At this point in our cruising series it should be obvious that we LOVE food. It feels like all we did on this cruise was eat! But for our last day on board, we had planned the most special experience yet. We would be dining at the super fancy and high class adults-only restaurant, Remy!
On day 2 we took a tour of Remy and on day 3 we had dined at its neighbor, Palo. But we saved the best for last with Remy. It’s considered the ultimate in luxury dining at sea, and our tour guide estimated that a meal at Remy would cost about $400 per person on land!
However, it wasn’t dinner we would be having at Remy. Instead, we were signed up for a special dessert tasting! Pompidou’s Patisseries Dessert Experience is a 6-course “meal” where all the courses are desserts. All desserts in a Ratatouille-themed restaurant. I can’t imagine a better time to be had.
We actually didn’t really know what to expect from the experience because, truthfully, we signed up for it on a whim. We booked this cruise pretty late before it set sail so we didn’t have time to do a ton of research. We just knew we wanted to eat at both Remy and Palo. Remy offers a champagne brunch, this dessert experience, a small plates food & wine experience, and of course dinner. We chose the dessert to try something different! At $55 a person, it wasn’t going to break the bank as much as some of the other offerings either.
Like with Palo, we received a special invitation confirming our reservation at Remy a few days before. Also like Palo, Remy is an adults-only dining location and has a dress code. We brought out our best and fanciest outfits for our dessert!
Our dessert experience was at 3:15 and we were called back right on time!
The dessert experience had just one seating, so everyone was taken into the restaurant at the same time. There were only about 20 people in the restaurant so it was quite cozy. I was also very glad that we had taken the tour and seen the whole place a few days before, because we were sat at one of the first tables near the entrance and wouldn’t have been able to see much else if we hadn’t already!
The restaurant was beautiful, but we already knew that much from our tour the previous day! We were sat in a super cute booth with the Remy upholstery:
A quick glance at the menu showed that this was sure to be a delightfully fancy experience:
Along with, of course, the bag chairs we noticed during our tour:
The way the experience was set up was there were about 8 parties, each sat at their own table. The executive chef came out to introduce himself and explained that he would come out between each dish to tell us about it. The menu was purposely very plain without much explanation so he could tell us all about each one. There was also a sommelier that came around and offered us the wine pairing, which we could add on for $25 a person. It was tempting, but we opted not to this time. Several tables around us did it though and it looked great, so perhaps if we do it again we would indulge!
Before long our first dish came out, which was this Macaron Framboise:
It’s large a raspberry macaron with berry filling and gold leaf. It was a great start to the experience – sweet but tart and really delicious!
A really wild thing that we noticed as well was that each time the servers came out to bring us a dessert or clear our table, the 4 of them would make eye contact and place our dishes or pick them up in sync. It blew my mind watching them silently coordinate the placement each time! It was such an odd detail but made us feel super fancy.
Our next dish was a sort of caramel cream puff, or “Religieuse Caramel”:
The chef explained that the name looks like “religious” because this dessert is supposedly meant to look like… a nun! It’s basically two caramel cream puffs topped with a pecan. It was very rich and delicious!
Something we quickly noticed about this experience was how adorable and passionate all the chefs were. The executive chef as well as other chefs walked around for each dish, answering questions and asking how we liked everything. It was very clear that they all absolutely LOVE food and talking about food and making others happy with food – it was just so wonderful to see and experience.
Next up we had what ended up being my favorite, the Mille Feuille Vanille:
Don’t ask me how to pronounce that because I have no idea. It’s basically a layered pastry with thin little slices of puff pastry, cream, and chocolate. It was so amazing. I found it a bit difficult to eat because the top and bottom layers of pastry were hard to cut through, but the flavors and mixed textures were so good!
If the mille feuille was my favorite, the next one was for sure my second favorite… or maybe it’s a toss up. It’s an Opera cake:
I guess I really like layered desserts! This one had layers of sponge cake and chocolate ganache, and that little bit of vanilla ice cream there at the bottom. It was so chocolately and tasty but not overly rich. We all loved this one.
The next to last dessert was a bit different – for the first four, the chef had come out ahead of time or with the dessert to explain all the flavors and everything before we ate it, or as we were eating. For the next one, there was no introduction. Even the menu was vague, presenting this only as “Citron”. We joked about it, saying like “oh are they just going to bring out a lemon?” So we were a little taken aback when this was brought out to us:
It’s…a lemon? None of us really knew what to expect here, and it was clear the other tables felt the same, until the chef came out and gave us the details:
This “lemon” was actually a sort of truffle! It was filled with a lemon lime jelly, surrounded by a mousse and then a chocolate shell. For the shell they used a special blowtorch technique to make it look like lemon skin. It was amazing! The jelly inside was VERY tart and at first almost too sour for my liking, but after a few more bites I enjoyed it more and more. This one was a surprise favorite for all of us, just for the presentation of it!
Finally it was time for our last “course”, and we were actually getting pretty full for just having eaten nothing but desserts! This one is the Chocolate Chateau de la Muire:
This one was hard to take a photo of because it was basically just a bunch of layers of chocolate shaving things. It was a good ending as it felt “lighter” than some of the others. The chef explained that it’s called chateau because it’s meant to be like a house! We all really liked this one too, especially as a last course.
At the end of the meal they brought us one more surprise – free champagne and macarons to take home!
This is also a good spot to note something unexpected that took us all a bit by surprise – the champagne at the end of the meal was free, but we noticed on our receipt that we were charged for water…lol. We all had noticed and commented on the fact that they kept pouring our water out of glass bottles of Evian and we assumed it was just part of the fanciness of the experience! Obviously it’s not a big deal or anything, just not something that we were expecting. And it’s probably good that we didn’t do the wine pairing in this case!
When we were finished, we thanked all our chefs and servers and made our way out! To top off our experience we signed the special book that they have at the host stand, to commemorate our time at Remy:
It’s such a cute little finishing touch to a great experience!!
Once we got back to the room we compared notes and concluded that – no surprise – we all loved our time at Remy!! Like I mentioned before, my favorite dessert was the Mille Feuille, Chris and Sarah both loved the Opera, and as a lover of fruity desserts, Grant’s favorite was definitely the Citron!
Our final thoughts: Remy dessert was such a cool thing that was unlike anything we’d experienced before, and at “only” $55 a person, we thought it was worth the price. While I would definitely do it again, I think now that I have experienced it once I would be more likely to try another meal at Remy before I go back to this one – like champagne brunch or dinner! The chef also mentioned that the desserts change frequently so just because you’ve done this experience once doesn’t mean you will get any of the same desserts again on a repeat trip. Even just reading some reviews from other blogs, they had completely different desserts from us so I’m sure it could be done many times with very different selections. Overall we all loved Remy and are looking forward to being able to dine there again!
I hope you enjoyed this review of our time dining at Remy’s dessert experience. There’s a few more cruise posts on the way (including the details of the rest of this day), so make sure to stay tuned for those as I wrap up this trip report! Thanks so much for reading as always – until next time,
One Comment
Mom
Amazing food! And you’re beautiful!