Given how good the buffet food was on the Oceania Riviera, it is no surprise that the dining room food was even better. There was a main dining room, which I only ate at once, and four specialty restaurants available by reservation, with one night's seating guaranteed at each of the restaurants.
Red Ginger (Asian) - Salmon and scallop ceviche
Red Ginger - Watermelon and duck salad
Red Ginger - Claypot salmon
Polo Grill - Rib eye steak
Toscana (Italian) - Tagliatelle with salami
Toscana - Sea bass
Jacques (French) - Sea bass salad
Jacques - Lobster and scallop gnocchi
Jacques - Pumpkin soup
Jacques - Fabulous Dover sole
On every other cruise I had ever been on, virtually every dinner was in one of the large dining rooms. However, on this cruise I only ate dinner one time in the Grand Dining Room. The reason was due to a very unsatisfactory structure for dining on the Oceania boat. First of all, dinner was only served from 6:30 pm to 9pm, so it was virtually impossible to eat in the main dining room first, then check out the buffet later. Secondly to eat in the main dining room you had to physically go down to the reservations desk on the 5th level to make your reservation. Third, to see what was on the menu in the dining room, you'd have to go to the dining room to look at the menu, with no app or video screen access to the current menu. (Yes, you could see the specialty restaurant menu from your video screen, but that menu was static.) And fourth, you did not have your own assigned table in the dining room, so you wouldn't see the same people in your dining neighborhood. Lastly, the food was not terribly memorable. Indeed, I don't remember what I ate in the dining room, nor did I even make a note of it. However, I did take these two pictures.
