Probably the most accurate review of MSC's food I've seen...

[Itchy&Scratchy]

On 11/21/2023 at 7:22 AM, BeeeJay said:

They had them in the kid buffet once that I noticed.

yes, last week on Seascape the only place that had hash browns was the kid's part of the buffet. I don't know why. It's just weird to me. People were crowding all over it just trying to get some hash browns.

 

They were very good.

[BeeeJay]

2 hours ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

yes, last week on Seascape the only place that had hash browns was the kid's part of the buffet. I don't know why. It's just weird to me. People were crowding all over it just trying to get some hash browns.

 

They were very good.

 

the manager told me they have a limited supply

 

just want to also mention apparently this random Princess cruise has an unlimited supply.

 

the food is so much better on Princess than MSC and the buffet is a fraction the size but there is zero crowding.  I am guessing because the MDR is actually good.  Also prob helps the hours are much longer than MSC.  Breakfast is 6am-1130am.  

[benjaminnicholas]

On 11/20/2023 at 6:33 PM, Avatar345 said:

 

Does appealing to middle America have to be a 'shtick'?

 

It's ALL shtick.  Appealing to anyone on television, especially any specific group, is theater.

 

It's producers/agents/talent/marketing sitting around and figuring out segments of the population who will tune in, buy merch and support the brand.

 

 

[joeyancho]

On 11/21/2023 at 11:11 AM, PACrew said:

This is dead on. My upcoming MSC cruise is 50% of the cost of Royal. Do I expect the same as Royal -  no. (However, the food on our last royal cruise was not great at all and frankly I feel it was a rip off at the price we paid. They are clearly milking the cow for all its worth.). 

I have noticed how far down the food on Royal has gone just in the past 18 months.  Which is why, even though we are Diamond Plus on Royal,  our next cruise is on MSC.  Royal has a lot of debt to service,  since the pandemic shutdown and a lot of stockholders that expect  dividends.  That is why they are squeezing at both ends.  Offer less and charge more.  MSC is a privately (family)  owned.  So their financial situation is different.   They do not answer to stockholders.  MSC cruise line is part of MSC holdings, the largest shipping company in the world.  The shipping business did not stop during the pandemic.  They have much deeper pockets that the big three cruise lines.  This is part of the reason why prices are lower on MSC. They are the fastest growing cruise line in the world.   

[Stockjock]

3 hours ago, joeyancho said:

I have noticed how far down the food on Royal has gone just in the past 18 months.  Which is why, even though we are Diamond Plus on Royal,  our next cruise is on MSC.  Royal has a lot of debt to service,  since the pandemic shutdown and a lot of stockholders that expect  dividends.  That is why they are squeezing at both ends.  Offer less and charge more.  MSC is a privately (family)  owned.  So their financial situation is different.   They do not answer to stockholders.  MSC cruise line is part of MSC holdings, the largest shipping company in the world.  The shipping business did not stop during the pandemic.  They have much deeper pockets that the big three cruise lines.  This is part of the reason why prices are lower on MSC. They are the fastest growing cruise line in the world.   

I very much prefer MSC food to Royal's.  Celebrity used to be light years ahead of MSC, but no more.  Paper thin sirloin steaks, sometimes fatty, plenty of mashed potatoes.

If you'd asked me 3-5 years back, I'd say Celebrity's MDR blew MSC's MDR food out of the water.  But I've done 2 Celebrity cruises in the past 3 months, and there was a huge drop-off in quality.  

[Stem to Stern]

13 hours ago, Stockjock said:

I very much prefer MSC food to Royal's.

Sorry for running off topic, but how were the room temperatures on board MSC?  I am wondering if I should plan on long sleeves and a sweater in the evenings particularly in the Yacht Club.  Thanks.

[Itchy&Scratchy]

17 hours ago, joeyancho said:

They have much deeper pockets that the big three cruise lines.  This is part of the reason why prices are lower on MSC.

yes, they have deeper pockets, but they are not spending the money on those pockets on passengers. 🙂

 

Many people on our cruise (on FB) said it was going to be their first and last MSC cruise. And not only due to food.

