I've done thirteen cruises, and I still remember the first time a chef started singing while cooking my dinner a couple feet from my face. Let's talk about food — what's included, what costs extra, and how to get the most out of it without feeling frustrated on day one.

The main difference between the main dining room and the buffet is the hours and the type of service. The buffet is open far more hours a day — breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack, and dinner — and you serve yourself. It's usually organized by section (pizza, local dishes, the chicken-and-beef basics, fruit, desserts, pasta...), on both MSC and Costa.

The main dining room, on the other hand, mostly operates at dinner, with a menu that changes daily: usually five to eight options per category (starters, sides, mains, desserts), plus a handful of fixed options that are always available (vegetables, turkey breast, rice...). During the day, if it's open at all, it works almost like a buffet rather than off a menu.

Specialty restaurants are separate: they're usually not included in the cruise fare (though some cruise lines include them depending on your cabin category, or comp them if you've reached a certain loyalty tier). You need to book them in advance — usually a day ahead, or the morning of for that same night — and the menu barely changes: they specialize in one type of cuisine. They're typically open at dinner, sometimes at lunch too.

There are fixed seating times — usually two or three, depending on the season — and the whole restaurant runs on the same schedule: almost everyone arrives within the same 20-30 minutes, eats for an hour to an hour and a half, and within two hours the restaurant has seated, served, and cleared out the entire room.

In higher cabin categories (a suite, for example), you often get access to a restaurant with no fixed hours — you show up whenever and get seated — something Norwegian calls flexible dining. On lines like Virgin Voyages, every restaurant is included and none of them cost extra, but it's still worth booking ahead, even a month out, since they fill up.

The Teppanyaki, without a doubt. The food is good, though not fine dining — what makes it special is the show: the chef cooks your dinner right in front of you, sings while doing it, gets you singing along too, and does tricks with the utensils. You'll usually spend three to four hours at the table, with plenty of food. I first tried it around my seventh or eighth cruise, and I've done it twice since.

The other one I'd highlight is Costa's Michelin-starred restaurant — the only one with that distinction among the cruise lines in the club. On my last visit we had an eight-course tasting menu with two or three desserts and wine pairing included, for around $110 (100 euros) per person. It's not quite the level of a Michelin restaurant on land, but it comes pretty close, at a fraction of what it would cost on shore, with very attentive service.

In my experience, not much — the biggest difference is in the buffet. Costa's tends to have a bit less variety and changes less from day to day; overall I prefer MSC's, though this varies a lot by region: my worst buffet experience was in the Caribbean (less variety, which makes sense given local product availability there), and my best was in the Mediterranean, with more variety and better ingredient quality. In the end, each ship adapts quite a bit to the market it's sailing in.

One funny detail: Costa doesn't offer free pizza at the buffet, while MSC does. Costa's pizza is good quality if you order it separately, but not different enough to justify paying for it.

Rushing. People don't realize you're one of hundreds or thousands of passengers, and there are flows that need managing — it's the same as the person who's already standing in the aisle the second the plane lands, or the one who gets to the airport and camps out at the gate "so nobody takes their spot" when the seat is assigned. It's the same with the restaurant: people line up at the door like they might miss dinner. Relax — there are hundreds of you, and you're all going to eat.

At the buffet, the classic mistake is grabbing food before you've walked the whole thing. My trick: do a full lap before you pick up a single plate. A buffet isn't there for you to eat everything — it's there so you can see all your options and choose what you actually want that day. That way you avoid loading up on something on impulse and then throwing it away because you didn't actually feel like it.

The Costa pizza thing was funny the first time I found out — I remember thinking, "wait, this is free on MSC?" And here's another one: after the pandemic, some cruise lines (Costa included) cut back the hours on their free restaurants, and only leave a few paid spots open late, like a burger stand. So if you get hungry past midnight while you're out at the party, you have zero free options unless you stashed something in your cabin earlier. It's a bit jarring for something billed as "all inclusive," though it's also understandable — on land, out partying, you don't get free food at that hour either.

From what I've seen, cruise lines handle this well. Everyone I know with allergies or intolerances has been happy with the alternatives they're given — I haven't heard a single complaint about it, quite the opposite.

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