14/02/2025
Food Reviews for Sandals Royal Caribbean
Royal Caribbean includes 9 restaurants. Neighboring Montego Bay includes 12 for a total of 21 eateries. If you can’t find something you like between the two I feel for you!
Spices:
We started out with arrival lunch at Spices. They have a daily lunch buffet with cuisine that changes daily. We arrived on Caribbean day and were treated to oxtails, rice & peas, various fish dishes, festival, and a full salad and dessert bar. We also both enjoyed a cup of chicken soup that was out of this world. Everything was delicious and not overly spicy (okay except the soup. It was fire!).
We ate buffet breakfast here twice. A nice spread of fruit, omelet station, smoothie bar, hot food & pastries. No pics unfortunately.
Royal Thai:
Without a butler you are only able to make one reservation on the app (though you can reserve all others through Club Sandals). We reserved Royal Thai which was the restaurant I was most excited about being a Thai food lover. This ended up being our least favorite meal! The location is beautiful. You take the dragon boat to the private island, and all seating is outside. We had a nice table by the water. We were very lucky with the weather and had a cool breeze. I can see this being prohibitively hot during summer. The appetizers were nice. We shared spring rolls and satay. The satay could have used more seasoning in my opinion but it wasn’t bad. The sauce made up for the lack of flavor. We also ordered laab but it never arrived and we didn’t follow up. We each had a cup of tom kha soup and this is when it went downhill for me. I had one mushroom and one cube of chicken in my soup. It was also quite watery instead of the creamy, luxurious texture that normally comes from a coconut based soup. For our mains we ordered fried rice to share, pad thai and two curries. There was approximately 1/2-3/4 of a cup of rice to share, and frankly once we tasted it we didn’t need any more. The curries were the same issue. Whoever is cooking is so light handed on the herbs and spices this could have been hospital food. The pad Thai was passable but not good enough that we wanted to fill up on it. We ended up leaving and going to Bombay.
Bombay:
We ate here 3 of our 4 nights. That should tell you how wonderful it was. The first night we tried all of the tandoori appetizers (lamb, chicken & paneer) and shrimp pakora. All were excellent. I really enjoyed the tandoori lamb chops. For our mains I chose butter chicken, and Noel had the rogan josh. We shared a basmati rice, yellow dal, and butter & garlic naan. When I tell you the butter chicken and naan were the best I’ve ever had - we came back two more times and only ordered that. It was incredible. So much flavor and the perfect spice level. The manager was very accommodating and got us in every time as walk ins close to closing. We had a wonderful server every evening named Daley. If you are lucky enough to sit in his section you’ll understand.
Bombay also has a nice sit down breakfast where we had steak & perfectly cooked eggs and my favorite sandals hash browns.
Bella Napoli:
We shared one pizza from here during pool time. Noel got my favorite ham & pineapple (no judgement). It was delicious and a nice snack. Not too heavy to eat in the sun. They have a variety of pizzas to choose from but will also custom make.
The Mariner:
We only tried a Jamaican patty from here. We both preferred the beef over chicken. They do an American style lunch with burgers, sandwiches and salads. We have eaten at Mariner at various other sandals and they make a decent burger if you’re craving a taste of home.
Jerk Shack:
We absolutely love Jerk Shack. This was our third location and just as good as the others. It’s a simple menu of chicken, pork, sausage, fish, sweet potatoes and festival. Just ask for a combo to share and they bring a bit of everything. This is the spot to be after a morning spent in the sun and ocean. Best eaten with your hands, dipped in hellfire & jerk sauce. If you like hot food, hellfire will bring the heat.
The Cricketers Pub:
This is a standard at Sandals. Some locations serve a nice Indian & British spread. Ours had a smaller menu. We only stopped in for a drink after learning this location had no scotch eggs. It was also the smallest of the five we’ve been in.
We did not eat at the following:
Le Jardinier - French. We had reservations for our anniversary and skipped to have Bombay one last time. We’ve eaten at two different Le Jardiniers and they were both excellent.
La Tavola - Italian. I’ve not been impressed with any Italian at any sandals so we skipped - however this was the busiest restaurant on property by far so may be worth a try next time.