[Best Cat Mom]

2 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

Many people on our cruise (on FB) said it was going to be their first and last MSC cruise. And not only due to food.

We are not cruisers. We are people who like to travel to Italy. An MSC cruise out of Florida is a two-hour flight to Italy for us. We've spent over 150 nights on land vacations in Italy. If some people decide that MSC is not for them, then they probably will not be spending a few weeks of their holiday time in Italy either. Cultural differences are not always welcome, unfortunately.

[Itchy&Scratchy]

10 minutes ago, Best Cat Mom said:

Cultural differences are not always welcome, unfortunately.

Not sure what cultural differences have to do with lower quality of food and customer service on an MSC cruise. We didn't enjoy food on an Norwegian cruise, does that mean we wouldn't like Norway? 🙂

And why wouldn't people who enjoy Princess and Celebrity cruises want to spend a few weeks in Italy?

 

10 minutes ago, Best Cat Mom said:

An MSC cruise out of Florida is a two-hour flight to Italy for us.

What does this even mean?

Edited November 30, 2023 by Itchy&Scratchy

[Best Cat Mom]

22 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

30 minutes ago, Best Cat Mom said:

An MSC cruise out of Florida is a two-hour flight to Italy for us.

What does this even mean?

That we don't have to fly ~10 hours to enjoy the Italy that we love. We can fly ~2 hours to Florida and board an MSC ship and enjoy the Italian experience. Sorry if that was not clear.

[Best Cat Mom]

23 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

Not sure what cultural differences have to do with lower quality of food and customer service on an MSC cruise.

If you holiday in Italy, you will likely experience the same quality of food and customer service unless you are paying top dollar for your trip. There are vastly different tiers of service for what type of experience you'll have on the ground in Italy.

[Itchy&Scratchy]

1 minute ago, Best Cat Mom said:

you will likely experience the same quality of food and customer service unless you are paying top dollar for your trip

but what I mean is - when I pay the same money for a Princess cruise, I have excellent food. Are we blaming the inferior food quality on MSC ships on cultural differences? or on difference in price?

[Itchy&Scratchy]

6 minutes ago, Best Cat Mom said:

That we don't have to fly ~10 hours to enjoy the Italy that we love. We can fly ~2 hours to Florida and board an MSC ship and enjoy the Italian experience.

the real Italian experience I "enjoyed" on our MSC cruise was real Italians completely ignoring the queue of people at the buffet bar and literally barging in right in front of you to place their order. They spoke Italian, pretended not to understand the unhappy people in line, and, worse yet, yelled out to their companions at the nearby table to see if they also wanted something from the bar.

[Best Cat Mom]

2 hours ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

the real Italian experience I "enjoyed" on our MSC cruise was real Italians completely ignoring the queue of people at the buffet bar and literally barging in right in front of you to place their order. They spoke Italian, pretended not to understand the unhappy people in line, and, worse yet, yelled out to their companions at the nearby table to see if they also wanted something from the bar.

That is pretty much what you'll get in Italy 

[Itchy&Scratchy]

14 minutes ago, Best Cat Mom said:

That is pretty much what you'll get in Italy 

you aren't exactly selling it, you know, lol. 🙂

[no1talks]

5 hours ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

I "enjoyed" on our MSC cruise was real Italians completely ignoring the queue of people at the buffet bar and literally barging in right in front of you to place their order.

Not just Italians.

European cultures that patiently queue are the minority. My wife is from Europe (non-Italian) and on our first MSC cruise some years ago. she was appalled at all her fellow Europeans skipping queues. Whenever she encountered line-jumpers who were speaking her native language, she read them the Riot Act.

It was quite amusing to see their stunned faces as an imposing six-foot tall blonde gave them a proper earful, out of the blue.

