It’s a full day at sea today and we’ve decided to spend it eating at IZUMI. They have a sushi bar that we want to eat for lunch and hibachi which we’ll do for dinner so we can wrap up our dining experience at all the restaurants on board. We made our reservation for closer to 1pm before lunch service ended which was good in the sense that it wasn’t too crazy and loud from the hibachi tables, but bad in the sense that you could tell the wait staff was ready to wrap things up and the service was just fine.
We started off with MISO SOUP and shared SHRIMP & VEGETABLE TEMPURA both of which were pretty standard. I decided I wanted to mix things up and try something special so I ordered their CHAMPAGNE LOBSTER ROLL which is blanched lobster, avocado, daikon sprouts, soy wrap, champagne sauce, and chili thread. It honestly tasted like sushi rice which was pretty boring and disappointing. I was full though just from all the eating so I didn’t order anything for dessert especially since it was just lunch and we had leftover key lime pie and cheesecake in our room hanging out in the cooler to snack on later. Not to mention all the dining areas on board the ship that were free if we wanted something to eat before we came back for Hibachi dinner.
HIBACHI: I was a little disappointed in Izumi for lunch but was hoping dinner would be more fun/better. It was not great. I forget that in terms of food, hibachi isn’t that good. It’s about the fun of the show but we didn’t have an amazing group of people at our station, our chef was a little awkward (though very nice and he tried very hard) and the food ended up being just salty and oily which is the norm for hibachi.
Overall, Izumi was the worst on board restaurant and while it wasn’t bad it wasn’t good either. Also, even with our dining package, Izumi is and extra $10ish to go to so we would’ve been better off going back to any of the other restaurants or getting food that was open to the whole ship at the buffet or at El Loco Fresh on the pool deck. At least we tried it though and it would’ve been a question mark for us if we didn’t go everywhere so it was good to go to in that respect. Would not go again or recommend that one to other people though.