Sabor provides modern Mexican dining , twists on traditional dining. My brother and I had the…read moreopportunity to dine at Sabor on the Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas, and it was quite good.
Sabor is a reservation only, added cost restaurant, hosting both lunch and dinner at $40 a head. It is located on Deck 6, near the Aquatheater in the Boardwalk neighborhood. The entire restaurant is open air, and has both indoor and outdoor seating, and is run similar to any other tourist restaurant serving this sort of food. There are TVs spread across the dining area, and we learned that sports fan will stop in to watch a game.
The menu has much of the classic Mexican fare, and with the cost, a diner is able to choose one dish from each course, though the server will honor requests of more than one as long as it's not the main entree. We got a variety of things, most of which was good..
Started out with guacamole and chips. The guacamole was excellent, freshly made, and seemed like it followed a strict recipe that had been fine tuned (right amount of lime juice, salt, etc). The chips were cheap, not sure why they wouldn't just use the thicker corn tortilla chips made in house. It also came with house pico de gallo.
For apps, we got both types of ceviche (fish using red snapper and mixto of shrimp and octopus). Both used a really good lime juice marinade and presented as one small scoop. The red snapper had pieces that were very strong fish tasting, while the mixto was just right, with small cut pieces of shrimp and octopus. Other appetizers were the fried chili calamari (served freshly deep fried, only rings no tenacles) and queso fundido (middle of the pack for me). served with a good flour tortilla.
For main courses, we got the pan-seared snapper and tampiquena steak. The snapper was very good, a large generous steak with a really matching mango papaya salsa. The tampiquena was OK, using the same steak quality that you would get in the main dining room. I loved the refried beans as a side, though, and used it as an accompaniment to each steak bite. We also got some Mexican rice and beans as sides.
Dessert comes as part of the 3 course meal, so tried three of them. The cafe con leche was a hit, very decadent and great with the small scoop of vanilla ice cream. Banana and chocolate chimichanga was interesting, needed a little time to cool down since the filling was molten when first served. And the cinnamon churros were not good, very dense with little flavor. A chocolate and tres leches dipping sauce was offered.
The restaurant experience is similar to any mainland restaurant, down to the cashier not applying the correct discounts to the meal when payment came due at the end of the meal. Everything gets an automatic 18% gratuity, and the entire amount is always charged to the room. The total amount is subsidized since any specialty restaurant has to serve food that one can't get from the complementary dining areas around the ship. In our case, I think the ceviche and red snapper are dishes that fit that bill, along with the great guacamole....but a lot of the other dishes do not. As we found out, the Harmony does Mexican food very well at the complementary restaurants and should be the first place to try if craving the typical beef or pork dishes.