[RandomUser123]

I was on MSC Meraviglia 2 weeks ago and i thought the food was good. Breakfast in the buffet could have been better, there was no customized omlette station, eggs benedict or smoked salmon. Those were only available in MDR for breakfast. Lunch was good, plenty of options and most were good. Dinner in MDR was usually good (Lobster bisque on formal night however was terrible). MDR dinner on any cruise ship is basically banquet style for the food, it’s not going to be gourmet but it is still good. We never did dinner in buffet so can’t comment on that. Overall i did not mind the buffet and its station setup. Other than embarkation day lunch it never felt full and while there may have been some lines in certain stations it was never that long. We also enjoyed the late night buffet setup, got my pizza fill then!!! 

[bilyclub]

Got off the Seaside a couple of weeks ago and the food quality and choices were not good. Pizza was better than what you find in Florida. Debarkation was the worst I've seen in many years.  Entertainment was good, but theater itself was small with no drinks allowed in.  Casino was small and smokier than most.

[LondonTowner]

We have just had a week on MSC Euribia, their newest ship. Hated the layout of the ship. Entertainment was less than inspiring, service very slow.

Food was OK, but I’ve been to Italy about 50 times and not had food like this.

The coffee was good.

Our cabin was freezing cold even though the thermostat was at its highest. Reported it to our cabin steward and gust relations, but it fell on deaf ears.

Hated passengers embarking and disembarking at every port. There was a lack of continuity.

Weve been on a variety of cruise lines, so have plenty to compare it too.

We won’t be travelling with MSC again.

[Maria63]

On 12/1/2023 at 2:30 AM, no1talks said:

Not just Italians.

European cultures that patiently queue are the minority. My wife is from Europe (non-Italian) and on our first MSC cruise some years ago. she was appalled at all her fellow Europeans skipping queues. Whenever she encountered line-jumpers who were speaking her native language, she read them the Riot Act.

It was quite amusing to see their stunned faces as an imposing six-foot tall blonde gave them a proper earful, out of the blue.

 

There is a very real cultural difference in how people traditionally handle queues. I come from a culture where you are supposed to queue the way Americans and Northern Europeans understand it, ie you line up and wait patiently for your turn. However, in Spain and Italy, people traditionally do not queue by lining up while waiting for something. Instead, they do what in English could be called "who is the last one?" and this is how it works: 

 

When you enter into a space where you are supposed to wait for your turn, you ask in a clear voice "Who is the last one?" The person who entered before you is supposed to react to your question and identify himself. You then keep an eye on this person, and when you hear someone ask "Who is the last one?" it is your turn to acknowledge that it is you. Otherwise, you are free to stand or sit where you want and socialize freely while you are waiting, but you must keep an eye on the person who came in before you so that you know when it is your turn to be served, and so that you don´t disrupt the whole process. 

 

This system of queueing is very civilized and works quite well when everyone understands the rules. Unfortunately, very unpleasant cultural clashes tend to happen when people from the Northern European & American queuing cultures mix with folks from Spain and Italy. The "who is the last one" -system would of course not work for instance in a buffet line, but people who have grown up in this culture probably do not place the same emphasis on the importance of forming orderly queuing lines. It is no big deal when it comes to determining polite behavior.

[JCMAN]

I can't speak for other cruise lines or their changes in post-COVID. My only other cruise before MSC on the Seashore earlier this month was on the Voyager of the Seas on RCL in November of 2005... way too long ago to reasonably compare. I have been to Europe, Germany as recently as 2016, Italy as recently to 2011. I am used to what some have dubbed "European tastes" (especially being lighter on salt) and I am fine with them... that's not the issue.

I would consider the non-specialty restaurant food on MSC to be, in general, a letdown, and I plan to look elsewhere. Maybe Princess. Or if I solo travel without friends, maybe I'd be willing to try Yacht Club - but I've heard very mixed feedback on YC food quality, to the food being leaps and bounds better, to it being presented better. 

