LA CUCINA – Specialty Dining Review, NCL Joy

Let’s Talk Italian. Today we are doing an honest review of La Cucina on the NCL Joy.

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Everyone today we’re going to do a specialty dining review on La Cucina on NCL Joy come check it out Hey everyone John here from bite size cruises welcome back to the channel if it’s your first time checking us out thank you so much we really appreciate you uh coming by today we are going to talk about La Cucina on NCL and NCL joy in particular I’ve been on uh most of

The NCL Fleet and been to La Cucina a lot so we’re going to do a little specialty dining review uh let’s get into it so La Cucina is a specialty dining restaurant if you buy the dining package you can use it you can also go to any of these restaurants

And do a la carte dining I don’t know why you would ever do that I don’t know why they have prices on the menu it doesn’t make sense uh to do that at all unless you were just going there and getting like an appetizer but if you’re

Going for dinner you should have a package and do it otherwise dinner’s going to be like 200 bucks so you could start out at La Cucina on NCL Joy it is a very large restaurant it has a very large outdoor area as well which was really really nice and crowded the La

Cucina and all of the specialty dining restaurants were very crowded the entire time we were on lock on NCL Joy uh I’ve been saying in the past couple months I am shocked at how busy specialty dining has gotten it’s almost packed and almost sold out every night depending on the restaurant like Le

Bistro uh La Cucina Teppanyaki most of those were pretty much sold out in Cagney’s uh Cagney’s was a mad house uh every time I walked by there so you can get small plates here you can get soup like pasta fazool you can get uh antipasto plates that has different types of meats and

Cheeses and pickled vegetables on it you can get a Caprese salad calamari we’re gonna throw the menu up here but it’s your very traditional Italian menu in my opinion you can also get a small uh kind of sharing plates of different pastas like carbonara lasagna fettuccine alfredo uh you can get gnocchi and

Risotto again to me this is very traditional Italian like if you would go to any Italian restaurant anywhere in the world you would have these options they do have their Pizza offerings Standard Pizza which you can see the different menu options for pizza and then obviously you’re gonna have

Your entrees again if you decided to go to dinner here and just pay for dinner it would cost you if at least 100 150 I don’t know why you would ever pay individual it’s why the other thing that’s funny to me is that they have the pricing on here

You you’re going to use your dining package so with your dining package you can get um it’s pretty much a fixed price menu I used a voucher for being Platinum now with the voucher you can only get one entree uh one uh one appetizer and one dessert and then

They allowed me to get a pasta as well which is very nice and we got a bottle aligned with that as well but again for your entrees you’re going to see very similar there’s some seafood there’s a salmon and a shrimp dish the shrimp has linguine

Then you’re going to get into your more traditional Italian dishes like red snapper sauteed pork scallopini they have a beef tenderloin with ravioli uh chicken and then they have osobuco as one of those and that looked amazing I will say that Meg had that it looked

Fantastic I got the red snapper I try to try I try to taste different things when I go to these restaurants because we go on so many cruises and we go to Specialty dining a lot I really do try to you know sometimes I just fall into

Like if I go to Cagney’s or chops I fall into just getting a rib eye and the same onion rings or french fries every time and I’m really trying to get outside of that and try some different things so I had the red snapper it was really good

It has braised fennel on it I have no complaints about the food at La Cucina I’ve said it before it’s not one of my favorite specialty restaurants it feels like Carrabba’s or any you know pick your whatever Italian chain you have Near You locally it seems like that

To me for dessert they have great desserts tiramisu panna cotta uh cannoli a ricotta cheesecake and a chocolate tart Meg had the ricotta cheesecake I had the tiramisu they were both good again I don’t have any complaints about La Cucina for me what it comes down to is how it compares to

The other Italian offerings on other Cruise Lines uh like Cucina Del Capitano on on Carnival or Jaime’s or Giovanni’s on Royal um and I forget the one that we ate at on MSC it’s all blur anyway when I compare all of these different Italian restaurants

The thing that stands out to me the most is that La Cucina in my opinion is very basic Italian food it’s Pizza Pasta and none of it’s great even at like Tuscan Grill and celebrity which I didn’t think was great I think Jamie’s and Giovanni’s are much better than Tuscan Grill was

And Tuscan grows like half Italian half steak um I like La Cucina I would eat it La Cucina I don’t think it should be a specialty restaurant I think it should be an included offering I think it would be awesome if it was an included restaurant because there are not a ton

Of complimentary options on Joy but I get why I get why it’s especially dining it just in my opinion it isn’t anywhere near the level of Giovanni’s or um Jamie’s so it’s very good I had a great meal I would recommend that you go there if you have a dining package like

A four or five night dining package it’s certainly worth going uh as we’ll review each of those restaurants this week you’ll see which ones I think are really worth paying for and which ones aren’t if you add like a dining package for every night it’s better than the dining room yes

It’s better than the Garden Cafe which is the buffet on the ship of course uh and so it’s good I think owned by Scarpetta the newer iteration of Italian on norwegian’s Prima ships is is really good and much better than La Cucina I think Palomar which is a Mediterranean

Restaurant on Prima way better than La Cucina so I think NCL knows where it sits in their like hierarchy of restaurants of all the specialty dining on this ship it’s at the bottom but it’s still a good restaurant it’s still the food was great the service was great the wine was great

The desserts were great everything was really good it’s just not at the same level as what I think you should pay for specialty dining now here’s a caveat if it was like a 15 cover charge per person 10 or 15 bucks like that I think that would almost be

Perfect a perfect slot for it so that maybe it’s a little bit elevated from your uh complimentary uh or included food and it’s just one of those like hop step UPS uh almost like what you would pay for lunch for something I think that would be amazing if you did like a thirty

Dollar dinner I think that would convince me to do it or maybe like half a package where you could use half a dining package for dinner at La Cucina and half for like American Diner right just two things that I don’t think should necessarily be full credit of your dining package just

My opinion so that is what I think of La Cucina still had a great meal still will go to it we’re going on Escape in October which I’m super excited about and we will definitely do La Cucina again and we’ll bring you another review at that

Point but that is our review and I am sticking to it um we hope you enjoyed the video we would love for you to subscribe to our Channel we put out a brand new Cruise video every day come along be part of our little Community here we really

Really appreciate it thank you so much and we’ll see everybody tomorrow bye