Specialty Dining on Norwegian- Le Bistro Review

Specialty dining on Norwegian ships includes the iconic French fare at Le Bistro restaurant. Pictured above is the delicate and decadent escargot, which is a favorite appetizer for many guests, including my husband and son who order it every time! As Norwegian has now made their specialty dining venues a la carte pricing, patrons may dine at Le Bistro and indulge themselves with as many orders of escargot as they wish! We prefer to enjoy a varied meal, however, so we always opt for the SDP meal plan, which we have been given as a promo perk for the past several cruises. The SDP stands for Specialty Dining Package, which offers between three and fourteen meals, based on your cruise length. If you pre-purchase the package online you save $10 as well. The details can be found here: https://www.ncl.com/onboard-packages/dining-packages
Having the dining package is beneficial for many guests, as it entitles each guest with the SDP a soup or salad, an appetizer, an entree and a dessert from the menu. Some cruisers might be concerned that there are no soup or salad courses they would want from a venue but they would like two appetizers. We have not found this to be an issue at any of the specialty dining restaurants as they will always work with you to make your meal enjoyable. As we received the 3 day SDP for my husband and myself on our Pearl cruise, and bought the 3 day package for our son, we made our online reservations for Le Bistro for the first night of the voyage. One note for anyone who does not know when/how to make reservations-Haven/Suite guests can reserve their dining 100 days prior to cruising and guests in inside, oceanview, balcony or minisuites may reserve their dining online or over the phone with their PVP 90 days before cruising. Now to the meat and potatoes of this delicious review....

The french onion soup pictured above was my son's soup choice. He also had the french onion soup in the dining room later on in the cruise and could definitely tell the difference between the two soups. The one at Le Bistro was rich and flavorful, and chock full of a buttery crouton and cheese. I had the cream of mushroom soup, which is the best cream of mushroom soup I have ever had!

I won't detail every delightful morsel of our meal here, but here are some highlights of our apps and dinner:
The tasty cornets stuffed with four unique fillings-

We all opted for beef at Le Bistro for dinner, with my husband and son sharing the rib eye. I enjoyed the grilled beef tenderloin.  

Dessert was scrumptious of course! We chose the creme brulee and chocolate fondue to share-we were really stuffed by the time we got to the last course! :) I almost forgot to mention that fresh baked bread was brought out at the start of our meal with their homemade herbed butter. This was amazing! I think we may have filled up on that a little too much!

Now for the pricing...we were told our menu was not completely current as the ship had just come out of dry dock. I have found a current menu with pricing, which is active for the Escape and several of the newer NCL ships. I can say this menu did not differ too much compared to the one we had-either price wise or with food choices. I so wish we would have remembered to take a picture of our menu!!! We got every other menu but in the excitement of our first day on the cruise it slipped our minds! Rest assured the choices and prices are very similar to the link for the menu below: http://www.beyondships2.com/uploads/8/2/4/5/8245255/30965_le_bistro_dinner_menu_escape.pdf

So will we go back to Le Bistro?! Absolutely! :) In fact we will be dining there on our cruise in a suite on the Sky in August! Stay tuned for that review and I will not forget to take a picture of that menu! :) 

If you are wondering what specialty dining venues are on the different Norwegian ships check out this handy link- 
https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/Dining_Guide.pdf