Norwegian Cruise Line offers what they call “Freestyle Cruising” which emphasizes the ability to do what you want when you want including where and when you want to dine. On the Norwegian Jade, you can choose from more than a dozen places to eat. I can say that I was never hungry! There is so much food and we found the quality to be really good and enjoyed almost all of our meals.
There are eight restaurants that are “complimentary” which means they are included in your cruise fare. There are also “specialty dining” restaurants that either have a cover charges or a la carte menus. At specialty restaurants, you’ll also pay an 18-percent service charge.
Complimentary Dining
Our favorite restaurant on the Norwegian Jade is the Grand Pacific. The Grand Pacific has high ceilings, tall windows looking out aft, and excellent food. The restaurant also has a dress code which differs from other complimentary restaurants on the ship.
A typical dinner menu in the Grand Pacific and Alizars, the other main dining room, includes a choice of daily specials, along with “classic dishes” such as steaks, chicken, fish, spaghetti, and lasagna. There are also appetizers, salads, soups, and desserts on the menu. Kids under 12 can order from a children’s menu (which was the same every night) or from the regular menu.
The dessert selection changes daily, but the popular Warm Chocolate Volcano was always available during our cruise.
We were pleased with the number of requests that were honored including asking for only the gelato that was found as part of the warm chocolate volcano and then receiving a huge sundae cup full.
Alizar, Norwegian Jade’s other main dining room, is smaller than Grand Pacific (with only 258 seats) and it feels more like a New York eatery with its side-by-side tables and banquettes. Menus in both dining rooms are identical each night.
The Garden Cafe is Norwegian Jade’s buffet-style restaurant. It is open for all three meals and has separate serving stations for hot dishes, grill items, Asian foods, desserts, etc. so there is minimal queuing.
To maintain food quality, the Garden Cafe’s cooks dishes in small batches that are replenished often. Not every item was perfect, but overall, Norwegian Jade’s Garden Cafe was a notch up the quality scale compared to buffets on other cruise ships.
The Great Outdoors, an alfresco extension of the Garden Cafe, has outdoor tables and a more limited buffet menu. It’s a great place for breakfast and lunch if you can score a table under the canopy. When the Garden Cafe is closed to switch the food from breakfast to lunch and lunch to dinner, the Great Outdoors remains open.
Other complimentary dining options include O’Sheehan’s (a 24-hour comfort food restaurant overlooking the Atrium), Jasmine Garden (Asian Fusion cuisine), The Pit Stop (burgers and other light meals on Deck 13), and Topsiders Bar & Grill near the pool.
You can also order room service 24 hours a day. The food is free, but a convenience charge of up to $7.95 USD may be added to each order placed.
Specialty Dining
We had dinner in Cagney’s Steakhouse and were not impressed. Our steaks were not grilled correctly, the restaurant was extremely smokey because of the open kitchen design, and it took forever to get our food (over 2 hours to get our entrees).
On another night, we dined at La Cucina, an Italian restaurant. We enjoyed our dining experience so much that we canceled our other specialty dining restaurant and booked another meal at La Cucina. The food was delicious and the waitstaff was amazing!
Other specialty restaurants on Norwegian Jade include Le Bistro (French cuisine), Moderna (Brazilian), Teppanyaki, and the a la carte Sushi Bar in Jasmine Garden.
Drinks
Ice water, ice tea, lemonade, coffee, and tea are all free. You will pay bar prices for soda and alcoholic beverages unless you have a beverage package.
There are a variety of soda, beer and wine, and all-inclusive beverage packages that you can purchase. I suggest checking prices to see if one of the packages might be beneficial to you. We received the ultimate beverage package free as a promotion, however, we did have to pay gratuities. These packages cover drinks in all restaurants and bars on Norwegian Jade.
Dinner Reservations
You can book dining reservations online before you leave home for both main dining and specialty restaurants. Once you’re on the ship, you can reserve tables at specialty restaurants. We booked our dining times for each night online before the cruise, so we never had to wait for more than a minute at the mâitre d’s desk.
To help you find a table onboard, Norwegian Jade has real-time monitors throughout the ship that use red, yellow, and green symbols to show which restaurants are most or least busy.
We really enjoyed our food on the Norwegian Jade and I highly recommend dining at La Cucina at least once during your cruise!
