MSC Magnifica Review - Part 6: Eating

​Reviewing food on MSC Magnifica is a job for the sternest of souls,  I mean, even writing about it makes the heart sink, so let’s try to raise the mood with two thin rays of of hope. The pizza is excellent, and available almost around the clock. There is also excellent gelato by Venchi, who charge about £5 a scoop for the stuff in their South Kensington store.

However, man cannot live exclusively on pizza and gelato. No really, you can’t - not even for a few days, at least not unless you’re a teenager with the metabolism of a hummingbird and the constitution of an ox.

MSC pizza = good. MSC gnocchi = bad.

​Away from the pizza station, the rest of the buffet is, well, problematic. Somehow, this Italian line, who are so good at pizza, manage to render pasta repulsive; gnocchi cooked to the point of disintegration and flavourless sauces.

MSC aubergine parmigiana - the oozing green liquid is a bug, not a feature.

​Things in the main dining room aren’t much better. The first night included a salad featuring wilted and rotting spinach, an aubergine parmigiana that was composed of two thin slices of aubergine and a little cheese, tasteless risotto then a veal dish that was so odd as to defy description.

Fish mixed grill - like some sort of aquatic hate crime.

​The second night in the dining room as themed as “Mediterranean Night”. Things actually started out hopefully - the gazpacho appetiser was OK. There then followed a main course of “mixed fish grill” which was unabashedly horrendous; overcooked to the point of inedibility - I could barely even cut the squid. A tablemate ordered moussaka and received a portion fit only for a doll’s tea party. Dessert was, without a word of a lie, a single piece of backlava - the sort of potion that a Lebanese restaurant would bring out with the bill.

By the third night, I’d lost the will to live, far less take notes about the food. Assume it was dreadful.