LongIslandTravel

Totally agree with this sfvoyage!! This is totally ridiculous that someone thought they had to order from the premium wine list. You'd have to work hard at it and be utterly clueless of what you were doing and who Seabourn is and what you paid for to miss the complimentary wine offerings. And it seems focusing on them trying to "make a buck" instead of focusing on what is good about the whole thing is not something I want to be familiar with either. Who CARES if they point out the premium wines? Say no. They might have pointed out the premium wines, and never did we feel they pushed it on us. To the point that I don't even remember! At Solis or any other venue on the ship. Anyone can focus on that or some other negative and that's their call. I don't choose that road.

On another note, our dear, wonderful friends from Australia (who we met a number of years ago on Seabourn!) just got off a 20 night round trip Barcelona on Ovation (we missed them by 10 days because of schedule conflicts!!!) and dined at Solis multiple times. They could not say enough about how much they enjoyed every meal. As far as we are concerned, having an option like Solis is something to celebrate and embrace and enjoy. (And we did!)

We had absolutely no experience at all like that with the wine or the wait staff. No one pushed premium wines or were circumspect with the complimentary wine offerings. Were you on Ovation? We had nothing resembling your experience at all. And we certainly didn’t find having premium wines listed on the back page offensive…. Why would that even an issue?

Just returned from a 10 day Ovation cruise last week ending in Barcelona. Ovation is a superb, beautifully designed ship and we ate at Solis twice. (Requested another night and Eugene, the manager was able to fit us in on the final night. Great guy.) Fabulous on both occasions. The Solis lounge, with Bruno on the piano, was sublime. He's wonderful and the atmosphere in the lounge (and Solis) was great. A beautiful venue. Not sure where all the comments about menu complexity come from. We had absolutely no problem with the menu, and any questions we had were easily answered. We didn't study the menu prior or any of that. Just went in like any other nice restaurant, ship or shore, looked at the menu and made decisions. Also, there was not a person we spoke to on the cruise who had anything but positives to say about Solis. Everyone loved it and many had experienced Thomas Keller prior. No one was confused by the menu. On the contrary, everyone was impressed by the attention to detail and the offerings.