NCL Mexican Riviera Cruise Day 1: Versailles Main Restaurant Dinner

NCL has "freestyle" cruising. At most cruise lines, you are assigned to have dinner at a certain time, at a certain restaurant, on a certain table shared with certain guests. But on NCL's ship, you can dine wherever you want, whenever you want. We really like the freedom. There were tons of restaurants on the ship. Two main dining rooms offer different menu daily and it's free. The other specialty restaurants have extra charge if you choose to dine there. There are French, Italian, Mexican, Asian and Steakhouse restaurants.



For our first night, we went to Versailles Main Restaurant for dinner.  Sorry for the blurry picture.  The ship was moving like crazy the first night.  Versailles is the more upscale free option.  No jeans, shorts and tank top allowed after 5pm.  But they weren't too strict about it on the first night so we went in jeans.




You can order anything from the menu, as much as you want.  For people who's more health conscious, they also offer "Cooking Light" selections with fewer calories.



Menu changes daily.  There's always a meat dish, a chicken dish, a fish dish, a pasta dish and a vegetarian dish.



Some dishes are always available that you can order any day.  Desserts also change on a daily basis.


Bread

Our waiter brought us some bread after we placed our order.  The same type of bread was served for breakfast, lunch and dinner all 7 days.


Red Wine ($9.78)

Dr. P ordered a glass of red wine.  I can't remember exactly what kind of wine it was.  Every drink you order on the ship included 18% gratuity charge.  Even if it's just a can of coke.


Crostata - Savory Farm House Style Tart

For starter, we got the Crostata tart.  It had Buffalo Mozzarella cheese inside the pastry and topped with wild mushrooms.  I really liked it because I just love mushroom and cheese.  Dr. P thought it was just ok.


Cooking Light Potato and Fennel Soup

The potato and fennel soup was from the Cooking Light menu.  It had a dollop of sour cream in it.  We liked the soup.  It was light and tasty.


Tossed Greens with Endive

Salad greens, endive, crumbled Roquefort cheese, sherry vinegar and walnut dressing.  This was one delicious salad.  Really good dressing.


Cooking Light Jerk Style Chicken

The grilled Jerk chicken was flavored with cinnamon, thyme and allspice.  The sauce was very tasty and a bit spicy.  Chicken was really tender.  Dr. P loved this dish.


Grilled Mahi-Mahi

I liked the grilled mahi-mahi better than the chicken though.  The fish was good.  But I love the side dishes even more.  Sun-dried tomato polenta was so good.  I couldn't get enough of it.  Braised fennel was super delicious.  I just love fennel.


Cooking Light Italian Cream Cake

The Italian cream cake looked good, but didn't taste that good.  We weren't sure what it was, but this cake just didn't taste right. 


Frozen Strawberry Yogurt

The frozen strawberry yogurt was even worse than the cake.  It had a really artificial taste.  You all know that artificial strawberry taste, right?  It was really bad.  We both only took one bite.



Our waiter offered to take a picture of us.  The food was great, but dessert wasn't.  Also the ship was rocking so I couldn't really eat that much.  I kept on feeling the food wouldn't stay put in my stomach.  Well, if we get hungry later, there's always food to eat, right?  haha.... and we DID!

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