original poster over a year ago. We found the menu in Luminae limited on our first cruise as it opened 2015. We cruise again March 2016. We are just off Eclipse and the menu is unchanged. You can choose from the MDR menu.

We booked our dining pre cruise with the on shore suite concierge. We were in the PH and a few days into the cruise we were asked why we were not using Luminae, especially in the evenings....I genuinely think they were worried they had offended us. We answered openly, and I hope objectively, and have no issues sharing our views here.

I will say we did use it for boarding lunch and a couple of breakfasts and we had no issues with the quality of food or service level which were, as we have always found it, excellent.

Breakfast......opens early, closes early....if we have a very early excursion on a port day we will choose croissants and coffee in the room. Sea days we don't want to rush for breakfast. We know we can order room service and take our time....We do enjoy eggs benedict from Luminae...would love to see it included in the suite breakfast menu but it is not enough to get me up and into Luminae on a leisure day.

Lunch.....port days it doesn't exist. Ironically on our last cruise this may have been when we would have used it. Sea days, we find the lunch menu heavy but have talked to servers and they have sorted us with a soup and salad...

Dinner...OK, I'll be honest. I know lots of you love the Luminae menu but it just isn't for us. We have honestly tried over three cruises and either I or my husband will have an ok meal but with such a limited menu choice one or the other of us will not see something we like or will compromise by ordering something from the MDR. Contrast this with Murano's and Tuscan where after an 8 day cruise there are still favourites we did not get round to....

We know we can choose from the MDR menu as well as Luminae's but why would we do that when we can dine in Murano's, Tuscan, Silk/Q'sine? I have never seen a waiter in Tuscan, Murano's, Silk or Q'sine offering an MDR menu....Could it be they already have adequate choices?

This is not intended to be a criticism of Luminae, I am glad so many enjoy. It just does not suit us. If it had not been my original post I would not have commented. It has not stopped us from booking future cruises. I do think it offers a menu, however, that is quite limited.

We have now experienced three Luminaes on three different ships. One right at the beginning, one a year ago and were literally off last week! Never seen a locally sourced item or a 'specials' board.

BEAV....please do not let my post put you off! We love our Celebrity cruises and have loads more booked. I am sure you will have an excellent time. As I said, loads of cruisers love Luminae (I am waiting for extensive criticisms of my comments now...). Also as stated above service is excellent. Just a limited choice and nothing fresh....

We had an amazing waiter in Luminae on Reflection. He would create items not on the menu for me. One evening I asked what he had for dinner the previous night and he said the crew have their own cooks and have their meals served to them... and he had curry with a plate of rice. I said that sounded good. He said he could have curry with rice for me for dinner. I said I wanted a meat and we agreed on chicken. I asked if they were bringing it down from Oceanview and he said no as they would cook it specially for me. The following night I had curry chicken with rice. Another night he said they had an item that he thought I would have liked but I did not show up. He asked the kitchen to hold that item for me for the following night. He also put in an order of gluten-free pasta on most nights because I liked my entrees with a bit of pasta.

Chemmo,

Thank you for your always informative posts!

No worries, your recent experiences don't put us off at all. Although I agree almost 100% with your own personal assessments, we still enjoyed Luminae last Fall (September) aboard Millie. While the menu is in fact limited, I'm an adventurous eater (!) and enjoy trying new and different items that we never have at home. However, my better half is not that adventurous, but learned to supplement the MDR menu at night with Luminae's offerings.

I was mainly curious if any locally-sourced items are now being brought on board as was promised two years ago. It sounds like that still hasn't happened, so I won't anticipate fresh-caught salmon or halibut while cruising up the Pacific coast! We will manage and survive!

I was the original poster over a year ago. We found the menu in Luminae limited on our first cruise as it opened 2015. We cruise again March 2016. We are just off Eclipse and the menu is unchanged. You can choose from the MDR menu.

 

We booked our dining pre cruise with the on shore suite concierge. We were in the PH and a few days into the cruise we were asked why we were not using Luminae, especially in the evenings....I genuinely think they were worried they had offended us. We answered openly, and I hope objectively, and have no issues sharing our views here.

 

I will say we did use it for boarding lunch and a couple of breakfasts and we had no issues with the quality of food or service level which were, as we have always found it, excellent.

