Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady Food. The Best Food at sea or Hype?
We booked Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady specifically FOR the restaurants and dining onboard. We've sailed 7 other cruise lines so now the big questions is, how does Virgin stack up? Does the Virgin Voyages food in the included 20 eateries live up to the hype? We ate a LOT of food to find out! Come on our eating journey with us.
TRANSCRIPT: (excuse the typos)
An asparagus sorbet freshly cooked right in front of us. Oh, my God. You are having me down.
Hey, folks, welcome to your food tour of the Virgin Voyages, Scarlet Lady. You know, Virgin Voyages had put a lot of emphasis on the food. It's supposed to be an elevated experience above the other cruise lines. All of the eateries are included in your cruise fare. There is no such thing as a specialty restaurant on virgin voyages. They do have a couple of upcharge items called Treat Yourself if you want.
But you can eat all week without spending an extra dime on any food anywhere on the ship. So did the Scarlet Lady live up to the hype? Will you enjoy the food on this ship? Let's get started.
We literally just got on the Scarlet Lady. We're sitting out here at the dock. So outside the dock, inside is the dock house. Gentleman is cooking hanger steak right out here on the deck. There's a grill running right over here next to us. I had grilled octopus at this hanger steak. I had some grilled shrimp. Rebecca had a goat cheese polenta.
She turned away. In the witness protection program. You're supposed to see her. We've just gotten started on virgin voyages, and the food is living up to the hype. And the other cool thing. We got a lot of grab and go stuff, so they had a little charcuterie right inside, a little cheese and meat platter and a little grab and go trade just inside the door.
So we're sitting out here on deck seven. This is the dock overlooking the ship. And I got to be pleased to kind of a play on the bee's knees. And this cocktail, which got $13 a little bit, cocktails are running about 39 to about $15. Know about what I would recommend most cruise line but beef please so cheers everybody from the Scarlet Lady.
And we are in Gunbae, which is the Korean barbecue here on the Scarlet Lady. And the appetizer. You've already come out and they had the drinking game. You're going to drink with soju, so let's start the trip. We came. This should be weird. I don't drink because this should be interesting.
The real game was over. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, oh oh.
They come back and.
Wow. Ten.
11.
12.
14, 15.
17, 18, 20, 20.
One.
32.
GUNBAE!
GUNBAE! GUNBAE! GUNBAE!
Everything has come out, and it looks amazing. These are vermicelli from JFK. We're really good. And we've got a scallion and shrimp. I a thought here on the side, you can hear the drinking game going on behind us.
I heard him say. Go in and throw everything.
I got. Really, really good. Hopefully I've been. Doing better than that.
But I think we're getting more food, as you can see. We didn't have enough food. We have more food coming. You know, you say, oh, well, all the restaurants are included, though we're probably not going to get that much food wrong. You're going to get a lot of food. So what is the seaweed salad? We have like a seaweed salad here.
Which is. Very interesting. Not seaweed, not my favorite. Rebecca probably liked it more than I do, but you got to try everything and really dig in the noodle. And I'm really digging at shrimp scallion cake. Ooh, out of the way. My mom is really hot, so I'm not going to pick it up. I am just going to scoop that up in the big A very, very hot bowl anyway.
And this is what right now. Mung bean and kimchi and a little thing here. It's.Really good. You know, virgin, you know a lot of hype on the food. This is you know, this is just like going to a specialty restaurant on any ship.
With a. North. I loved it, though. I don't know if you can see it. Christine has a crystal ball. What is that?
It is Kpop disco water and it has copper. And hydro at Ibrox. It has pop rocks in it, a disco ball drink with pop rocks in it. George and Christine, how are we doing it?
Amazing.
Amazing. Right? We're doing good there. How is everything? You're doing it good. Yeah.
Okay.
Where are you guys from?
Canada.
You're from Canada, but. Originally from the Philippines.
Awesome. And that's why we love the cruise. People pick on me all the time because we go cruising. But we get to meet lovely people from all over the world. You see right now.
I'm enjoying it. As you can see him, grilled shrimp. It's absolutely beautiful cooking the meat right here in front of us. You know, you start out the meal with stuff prepared in the kitchen and then the second half of the meal start cooking right here at the grill, right smack in front of a freshly cooked right in front of us. Put the sausage on this.
Good. one thing you don't get in the video is just that aroma or aroma is absolutely amazing
Have to go through.
Gunbae. It's not a quiet restaurant. If you're thinking about a quiet, romantic place to have dinner, this is not it. This is fun party restaurant, for sure. I'm terrible with chopsticks and you don't laugh at me.