I only went on a four night cruise, so limited options to eat at the MDR. The night of departure, twelve of us ate in the MDR. We ordered different items - I ordered a steak with peppercorn sauce - and the appetizer was an antipasto plate. The antipasto plate was small, but fine. The peppercorn steak was medium rare but the searing was sad and the fat was not rendered. The sauce hid these deficiencies. The cheesecake was bland, but that's on me for being a New Yorker ordering New York style cheesecake on a cruise ship. An okay, but not amazing meal. 

Day 2 nobody ate at MDR, we wanted to get to Ocean Cay early, buffeted lunch after some time on the beach, went back to beach, and then the couples decided to have date night. Me being solo and not wanting to sit at a table with 12 empty chairs, I ate at Butcher's cut. The ribeye did not have all the fat rendered (this is not an issue of the ribeye being a fatty cut... if fat is rendered with correct temperature and cooking, then it is melt in your mouth delicious. Unrendered is like chewing cud) and they swapped it with a filet with little hesitation. Delicious, but $$$.

 

Day 3 we were ambivalent about the MDR and most skipped it. A friend and his wife and I decided, hey, we'll give Caribbean night a try. I'm allergic to seafood which made the menu choices simple: chips and guac for appetizer, carne asada for dinner, and key lime pie for dessert. Yum! Or so I thought.

I ordered chips and guac... this is what I received.

Yes, three chips. Three entire chips. The chips were somewhat stale, which is surprising since embarkation was only three days prior. I ate the chips and due to the disparity between the chip and guac portions, there was still guac on the plate. When asked if I didn't like it I did and said to the waiter that I liked it and would finish the guac if given more chips. At that point the plate disappeared... never to be seen again.

 

Now for dinner I received carne asada. "Carne asada". I put the quotes around this because it wasn't carne asada. Saying there were no spices is not exaggeration, or hyperbole, or to emphasize it was underseasoned. No spices detectable were there, much less the usual ones for carne asada.

What did I receive, you might ask?

 

I received pot roast. Cold, underseasoned, potroast with inedible unrendered fat.

 

Why do I know this is pot roast, you may ask? Because I ate meals outside the MDR for breakfast and lunch. Lunch the same day they had pot roast at one of the buffet stations. I received a couple pieces and tried it. Lukewarm and not particularly flavorful, I ate one bite and left the rest on my plate in favor of other buffet food.

I know that this was the same pot roast because it tasted identical. Note that I only apply "same pot roast" to the meat and recipe. While I will not assert "same" as the same exact meat that was on the counter at noon being in the MDR at 5:15PM, I would not be surprised if they took some pot roast that was still food safe at holding temp from the buffet later that day and called it "carne asada".

 

It was completely inedible and disgusting, I had the faux pas of having to spit it out because I couldn't bear to swallow a single bite. The waiter apologized and asked me if I wanted something else...given the seafood heavy MDR menu leaving me no alternatives, I declined (giving that reason), said I'd eat at the buffet, but I'd still take the key lime pie. The key lime pie was small, but pretty decent.

I also know that MSC can do mexican right... because Hola Tacos did it right, and not for a bad price either ($18/adult).

I will end my diatribe on a positive note: I actually thought, on the whole, that the buffet was decent. As a New Yorker my pizza standards are high, and it is possible to get a bad slice of pizza (worst pizza I've had was at Kennedy Space Center - when a 12 year old kid and his siblings won't eat pizza, you know it's bad), but the buffet pizza was great by buffet pizza standards and being popular was often well turned over so you got a fresh slice. I also thought that the breakfast at the buffet was great, matching a typical breakfast assortment you'd get in hospitality (like hotels) in Europe. I didn't order a room service pizza but other passengers showed me pics and it looks every bit as good as the Neapolitan pizzas I cook myself in an Ooni pizza oven, and I'm sure if I ordered that I would have been quite pleased.

But the MDR dragged on my entire experience of the cruise. The buffet did not have enough variety to enjoy consistent eating for several days. Sure there were a lot of options, but not a lot of options that changed daily (basically I only saw three trays in the buffet's international section). I could only imagine the dread of approaching the buffet to eat the same items towards the end of a weeklong cruise. When combined with other baffling policies (like not allowing drinks at hot tubs and closing all pools/hot tubs at 8PM), it left my friends and I agreeing that we had a good time overall, but would be looking elsewhere next time.

