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Dining The Jewel's 10 dining venues offer open seating, flexible hours, and excellent service. An electronic reservations system keeps things running smoothly we made reservations for the week at the reservations desk at reception upon embarkation and never had to wait more than a few minutes to be seated (reservations can also be made by phone). It's best to book early for the specialty restaurants, especially for large parties or for the smaller venues like Teppanyaki. Cancellations after 5 p.m. incur a $5 fee. The chances are good that your hometown can’t match the number of good restaurants that you’ll find aboard the Norwegian Jewel. There’s a good chance your hometown doesn’t offer a Tapas Bar, a Sushi bar or 24-hour room service, either. But maybe that’s a good thing, because your willpower (i.e. your diet) will be challenged at almost every deck on this ship! As on all NCL ships, Freestyle Dining guarantees plentiful dining options – in fact, probably more dinner choices than your cruise has nights on board. Quantity shouldn’t be confused with 5-star gourmet quality, however. Aside from the ships extra-cost, upscale venues, the main restaurant, alternative, and buffet dining rooms aboard Norwegian Jewel offer good, well-presented, but not especially stellar fare. The two main restaurants aboard the ship offer two distinct menus – and two distinct dining atmospheres. Tsar’s Palace is grand, opulent, marbled and bejeweled (the ship’s name befits this singular venue). In contrast, Azura offers a sleek, trendy, contemporary setting but both restaurants include lighter, leaner, low calorie menu alternatives. For buffet convenience, the always-casual indoor/outdoor Garden Café fits the bill for on-the-go guests. The cuisine at Mama’s Italian Restaurant is self-evident – a trattoria with a country farmhouse appeal. The Great Outdoors offers a “feel-good” menu of basic, no-nonsense entrees – and excellent 370-degree views out to sea thanks to its aft location. The Blue Lagoon, though somewhat small, offers burgers, sandwiches and similar fare 24 hours a day. Tango’s Latin/Tapas Restaurant opens its doors to lovers of something on the hot and spicy side. There are three extra-cost dining options aboard Norwegian Jewel. Prices are nominal but most agree, the cuisine is excellent and the dining ambiance is intimate. Le Bistro French Restaurant – an NCL hallmark – offers French and continental options. Cagney’s Steakhouse offers succulent, mouth-watering steaks and Chin Chin Asian Restaurant features a main dining area as well as a separate Teppanyaki Room and an adjacent Sushi Bar and Sake Bar. This being an NCL ship, there’s even more! The Grill, located just a few wet steps from the Sapphire Pool, will grill your burger, hot dog and chicken breast to order. Indoors and down a few decks overlooking the atrium is the Java Café where specialty coffees and pastries can be had. A limited 24-hour Room Service menu is also on hand for those who want to sleep in, watch a movie on closed-circuit TV or share their meal with the views from their balcony! Oh, and save room for the Midnight Chocolate Extravaganzas – another of NCL’s signature offerings! The food in the alternative restaurants as well as the daytime buffets was better than I had expected. The Italian food was delicious, especially the appetizers and pasta; the filet mignon in Le Bistro was beautifully prepared, even better than in the steak restaurant; and the range and quality of food in Tapa's was extraordinary. At Chin Chin, the guests' favorite seemed to be the Teppanyaki room, with the chefs putting on quite a show. With the large picture window design, many guests walking by stopped to watch the chefs at work. As for the sushi, they had a $5 all-you-can-eat menu that was great, day or night but; even the sushi a la carte was affordable, excellent and perfect for a snack. Perhaps the most popular, though, was the extensive Chinese menu with all sorts of Asian specialties. The menu was the same for the two main dining rooms each day, offering up meats, fish, poultry, etc. Restaurants This is the highlight of the Norwegian Jewel's Freestyle Cruising experience. There were two main dining rooms: Azura and Tsar's, holding 310 and 552 guests respectively. Tsar's is one of the most attractive large-ship dining rooms I've seen. Even though dining is all on one deck, it's two stories high with great large windows aft. The theme is Russian royalty, as the name implies. These rooms got the greatest number of guests, but there weren't any undue lines. If a guest wants to sit at the same time each night and at the same table in one of these two rooms, it can be arranged. Five restaurants specialize in different cuisines: Cagney's for steaks; Mama's Italian Kitchen; Tango's Tapas for tapas and Tex-Mex; Chin Chin for Chinese, Teppanyaki, Shabu-Shabu and sushi; and Le Bistro, the line's signature alternative restaurant for French food. Mama's and Tango's carried no extra charge; the others do (a modest $10 or $15). All of the above are open for dinner. Either Tsar's or Azura is open for breakfast and lunch; and on days at sea, guests could enjoy all the foods available at Chin Chin. The breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets at the Garden Café/Great Outdoors were quite varied along with the occasional theme such as Oriental. Rather than long buffet lines, there were lots of individual serving stations, so there never seemed to be crowding, even on days at sea. For breakfast, custom-made waffles and omelets were quickly available. At lunch and dinner, different kinds of pastas and sauces were offered. In addition to all that, Blue Lagoon, a casual eatery overlooking the water or the atrium, was open from 10 p.m. all through the night until 4:30 in the afternoon. This was a great place to get a snack when coming back form a shore excursion or the private island. Very importantly and very well-handled NCL has a reservations system that lets guests book dining times anytime during the cruise for the entire week, beginning as soon as they board. This makes figuring out where to eat that much easier. For those who prefer to wait and select a dining spot on board, there were more than a dozen television screens set up indicating which restaurants were full, nearly full or wide open. Guests could then choose where to go based on immediate seating or comfortable waiting times. Those choosing to wait were given beepers that work all over the ship so people did not have to hang around a restaurant's entrance. |
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