Wrap it in lettuc. I can wrap it in the lettuce. Oh okay cool. Haha that's why I have my wife. She actually listen to what goes on.
Freshly cooked right here in front of me at the table. It is just after 8 p.m. and we are finally sailing away. We're sitting here in Gunbae enjoying dinner and we've got a beautiful view of Miami. Right outside we are sailing on the Scarlet Lady. So finally, this is the only place on the ship where you can get this.
This is a soft serve. This is rice milk and sesame ice cream like to c and then they gave us a sesame granola down here on the bottom and then, of course, some marshmallows on top to sprinkle onto the world. So why not.
Our. World, Tony? It they show you. Oh, my God, you love this. Good. Are you a different fan if you look out the window looking at Earth Miami going by, we are sailing away at sunset. Absolutely beautiful out there. But Gun Bay, not a quiet place. You're going to come here to party. You going to come here to have fun and you're going to come here to. Eat.
Really good. So down here at the social club, they have the social club diner with a whole bunch of different kind of hot dogs, including a vegan hot dog. I am going with the origin, the room. And so the hot dog had a Reuben, the Reuben hot dog right here. It doesn't matter who you love. You would have done that for corned beef anywhere.
Right now, if you're vegetarian, they do have the biggest hot dog out there. And Rebecca said, if they like you better than me, it got crunchy. She said, that's got to be really good on it as well. So if you're vegetarian, you can come on down here in the freezer, but not here and get you out of here.
So we are in the test kitchen tonight and the menu the menu tonight is corn, salmon, beet root shrimp, lamb, asparagus and strawberry. Literally all that's on the menu. And then we don't really know how they're going to prepare it. It'll just eat it. So we just placed our orders and as it was explained to us, this is a micro gastronomical adventures.
And what that means is the portion sizes are a little bit smaller, but these items are prepared in ways that we had probably never seen. Now, Rebecca went with the vegetarian option and she had a couple of other things which are going to be kind of cool. So we'll be able to see what she's got. And then they have a beer pairing and a wine pairing and at a cocktail pairing, right?
Or nonalcoholic mocktail. Or you can just get one cocktail. I decided to get one cocktail, George doing the beer pairing. So we'll get to see what that's all about. Are you doing the wine pairing, though, Christine? Doing the wine pairing and Rebecca is doing the mocktail. So we're going to get to see a little bit of everything here.
So this is going to be a lot of fun.
And this is an old fashioned. They had Amaretto in in Buffalo Trace and it looks like I got a stick of sentiment in there. So cheers to all of you.
That will get interesting.
Oh, my God. If you like old fashioned, right? That could be one of the best old fashioned I have ever had. Cheers, my friend keto course number one is corn and there's a little popcorn on the top. I know, she said. There's a hot oil around the side and then the rest of it is corn. And then a lovely bread they brought to the table, she said.
This is made with polenta and truffle oil. Now, when you come here, the menu could be different. This is a brand new menu that was different than what we saw online before we came on the ship so the menu could change. So the corn, I'm going to get a little bit of that oil on my fourth. How do you describe that?
I don't even know how to describe that. Hey, Dave. So, Christine, you said it almost like a custard and it's got multiple textures going on because they've got the the popcorn on the very top, very, very tasty. And in that oil that's going on on the side, very, very nice. You know, Rebecca had a tomato appetizer, a Bloody Mary mix, caviar.
I doubt. I know. Like.
Holy cow. That's absolutely delicious. Did I mention the old fashioned is really good? Okay, too. We're on our next course where we got the salmon right here. And then Rebecca got a tofu dish. You start with that little smoke that they lifted off the smoke melt so good it really did. See what we got? It looks almost like this is almost like sushi style.
But it's cooking. Yeah, I cook it for George in the present.
You like really good, very mild co two cucumbers that are apparently done in a couple of ways. Fresh pickles and something else. Did I mention how good the old fashioned is? I'm having a good time at the test kitchen. Can you tell the beetroot.
With a. Little cloud on the top? Can you describe it kind of like an open an open faced ravioli or something like that? Right. Food is all about exploration, right? So you're not you may not like everything.
I hate a dog is better than me with salmon.
I like it more when with I think there's like a bagel or something on there. I like it more when I get that. Oh, sure. I don't know. What will it take? Almost like a basil. So it saw a lot of hair, but it looks like a basil. That was not my favorite dish. But that's okay. We've got.