[warren buffet]

On 11/29/2023 at 4:27 PM, joeyancho said:

I have noticed how far down the food on Royal has gone just in the past 18 months.  Which is why, even though we are Diamond Plus on Royal,  our next cruise is on MSC.  Royal has a lot of debt to service,  since the pandemic shutdown and a lot of stockholders that expect  dividends.  That is why they are squeezing at both ends.  Offer less and charge more.  MSC is a privately (family)  owned.  So their financial situation is different.   They do not answer to stockholders.  MSC cruise line is part of MSC holdings, the largest shipping company in the world.  The shipping business did not stop during the pandemic.  They have much deeper pockets that the big three cruise lines.  This is part of the reason why prices are lower on MSC. They are the fastest growing cruise line in the world.   

i also highly suspect it may also contribute that they have designs to eventually gain much more market share and expand to every major US port. that requires trying harder. if there prices were not lower, I would never have booked them considering the really bad reviews from american's for the europe sailings. i hope only due to 8 lanquages being heard on announcements and the crazy system of allowing people to start and end on most ports which understanably causes huge problems to disembark. there is a reason why no other cruise line sells tickets that way

[Benthayer Gonbak]

On 10/20/2023 at 11:55 PM, Stockjock said:

There are some good things and not so good things about MSC.  I've been critical where warranted (IMO), but one thing I will say is that they've held steady or improved in a number of areas where other cruise lines have cut back drastically.  I went on a Celebrity cruise last month (and again in 2 days) and the food, while edible and sometimes even very good, was a shadow of what I've had on Celebrity in the past.

I've always found MSC's food to be pretty decent.  While meals are hit and miss, they're usually good to very good.  This is one area where I've long felt MSC got a bad rap, unfairly.

Anyway, I've not seen this guy's videos before, but I thought he was fair and objective.  His experiences, more or less, mirror my own.  I'll be back on World Europa soon, so I'll be able to see if anything has changed, but we often sail MSC once or twice per year, and their food quality has been pretty consistent, in my view.
 

 

My very first dinner on MSC I had a steak of some sort.  The “gravy” tasted like flour:  I.e. it wasn’t really cooked! 

[steveknj]

We have cruised mostly on NCL but also a 3 cruises on Carnival and 2 on Royal.   We sailed on NCL in 2022, after the pandemic and I have to say, that the MDR food really went downhill.  Last year we sailed on the Carnival Italian style ship, the Venizia, and we found the food REALLY good.  The thing about Carnival is there are lots of choices, especially for lunch.   So you can usually find something that is good.  We are going on our first MSC cruise in a couple of weeks (Seashore) and I'm less than encouraged by the reviews, but know that food is subjective.   I'm encourage to read that the pizza is good (as someone else in the thread I'm a native New Yorker living in NJ and pizza is practically a way of life).   But I haven't found too many reviews of the MDR that are positive.   The only food that seems consistently good is the Mexican place so we'll probably try that one night (my son's one and only cruise was on the Meriviglia and he said it was great as well, but he has nothing to compare it to).  Our cruise is only a 3 night one, so we'll get a taste of what it's like and if it's reasonable we'll do more, but if it's terrible, we'll probably skip MSC in the future.

[Reds4life]

Just off Carnival, cruised HAL and RCCL last year, and MSC food is pretty much on par with those. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses but overall about the same quality. MSC pizza is the best. It is legit. Sorry for you guys knocking Guy Fieri's burgers but they are quite good. Then again, I like MSC burgers pretty well also and think they're not too far off. I prefer MSC breakfast over the others as well. Our MDR experience on Carnival recently had its ups and downs similar to MSC. We tend to prefer MSC MDR because we like the Italian pasta dishes and seafood, but to each their own.