 

Breakfast......opens early, closes early....if we have a very early excursion on a port day we will choose croissants and coffee in the room. Sea days we don't want to rush for breakfast. We know we can order room service and take our time....We do enjoy eggs benedict from Luminae...would love to see it included in the suite breakfast menu but it is not enough to get me up and into Luminae on a leisure day.

 

Lunch.....port days it doesn't exist. Ironically on our last cruise this may have been when we would have used it. Sea days, we find the lunch menu heavy but have talked to servers and they have sorted us with a soup and salad...

 

Dinner...OK, I'll be honest. I know lots of you love the Luminae menu but it just isn't for us. We have honestly tried over three cruises and either I or my husband will have an ok meal but with such a limited menu choice one or the other of us will not see something we like or will compromise by ordering something from the MDR. Contrast this with Murano's and Tuscan where after an 8 day cruise there are still favourites we did not get round to....

 

We know we can choose from the MDR menu as well as Luminae's but why would we do that when we can dine in Murano's, Tuscan, Silk/Q'sine? I have never seen a waiter in Tuscan, Murano's, Silk or Q'sine offering an MDR menu....Could it be they already have adequate choices?

 

This is not intended to be a criticism of Luminae, I am glad so many enjoy. It just does not suit us. If it had not been my original post I would not have commented. It has not stopped us from booking future cruises. I do think it offers a menu, however, that is quite limited.

 

We have now experienced three Luminaes on three different ships. One right at the beginning, one a year ago and were literally off last week! Never seen a locally sourced item or a 'specials' board.

 

BEAV....please do not let my post put you off! We love our Celebrity cruises and have loads more booked. I am sure you will have an excellent time. As I said, loads of cruisers love Luminae (I am waiting for extensive criticisms of my comments now...). Also as stated above service is excellent. Just a limited choice and nothing fresh....

Which ship were you on? We experienced Luminae twice on Eclipse over the past 2 years and it was amazing in both service and food. Just got off Constellation and there was a drastic difference. Service was uneven; most of the staff appeared to be new to Luminae and often seemed unsure of themselves. The food was the big disappointment

though in both presentation and quality. We had just had many of the same dishes in January on Eclipse so they were fresh in our memory. I have been raving about Luminae and could not understand the criticisms people lobbed against it but after this Constellation cruise I can totally see why people would be unimpressed. We actually ate at Oceanview on a few nights as we just didn't want to go to Luminae. This never happened to us on Eclipse. This is not acceptable with the prices Celebrity is charging for suites now. Luminae should be consistent in quality and service across the entire fleet.

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We only ate twice in Luminae during our February cruise on Reflection...embarkation lunch and one dinner. It's not that we don't enjoy the food and service, but we are very early risers and the breakfast hours don't work for us, we normally don't eat a large lunch and the one evening we went for dinner, we ended up ordering from the MDR menu. Don't get me wrong, it's a great venue but not a must do for us. Now the LCG and Porch lunches are a different story and when we had our lunch there, we wound up cancelling our dinner reservations because we were still full from lunch!

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My wife and I were on the recent Norwegian fjord cruise on the Eclipse. This was our first time eating in Luminae, so we can't comment on whether Luminae has evolved. But for what it's worth, we thought Luminae was wonderful. The food was excellent and the service could not have been better. Because of our Luminae experience, I don't think we would book another cruise unless we were able to eat in Luminae. We have eaten in specialty restaurants and we had onboard credit to use, but we decided to eat all of our dinners in Luminae. One night we ordered a few appetizers off of the main menu, but after that stayed with the varied and often interesting Luminae menu. I don't know whether Luminae has evolved, but if it has evolved it has evolved in a good way.

Which ship were you on? We experienced Luminae twice on Eclipse over the past 2 years and it was amazing in both service and food. Just got off Constellation and there was a drastic difference. Service was uneven; most of the staff appeared to be new to Luminae and often seemed unsure of themselves. The food was the big disappointment

though in both presentation and quality. We had just had many of the same dishes in January on Eclipse so they were fresh in our memory. I have been raving about Luminae and could not understand the criticisms people lobbed against it but after this Constellation cruise I can totally see why people would be unimpressed. We actually ate at Oceanview on a few nights as we just didn't want to go to Luminae. This never happened to us on Eclipse. This is not acceptable with the prices Celebrity is charging for suites now. Luminae should be consistent in quality and service across the entire fleet.

