Virgin Voyages Review, Part 2: Food Heaven

If you’d like to book a Virgin Voyage I encourage you to use the following link, courtesy of my friend Isabella, who can answer even more questions than me (leave a comment and I’m happy to put you in touch with her!). Full disclosure: I do not receive a thing from her if you use the following link, just supporting a dear friend: Virgin Voyages Booking Link

Ok let’s get you caught up on the other review posts, since this is a multi-parter:

Let’s continue by taking a look at some of the food on board. I hope you’re not hungry…

General Dining

I think I made the point very obvious in the last post: there are no Main Dining Halls with assigned seats nor buffets on Virgin ships. This is a good thing.

There are small eateries around the ship, like the pizza place on the Deck 7, next to the ice cream parlor. There’s also one of my favorite places on the ship, the Dock House on Deck 6, which has a lovely deck on the aft of the ship and serves Mediterranean cuisine. But the main food hall is called The Galley, on Deck 15. You sit where you like and there are small food stalls that you can order from. I had ramen one day, an omelet for breakfast the next day, etc.

I found all of the food to be high quality and enjoyed exploring the variety of options available to us, knowing it was all included with my ticket.

My favorite part of visiting The Galley had to be the S’mores Jar, one of the little dessert offerings they had that were just the perfect blend of richness without being too dense and making you take a nap afterward.

Specialty Restaurants

There are six specialty restaurants, each with their own theme. You have to make reservations through the app, which is what most people end up doing as soon as they board the ship.

The Wake – Steak and seafood. A fancy steakhouse vibe at the aft of the ship (over the wake of the ship)
Pink Agave – Elevated Mexican. Dark interior colors give way to creative drinks, great food, and an enormous variety of tequila and mezcal
Razzle Dazzle – Signature restaurant. Wildly decorated with a naughty-or-nice menu concept (nice being plant-based and naughty having a few meat options). GET THE SMOKED BACON
The Test Kitchen – Experimental modern cuisine
Gunbae – Lively Korean BBQ. Soju and plenty of hands-on meat-grilling
Extra Virgin – Classic Italian trattoria. Absolutely fantastic.

Out of all of the specialty restaurants, Gunbae is the only one where you will be seated with anyone outside your party, but it’s designed to be a more social environment (there’s a drinking game, don’t worry).

The Wake

The Wake is a classic take on a fancy steakhouse. You walk down a grand staircase next to an incredible chandelier to go to your table and it really sets the tone for something special.

The table settings were fantastic and very on-brand for the type of vibe they were going for.

And the ceiling had these brass reflecting orbs, it was a really cool look.

I figured it wouldn’t be a nice steakhouse without a brown drink so I ordered some version of an Old Fashioned (cocktails top out at around $18 but most are $12-13 apiece, not any worse than what I’m used to in Dallas).

I started with a steakhouse classic: a wedge “salad”. I love how after drowning some lettuce in bleu cheese and bacon you can still call it a salad!

For my entree I went with a filet, which of course was included in my fare. They had some premium options (namely: a tomahawk steak) but there’s always next time. Filet it was.

The steak was cooked beautifully with just enough char. I’m a big dude and know my way around a steak, this was legit. I crowned my meal at the Wake with a chocolate tart situation.

During my second cruise I went to the Wake for brunch (the Wake and Razzle Dazzle are open for breakfast/brunch). For whatever reason I didn’t get too many pictures but the french toast was wonderful!

Pink Agave

As a reminder: I live in Texas, so I’m around Mexican food all the time. Pink Agave would have to hit a high bar in order to impress me, and I’m happy to say they did!

I had eaten at Pink Agave on my first cruise but stopped by the bar area for a quick bite one evening (which turned into a bonus Mezcal tasting, which I’ll get to later). I highly recommend the corn appetizer (very similar to helotes) and the shrimp. For dessert you HAVE to get the Choco Taco. I found the dishes to be very flavorful but not overbearing, which just the right amount of spice to add just a bit of heat without going crazy.

Test Kitchen

Test Kitchen was my favorite place to eat. It also had some amazing light for food photos so I decided I’ll do a complete post entirely about Test Kitchen, so stay tuned!

Extra Virgin

Ok, I just said that Test Kitchen was my favorite place to eat, but I think that was because of the photos I got to take of the incredible food. I’ve been on an Italian kick lately (my doctor is worried) and Extra Virgin was just incredible. We started with a charcuterie board, which was very full and delicious!

Between our group we must have ordered every starter they had. All were delicious except the artichoke (read about my experience eating at noma for the full artichoke story), which I’m sure was delicious but I don’t artichoke.

They had a selection of main entrees you could order and then you could have some hand-made pasta as well, with a few different varieties available. One of our group tried the Chilean sea bass, which was pretty nice.

The star of the show, in my opinion, was the pasta. Absolutely divine flavor, texture, and toppings. It seriously reminded me of being in Tuscany earlier last year.

The offered a few slices of truffle as a premium option, which one person in our group went ahead and got “for the ‘gram”

As expected, they had a variety of desserts, like this chocolate cake situation below, but my favorite was the tableside affogato, made with a variety of toppings that you can pick (or you can just yeet them all like I did).

Razzle Dazzle

I think, without even meaning to, that I ended up eating at Razzle Dazzle the most during my two cruises. The first night of every cruise they have a few tables set aside for solo travelers to hang out and get to know each other, which was really cool of them.

The menu at Razzle is primarily plant-based and everything seemed to be zhuzhed up with crazy colors. They had a few meat options as well, which were also great.

The main reason I loved Razzle as much as I did was simple: smoked bacon. It was basically candied bacon with a hint of smoke added to it, and it was just divine. I never had my good camera with me when we were at Razzle Dazzle, so here’s a quick video I posted on Instagram that has some of our dishes. Sadly the smoked bacon seldom lasted long enough for pictures to be taken.

My secret order at Razzle Dazzle for brunch was ordering the chicken sandwich and the waffles to create my own chicken and waffles dish (the server was impressed).

Gunbae

Gunbae is a fun, social Korean BBQ experience. Soju was flowing and meats were grilling. Our waitress also introduced us to a fun drinking game (very little alcohol was consumed, don’t worry) that the entire table played. I dominated, obvi.

The food was exactly what you’d expect for Korean BBQ and it tasted exactly how I would’ve expected.

Like every other restaurant, I left full and happy. We enjoyed the other couple that sat with our group and saw them every now and again elsewhere on the ship.

Food summary and what’s next

I like the way Virgin approaches its dining program. By including all specialty restaurants in the price of my ticket it meant I explored more parts of the ship to get to each restaurant. It meant I spent more time in the Virgin app getting my reservations in. It also became a topic of conversation as I would chitchat with people on the ship, asking where they had been and what they thought of each restaurant.

In the next post we’re going to take an intense look at the Test Kitchen, Virgin’s take on cutting-edge modern cuisine!

Have you eaten at Virgin’s specialty restaurants? Let me know which one was your favorite in the comment section below!

Virgin Voyages Review, Part 2: Food Heaven

General Dining