How many more do we have? We have three more and three more in plate coming out here. It's a very, very sad moment in the meal, the old fashioned is just about gone. I don't know if I'm going to order another one or not, but it's very sad moment in the meal and I'm very excited the lamb is coming next.
So I had a choice between shrimp and lamb and I went with the lamb. So let's see what that is like. Look at that little lamb jus on top of it. Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. I'd love to just pick this up and eat it, but, you know, I don't think you really forced to do that here.
I with the barley, too, right there. Yeah. And I think.
You've got a really good lamb grow. Christine doesn't really like lamb all that much. You just said. Oh, that's really good, Christina. Think that the shrimp is excellent, too, though. Rebecca got a pumpkin risotto. She went with the vegetarian menu again, and we got barley. We get some pumpkin stuff from pumpkin from. Oh, my God, that's ridiculous. This is probably the kind of meal that you would pay.
Let's say you were on a celebrity chef, you would probably pay at least $55 for that meal per person at least. And now we're going to head into some sort of a dessert. Dessert is going to be strawberry tonight. Oh, my gosh. I totally forgot. There is a palate cleanser. Of course it is an asparagus course that's going to come after that.
Then we get the strawberry. So this is essentially an asparagus sorbet, a cabernet sauvignon with the foam underneath. It's supposed to be a palate cleanser. You want to make sure that you get some of the foam with the asparagus. They go very well together. They never had anything like this, having our strawberries multiple ways, a strawberry jam. And we haven't got the freeze dried strawberry, white and white chocolate with a little wasabi.
Because this is for finally course number one, two, three, four, four. Finally, of course, six. This is the end of it. And it had been a little bit over two and a half hours that we've been ordered to carry more very little bites going on with the white chocolate now, which is really cool if you got anything that you would probably see on a menu and never order.
But can you just that strawberry and you don't know what's coming. It's really cool. That's a cool thing about that meal. We literally had no idea what was coming. So if you like to pick your food before a food journey where you literally have no idea you're not in control of your meal at all, I would say go for it.
But it's an amazing culinary experience here. So we're looking for some late night eaten tonight. The pizza joint is open until 130. It's just called the pizza place. So we're back. Christine ran down to the pizza joint. Rebecca got a classic feature. This is just sort of a cheat or knife way. We're looking at crust crust beautifully down there.
I went with the way pizza direct got to your material it got to my Reagan I want to get a little garlic in there I like this more than the classic dough we got. The late night monkey knew this. Or you can go to diner and dash with your dash and diner, whatever it is. And they have breakfast all day and sometimes they had from other things as well.
Pizza. Hey, they get a thumbs up from me on The Scarlet Lady.
Oh, next step is Extra Virgin, where I had two microphone issues. So I'm going to narrate this one. But this is the Italian restaurant refresh made pastas and sauces. Now, typically, this is a four course meal appetizer, pasta entree and a dessert. But we only had about 75 minutes for dinner because we had to make it to our show.
So they combined the pasta and the entree course together. So we did it as a three course meal. So we started with this charcuterie board of what was really nice. We told them Rebecca doesn't eat meat, so they gave us a special tray set up with the meat on one side and the cheeses on the other. So if you've got somebody who doesn't eat meat, just tell them and they'll go ahead and separate the two out for you.
Putting a little honey on the Parmesan was absolutely amazing. Cheers to an awesome dinner. My appetizer worthy braised mini meatballs. Oh, my God. The smoked mozzarella, the pancetta. You can make a meal out of this. I mean, you can just tell them bring like three or four bowls of these and you can make an entire meal out of these.
George went with the calamari. They were okay. Christine at the River Leto, which was amazing. The kind of Leni being the squirrel or salsa are so delicious. Rebecca got the crispy artichoke, which were presented in a most interesting way, and she said The keeper really that came with it was really good. Next we had the combined pasta and entree courses and I went with the spaghetti Alabang Gali The spaghetti and clams and a new pork cheek entree, the spaghetti with perfect al dente.
And the sauce was really, really good. Now not as good as Mom's, but really good. The port chic. I almost can't even describe it. It was just like, melt in your mouth. Absolutely delicious. Rebecca got the potato gnocchi and the sea bass entree. Now, the gnocchi were really, really soft. They were too soft. The sauce was amazing, too.
Maybe that soft with a different pasta would have been really good. And the sea bass was absolutely delicious. I keep saying that, but it was delicious. Jorge went with the meat ragu, which had some oxtail in it. Very interesting. And then he had a lovely steak for the entree. Christine also got that potato gnocchi, and she went with the spatchcock chicken, which she said was some of the best chicken she's ever had.