 

 

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We were on Eclipse. As I said we had no issues with the service at all or the food quality (on the odd occasion we dined there). We just find the menu too narrow for our liking...

I'm resurrecting this year-old thread as I'm curious if Celebrity is sourcing any local food items (such as fish) in Luminae. We will be enjoying Luminae in the next few weeks along the Pacific Coast (San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, etc) where certainly fresh fish is available. In the link below, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo is quoted two years ago saying that "soon" locally-sourced items would be available.

 

By any chance has "soon" arrived yet?!? :-)

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=47042575&postcount=2

On May 2nd we left the Infinity after spending 30 nights onboard in a suite, and we could not identify any locally sourced food items offered in Luminae. We have experienced Luminae on three ships (Equinox, Solstice and Infinity), and on this last B2B there were several menu items offered at dinner that I didn't recall from our experiences on the Equinox or Solstice.

We spent 32 nights on the Solstice last fall, also in a suite for both legs of the B2B, and again no locally sourced food items were offered in Luminae. The second leg was from Sydney to Singapore. We have done cruises out of Sydney on Celebrity, and on a South Pacific cruise in 2014 kangaroo was offered in the Oceanview, at least for lunch.

While on the Infinity we were told that the Luminae lunch menu will be expanded from three rotating menus to 5 (or was it 6?) menus. They weren't available while we were onboard.

My wife and I were on the recent Norwegian fjord cruise on the Eclipse. This was our first time eating in Luminae, so we can't comment on whether Luminae has evolved. But for what it's worth, we thought Luminae was wonderful. The food was excellent and the service could not have been better. Because of our Luminae experience, I don't think we would book another cruise unless we were able to eat in Luminae. We have eaten in specialty restaurants and we had onboard credit to use, but we decided to eat all of our dinners in Luminae. One night we ordered a few appetizers off of the main menu, but after that stayed with the varied and often interesting Luminae menu. I don't know whether Luminae has evolved, but if it has evolved it has evolved in a good way.

We were on the same cruise! Which only goes to show each of us has different tastes....Some love Luminae! Just not me....

Just off Millennium and there were no extras/local dishes.

Agree with the comments that the service and food quality are good, but the limited choices are disappointing.

I was the original poster over a year ago. We found the menu in Luminae limited on our first cruise as it opened 2015. We cruise again March 2016. We are just off Eclipse and the menu is unchanged. You can choose from the MDR menu.

 

We booked our dining pre cruise with the on shore suite concierge. We were in the PH and a few days into the cruise we were asked why we were not using Luminae, especially in the evenings....I genuinely think they were worried they had offended us. We answered openly, and I hope objectively, and have no issues sharing our views here.

 

I will say we did use it for boarding lunch and a couple of breakfasts and we had no issues with the quality of food or service level which were, as we have always found it, excellent.

 

Breakfast......opens early, closes early....if we have a very early excursion on a port day we will choose croissants and coffee in the room. Sea days we don't want to rush for breakfast. We know we can order room service and take our time....We do enjoy eggs benedict from Luminae...would love to see it included in the suite breakfast menu but it is not enough to get me up and into Luminae on a leisure day.

 

Lunch.....port days it doesn't exist. Ironically on our last cruise this may have been when we would have used it. Sea days, we find the lunch menu heavy but have talked to servers and they have sorted us with a soup and salad...

 

Dinner...OK, I'll be honest. I know lots of you love the Luminae menu but it just isn't for us. We have honestly tried over three cruises and either I or my husband will have an ok meal but with such a limited menu choice one or the other of us will not see something we like or will compromise by ordering something from the MDR. Contrast this with Murano's and Tuscan where after an 8 day cruise there are still favourites we did not get round to....

 

We know we can choose from the MDR menu as well as Luminae's but why would we do that when we can dine in Murano's, Tuscan, Silk/Q'sine? I have never seen a waiter in Tuscan, Murano's, Silk or Q'sine offering an MDR menu....Could it be they already have adequate choices?

