Cruise: Food

The average cruiser gains seven pounds on a cruise. Awesome.

Chase and I have been trying to work out and sort of watch what we eat for months. I, especially, hit the workouts hard the week or two before the cruise. If you know me, I say this ALL THE TIME, but I'm going to say it again: I have the best job in the whole world. One of the amazing perks that leaves me no excuse for not being fit is that the house has a fully-equipped gym room. Elliptical, treadmill, pull-up bar/TRX system, weights, TV, audio system...the works. Chase and I even tried to work out on sea days (I think we ended up getting in three workouts...Chase might've done one more than I did). Per my mom's tip, we took the stairs everywhere (my mom, btw, is the only person you'll ever meet who loses weight when she goes on a cruise...she's amazing!). 

All of that matters only to say that we ate, and we ate big. I mean big...

When Chase and I are at home, we love to eat. There are a few places that we frequent (Babe's Chicken, Kelly's Eastside, Sauced Wings 'n More, Nico's Tex-Mex Cantina), but we love to try new places. It's a perfect date if we can try a new restaurant for dinner and end with a local coffee shop. Perfect. Needless to say, we were excited about trying all the food on the ship. There is so much variety that we didn't get bored, and we had fun finding the hidden gems.

Lobster night in the main dining room was fantastic. I thought it was cooked better than some of the fine dining restaurants I've visited.

We normally split our meals. It's economical and better for our waistlines. On the cruise, if we couldn't decide, our waiter would always say, "Try both." So we did. 

Soup as our first appetizer.

Spaghetti Carbonara as our second appetizer.

Prime Rib.

Of course, with each dish, we would share. Sometimes I would trade with Chase because I liked his better. Overall, I had two complaints about our food. It was under-seasoned. To be fair, I understand that most cruisers are probably 55+. It's easy to salt your food after you taste it, but people who like their food less salty can't take the salt out. I'll give them a pass on that one. My other complaint was the gravy. You can see it in the Prime Rib picture. They put that gravy on everything. I ordered a filet one night, and they put it on my steak! If I wanted a sauce on my steak, I would ask for it. They even served this sauce with "Southern Fried Chicken" and mashed potatoes with "gravy." If you say gravy with southern fried chicken, it better be cream gravy and not the same stuff you use as sauce for your steaks!

Our steakhouse night was incredible. We ate and ate and ate some more. I wish I had taken more pictures of the food because it was breathtakingly pretty. They even made my coffee pretty...although, I think I had already taken a sip at this point.

Bar-none, the best dish I ate on the whole cruise was the lobster bisque in the steakhouse. Oh. Em. Gee. It was seriously amazing. It was creamy with huge chunks of lobster, and I ate every last bite. My entree was surf and turf: filet (of course) and lobster tail. 

The desserts really stole the show. Chase had a quattro (I think that's what they called it) of chocolate desserts. He adores chocolate, and couldn't have been happier.

I got the biggest slice of cheesecake I've ever seen. We tried to save what was left over, but it wouldn't fit in our fridge.

A few other foods were worth mentioning. In the main dining room, I didn't get a picture, but they had a barbecued brisket that was tender and perfect. Also, the chocolate melting cake with ice cream was the perfect go-to dessert. Finally, the seaside barbecue, only served at lunch on sea days, was ridiculously good. Of our sea days, we only ate it once. We would've gone back on our last sea day, but we were doing the ship tour and missed it. They had sliders, quesadillas, pulled pork tacos, four different salsas...it was all so good! I wish I had taken a picture of that as well.

Overall, I'd give the food a 7.5 out of 10. If it hadn't been for a few really stellar entrees, the score would be lower. I felt like everything we got was tasty, but many things weren't worthy of a second try. Our servers really made the vacation for us, and we were so thankful for how kind and friendly the Carnival staff was for the whole trip.