Service was good to excellent on this cruise, with multiple servers/managers looking after us. You can order alcohol with your meal, but we always went with complementary water, which is constantly kept full by a myriad of attendants ready to spring into action. The meal always started with a bread basket, and the it was always consistently warm and really good. Not a huge selection...usually a french style white roll and some sort of rye or sesame roll, accompanied by pats of salted butter.
The waiter would come around to give you your menu, which was always 2 sided (the left consisted of the appetizer and the standard, always available entrees, with the right consisting of the specials of the day along with wine choices) You can also order special meals from Cagney's (like a Ribeye steak or 2 lobster tails) for a charge.
We ended up having 7 dinners here, with different choices most nights. There were a few nights when one of us didnt want any of the specials, so ordered from the standard menu (which is the 5 same entrees). These standard ones are: Grill New York Strip steak, Breaded flounder filet, Herb crusted rotisserie chicken, shrimp fetticunne alfredo, and 3-cheese baked ziti. We got to try the Strip steak twice, and the chicken one time. The chicken was a lot of food, almost half of a chicken with mashed potatoes and brocolli. The chicken was moist, with a crisp skin. The Strip steak was OK to really good. The first time, we asked for it medium and it was served that way, and relatively thick. it tasted great...they don't have steak knives available, so you had to cut with a butter knife, but it was doable. The second time, the steak had been cooked well-done, but was still OK. For steak lovers, it's not a bad choice if all other things on the menu are passable. Also consider that you can always order multiple entrees...so getting a shrimp dish (when available) to pair with the NY strip, made a nice surf'n'turf.
i do think the meals at the beginning of the 10 day cruise were the best. By the end, the planners were trying to finish off their supply of food items, so the dishes didn't seem as inspired as they had been earlier. I was really hoping that they would have two classic cruise dishes (coq au vin, escargot)...but neither were offered in the complementary (the waiter told it was only available at the fine-dining French restaurant on this cruise). No matter, NCL does a great job with their food and service, and the Manhattan Room is a great place to go for a relaxed, filling dinner. read more