The New Royal Caribbean Vegan Menu-Main Dining Room

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Your guide to Royal Caribbean’s new main dining room vegan menu!

In August 2019, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line announced that a new vegan menu would be available in their main dining room aboard all of their cruise ships. Beforehand, vegan options were available upon special request but without a specific menu. In February 2020, I had the pleasure of cruising on Harmony of the Seas and enjoying their new menu. From my experience, here is my guide to the new main dining room Royal Caribbean vegan menu!

Although we were on Harmony of the Seas for 7 nights, we only ate dinner in the main dining room for 4 of those nights. Other nights were spent at buffets, quick-service, or other restaurants on the ship. There are so many restaurants on Harmony of the Seas that it would almost be impossible to eat at them all during a cruise. The menu in the main dining room changes every night with new exciting options to choose from. The wait staff will present a new menu each night after your meal to preorder dinner for the following night. This way the kitchen can be aware of the special meals and have them accurately prepared. Otherwise, your meal will take a very long time to prepare. Below is my review of the 3 menus I was able to document.

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Main Dining Room Vegan Menu

Day 1

Appetizer

For our first course, we had green bean croquettes and vegetable tempura. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the green bean croquettes but they ended up being one of my favorite appetizers from the entire cruise. The sauce served with the croquettes is like a delicious pesto dip. The vegetable tempura was fantastic as well. I always enjoy a good vegan tempura.

Soup

For the soup course we had a creamed broccoli soup. This was absolutely delicious, though probably quite high in sodium. It tastes exactly how you would expect; like blended broccoli and spices. And it was amazing.

Main Course

The entrees for the evening were an eggplant burger and a butternut squash curry served with white rice. The eggplant burger was extremely delicious. I personally enjoy a vegan burger that tastes healthy and is healthy. Not everything needs to be a “meat replacement”. My only problem was the burger was not served with any side, but four courses is definitely still plenty to keep full. The butternut squash curry flavor were very good. A little too spicy for my personal taste, but most people would find it mild. Overall a great meal.

Dessert

Dessert this evening was a vegan creme brûlée, or at least their attempt at one. While this custard was rather delicious, it is no imitation for a creme brûlée. They had offered to brûlée the custard with some sugar on top, but said it might not turn out right so offered it to me as is. I don’t know if it would have been much better with scorched sugar on top, but by itself was quite nice.

Day 2

Appetizer

The appetizers for our second dinner were polenta fries with a spicy sriracha-artichoke salsa and a grilled avocado with a chili and cucumber salad. Both of these appetizers were delicious. The avocado was incredibly simple but flavorful. The polenta fries, while not really edible as fries, were quite delicious. The salsa with the fried polenta really had a great texture and flavor.

Soup

Potato soup with mushrooms was served as the second course on this night. While very simple, this soup was very flavorful. I’m assuming this consists primarily of blended potatoes with mushrooms as a garnish. Quite lovely.

Main Course

I was excited to see what the kitchen would come up with for the vegan pasta dish, carbonara. To be honest, this is kind of awful. The dish was literally just buttered spaghetti noodles with chickpeas added and some cooked eggplant skin. There was also some added uncooked tofu on top. Maybe to look like cheese? The vegetable fried rice would’ve been fine, but whoever cooked it over salted it to death. It was almost inedibly salty. Honestly both of these dishes were pretty bad.

Dessert

Dessert tonight was a peanut butter caramel rice crispy bar with a berry compote. This was absolutely delicious. All of the flavors complimented each other very well. This vegan dessert was the best of the entire meal.

Day 3

Appetizer

For our final night in the main dining room, our appetizers were rice paper rolls server with a citrusy dipping sauce and a raw vegetable salad with a sesame-lime dressing. Both of the were very flavorful and enjoyable. They were both very light.

Soup

The final soup on this cruise is their tomato basil soup. Nothing special or different here. Just a very standard tomato soup with some basil thrown in. A little bit too much salt, but that’s most things on a cruise anyway. Overall not bad though.

Main Course

For the final main course, we were served orzo pasta stew with vegetables and vegetable pakoras. The orzo stew was good but a little bit bland. Some of the flavors in the stew didn’t quite go together in my opinion though. A pakora is an Indian dish of fried chickpea fritters served with a cilantro dip. These were tasty but a little bit bland as well. In my opinion, this dish could’ve been better served as an appetizer.

Dessert

Our final course on Harmony of the Seas was this wild berry bar. The kitchen here clearly does very well with their vegan desserts because all of them have been very good. This wild berry bar was exception. Almost like a dry fruit cobbler, this bar was exploding with flavor. Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries make up this delicious end to my experience here in the main dining room.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, I thought the new Royal Caribbean vegan menu was pretty good. They definitely aren’t winning any prizes for the best vegan food in the world, but it is definitely nice to have more than just a salad or some rice and beans. I appreciate the work that they put into trying to make something interesting for those who actually want to enjoy their dining experience onboard their cruise.

The service staff in the main dining was truly fantastic and so accommodating. My server told me that if I wasn’t interested in the vegan menu of the night, the chef could prepare something specific at request. Obviously you would need to give plenty of warning and time for the chef to be prepared, but the fact they were so accommodating made me feel very well taken care of.

Before my cruise, I had called to alert them that I would need the new Royal Caribbean vegan menu and they assured me that would be available. Once coming to dinner, the staff was surprisingly unaware of my call-ahead request. But they still were easily able to accommodate my special dietary needs. I think you will enjoy the vegan menu the next time you decide to take a Royal Caribbean Cruise.

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