We rarely go for specialty restaurants on lines we really like to sail. While they are somewhat better than the MDR, we prefer to save our “eating out” funds for really superior (i.e. shoreside) restaurants. Of course if we’re talking about sailing Carnival, or especially NCL, the specialty restaurants really are called for. But some mass market lines- Cunard, Celebrity and HAL - do a pretty good job in the MDR and, in my experience thus far, are acceptable.