 

This is not intended to be a criticism of Luminae, I am glad so many enjoy. It just does not suit us. If it had not been my original post I would not have commented. It has not stopped us from booking future cruises. I do think it offers a menu, however, that is quite limited.

 

We have now experienced three Luminaes on three different ships. One right at the beginning, one a year ago and were literally off last week! Never seen a locally sourced item or a 'specials' board.

 

BEAV....please do not let my post put you off! We love our Celebrity cruises and have loads more booked. I am sure you will have an excellent time. As I said, loads of cruisers love Luminae (I am waiting for extensive criticisms of my comments now...). Also as stated above service is excellent. Just a limited choice and nothing fresh....

This is about the only area we disagree. Having eaten solely in the specialty restaurant sine 2009, we probably would have stopped cruising if Luminae had not been introduced. Whatever the supposed menu changes over the years, basically they are still serving the same food. Since its introduction, we have eaten dinner primarily in Luminae. For many, many reasons (most not to do with the food) we prefer to have breakfast and lunch elsewhere.

We have tried the specialty restaurants since but, except for Silk Harvest, have been greatly disappointed. We may have been unlucky (every time???) but both the service and the food have not been up to par (even/especially when we have eaten there at an officer's table). We have eaten two very enjoyable meals in Silk Harvest on the only cruise it has been available to us.

IMHO, I find the Luminae menu well balanced with great variety and many favourites although each ship we have been on seems to interpret the menu differently. My husband is getting more and more difficult to please as he gets older and is not so in love with the menu (as he gets older he really would be happy only eating the food he cooks himself and compares every restaurant meal to that standard on board and on shore) but they humour him and bring him what he wants each day.

As for bringing on local fish - it is not something that would interest me. As a granddaughter, great granddaughter and great, great granddaughter of fish porters and fish merchants, fish, especially local fish, is for when you cannot afford to eat anything else. If Celebrity have stopped the Chef's Market Discoveries buying local food to serve on board do to some US food regulations, I cannot see local produce being used for much higher numbers in Luminae.

(Just don't get me started on why we have to follow US food regulations on board a ship not registered in the USA, with the majority of the crew not from the USA and increasing numbers of passengers not from the USA when there is much to argue with about the US food regulations. Every time I eat meat on board I remind myself I am eating growth hormones...)

This is about the only area we disagree. Having eaten solely in the specialty restaurant sine 2009, we probably would have stopped cruising if Luminae had not been introduced. Whatever the supposed menu changes over the years, basically they are still serving the same food. Since its introduction, we have eaten dinner primarily in Luminae. For many, many reasons (most not to do with the food) we prefer to have breakfast and lunch elsewhere.

 

We have tried the specialty restaurants since but, except for Silk Harvest, have been greatly disappointed. We may have been unlucky (every time???) but both the service and the food have not been up to par (even/especially when we have eaten there at an officer's table). We have eaten two very enjoyable meals in Silk Harvest on the only cruise it has been available to us.

 

IMHO, I find the Luminae menu well balanced with great variety and many favourites although each ship we have been on seems to interpret the menu differently. My husband is getting more and more difficult to please as he gets older and is not so in love with the menu (as he gets older he really would be happy only eating the food he cooks himself and compares every restaurant meal to that standard on board and on shore) but they humour him and bring him what he wants each day.

 

As for bringing on local fish - it is not something that would interest me. As a granddaughter, great granddaughter and great, great granddaughter of fish porters and fish merchants, fish, especially local fish, is for when you cannot afford to eat anything else. If Celebrity have stopped the Chef's Market Discoveries buying local food to serve on board do to some US food regulations, I cannot see local produce being used for much higher numbers in Luminae.

 

(Just don't get me started on why we have to follow US food regulations on board a ship not registered in the USA, with the majority of the crew not from the USA and increasing numbers of passengers not from the USA when there is much to argue with about the US food regulations. Every time I eat meat on board I remind myself I am eating growth hormones...)

Sue, one day we really must meet up on a cruise! I promise to dine with you in Luminae one night if you and Richard will suffer Murano's the next for me! Perhaps on the third night whichever of us has 'bagged' the PH will entertain! Hope you are presently enjoying gourmet fish and chips!