As we said before, food is so subjective and although we appreciate good food, the food alone doesn’t make or break a cruise for us.
We tried several different restaurants on board:
O’Sheehans
A great concept with pub-style fare, O’Sheehans serves good food 24-hours per day. There are special breakfast items in the morning, but there are a few breakfast offerings that are offered all day. Sandwiches, fish and chips, burgers and meatloaf are just a few items on the rather extensive menu.
Just need a snack to tide you over until dinner? O’Sheehans has appetizers as well and of course, a full bar. They do make shakes and malts for an additional fee, but the food served here is included in your fare. We found a nice spot to enjoy a snack while waiting for our stateroom to be available.
There are 3 bowling lanes adjacent to O’Sheehans.
Le Bistro
Who could not like French food? We wanted to try one of the specialty restaurants and settled on this one. It’s funny how if you get a strange taste in your head that it sticks. It became very difficult for me to enjoy my steak because I had some strong sense of raw pork (as in at the county fair) in my head. As for my dining companion, he thoroughly enjoyed his salmon as well as the tenderloin that I couldn’t finish.
(Surcharge)
Modernos
We didn’t eat here because we could never eat all the food offered. However, we heard rave reviews about the Churrascaria style restaurant where large quantities and varieties of meat (beef, chicken, pork, sausage and lamb) are served to you. This restaurant shares a large area with Cagney’s. There is a very pleasant bar at the entry, which often offers drink specials.
Manhattan Room and Taste
These are the two main dining rooms onboard the Epic and both are included in your fare. Manhattan often offers some entertainment during dinner – the times that we dined, we saw a preview of the Legends in Concert show. We enjoyed the set-up of the dining room and the decor as well. The service was good and very friendly, although sometimes slow.
Taste is a smaller and more casual restaurant which reminded me of bier stube decor. We found it often busy and the service inconsistent. We don’t mind lingering over dinner, but sometimes it took a long time just to get a beverage or rolls. Other times, we were out of there so quickly that we were astounded. The service was very friendly.
We were disturbed to see the wife-beaters and cheek peeker shorts that some people felt appropriate to wear to dinner.
Teppanyaki, La Cucina, Cagney’s, Shanghai and Wasabi
We weren’t able to personally sample the above restaurants. When there are so many restaurants, it’s tough to try all of them on a 7-day cruise. Teppanyaki is like its name suggests, the Japanese restaurant offering that particular style of cooking. La Cucina is Italian and has a wonderful al fresco-style restaurant. (There is a photo of that on the menus in the tabs above.) Cagney’s is the steakhouse and Shanghai offers Asian dishes. Wasabi is an noodle bar.
Garden Cafe
This buffet style dining room is set up very well for easy flow preventing backups at the different stations. There is a great selection of all types of food – ethnic, pizza, continental, sandwiches. If you can’t find something to eat, then maybe the enormous amount of choices has overwhelmed you. Do try the pretzel rolls served here. We haven’t found them in the other dining rooms.
In addition to the larger indoor dining rooms, there are also outdoor grills at Spice H20 and at the Great Outdoors. Enjoying a meal in the open air is something that everybody should try once.
Sail Away