Cruise Buzz: Regent’s Reimagined Compass Rose Specialty Restaurant

compass rose

Regent Seven Seas Cruises is updating its Compass Rose dining room into a specialty restaurant with a new concept and menu that offers a variety of options nightly. 

The new main dining room experience will provide guests with a number of combinations of dishes to choose from during dinner service, including more than a dozen different meat, fish and seafood items. Dishes can be prepared to tasted, garnished with a sauce of the guest’s choice and accompanied by a selection of side dishes. Additionally, each evening the ship’s executive chef creates nightly specials, which adds more than a dozen appetizers, pasta dishes and entrée choices to the menu. For dessert, a separate menu includes items ranging from international cheeses to handmade ice cream and pastries, cakes, crumbles and soufflés. 

The menu for Compass Rose is divided into two equal portions. The left-hand side provides guests with the ability to fully customize their dinner, while the right-hand side has the executive chef’s nightly specials as well as a multi-course “menu degustation.” For the customizable section of the menu, guests can select from a list of entrées that include seafood items like lobster, shrimp, scallops, salmon and dover sole, or specialty cuts such as New York strip steak, filet mignon, lamb chops and veal medallions. 

After making their selection, guests determine how they would like it prepared – grilled, baked, broiled, poached, or roasted – and select from a complementary list of sauces to garnish the dish, such as madeira-truffle, creamy herb, hollandaise, green peppercorn and hickory barbeque. From there, guests can choose from more than a dozen side items that range from lyonnaise potatoes, potatoes gratin and sweet potato fries, to sautéed spinach, brussel sprouts and green asparagus.   

Since Compass Rose is the ship’s primary dining room, the dinner specials will change nightly with sample entrees that include veal medallions oscar, braised turbot fillet, cornish hen, roasted duck Beijing style and seared mahi mahi. 

The dessert menu will always have a selection of fine international cheeses offered with a glass of port wine, assorted crackers and French bread along with a variety of handmade premium ice creams and sorbets. Nightly specials prepared by the ship’s pastry chef will include such items as Tanzanian chocolate cake, almond croquant, bananas foster and Viennese apple strudel.

Along with the dinner menu, Regent Seven Seas Cruises is also reimagining the lunch menu for Compass Rose on Seven Seas Navigator, Seven Seas Voyager and Seven Seas Mariner. In celebration of the launch of Seven Seas Explorer, Compass Rose on the line’s other ships will include lunch selections from the three specialty restaurants on Explorer -- Prime 7, Chartreuse and Pacific Rim. As with the dinner menu, the lunch menu will be updated daily and offer entrée items such as Croque-Monsieur or Croque-Madam from Chartreuse, Aromatic Duck from Pacific Rim and Yellowfin Tuna Salad from Prime 7.

Guests on Seven Seas Explorer and Seven Seas Navigator experienced a preview of the Compass Rose menu during a multi-week test period, and it will remain as the standard menu for those two ships moving forward. The menu is scheduled to debut November 9, 2016, on Seven Seas Voyager and Seven Seas Mariner on May 13, 2017, following each ship’s scheduled dry dock.

This story originally appeared on www.travelagentcentral.com.