It was so good. And of course, for dessert, I had to go with the tableside affogato. I mean, it's ice cream and coffee, my two favorite things. And they bring out this whole cart where you can choose like which gelato you want there, what toppings you want to put on it. And then of course they put the espresso on it.
And she even asked you if you want a little side of espresso to go with it. Christine went with the chestnut dessert. It looked like a Hershey's kiss, and then she cut it open. Oh, my God. It was so beautiful, so tasty. And Rebecca went with the chocolate olive oil cake, which was topped with pear. Oh, my God.
It's just like melt in your mouth. And that was dinner at Extra Virgin. Off to the show. Hey, folks, before we move on to razzle dazzle, if you enjoy what we're doing, if we're bringing you some value in your crew's research, please consider hitting that subscribe button and click that notification icon. We really appreciate your support.
Did I mention how good the old fashion is we're having brunch and still dazzle. The razzle dazzle is a vegetarian vegan restaurant, but they do have some naughty items if you want to order meat. So, you know, you don't all have to be vegan or vegetarian in your party. Cheddar, jalapeno, Christian, you can t get some serious albinos down in there as well, right?
They're not kidding when they say Halloween. And I definitely have a slate, too. I'm going to hand it over to Rebecca Appel.
What grew up in.
Rock band and apple crop n, muffin crop n. You know, Christine and George, you've never seen me do this stuff on camera, so they haven't seen me do this chocolate chip con Rebecca's least favorite. Well, just throw it away. So it's very tasty that we're having it would see you're probably going to be better. It's a little dry.
What is this? Coconut milk? Mary, don't think about it like something that, you know, when you were a kid, you would have totally had this, you know? And you're making me giggle like, totally fine. It's kind of dry. But you got all that crunch going on on top and it's really sweet.
And I feel at the time, like.It's almost like eating cereal, but it's bread a lot of times, you know, the cruise ship coffee isn't all that great, actually. Good coffee. I like coffee. It's actually really good coffee down here. They call this mushroom tart char. Like I like a little mushroom salad of some sort. Look absolutely delicious. I think. Roaring frog. Okay, we really like mushroom.
Mushroom tart. Tart is absolutely amazing, right? Well, we're sharing all of it for for about the brain. We get a little bit of everything. Everybody gets like a bite or how they recommend doing it. But remember, this is all included. So this is what now like a watermelon and sesame salad of some sort? It looks like a pizza.
These guys are cutting it. I'm going to eat it like a pizza. We'll see what happens. Mm hm. Almost like a part of baseball. But you're eating it right on the watermelon. We've got a melon salad. Christine noted that there is some spice to the sauce.
Because. They're like, it hits the back of your neck. Oh, what does that they harissa vinaigrette. What? It is really good, though. We got cantaloupe and honeydew. Yeah, you're good. Very good. Go ahead. Here. You can keep it up. Thank you. Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
For the last of our starters with the avocado toast and this actually looks like a soft boiled egg or hard boiled egg, it's actually the lemon. And they grilled it a little bit. So it actually looks like an egg, but it's a lemon. All righty. Thank you. Appreciate it. They brought me my breakfast, but I'm going to try the avocado toast.
Really good. Yeah, really, really good. Now, I got my razzle dazzle breakfast, impossible sausage. I got over 80 eggs and I got some potatoes. Oh, and then we also got cheesy tots for the table. Cheesy God, how much fun is that? So George ordered the chicken sandwich over there, and the waiter wanted it to go. Well, you know, it tend to be dry.
We ordered it anyway. Anything good? Good. Moist. He's got massive french fries over there. It looks amazing. And I didn't know that was a vegetarian chocolate. I would totally believe that meat. Excellent mushroom. Oh mama had a erm bread and a half and really, really good. I got a little grill tomato here as well. The whole breakfast. Just good cheesy dad.
Got to have cheesy tots. Not bad. I've not got the best start I've had. It could be crispier.
Better but they're not. Bad but razzle dazzle and try it out. If you're here on the Scarlet Lady, why not?
Good food for the.
Welcome to pink agave with this iconic entrance where you know you have to take a selfie. I mean, come on, these lights are so frickin cool. I think agave is the elevated Mexican restaurant on The Scarlet Lady. And one cool fact, it has the most mezcal and tequila at over 120 different types of mezcal and tequila. I started the meal with one of my favorites, which is an old hockey, old fashioned tequila man's cow Chocolate Bitters, and some simple sirup.
And you've got an amazing cocktail. Okay, I'm not going to butcher the names of these dishes. This is a potato small plate. And it was really good. But the peppers in this dish and pre