Here’s a confession that will make no sense to anyone who has ever priced a Yacht Club suite.
My wife and I were in MSC Yacht Club on a four-night Seashore sailing out of Port Canaveral. We had a private restaurant. We had a butler. We ate two full lunches at Ocean House on Ocean Cay, appetizers included. At no point on this cruise were we in any danger of going hungry.
We still walked the length of the ship to eat fried chicken by the pool.
Twice, if you count the barbecue.
What changed on Seashore
I’ve sailed this ship before, including a seven-night cruise when we ate in the main dining room every evening. My opinion of MSC’s included food has been steady for a while: the pizza and pasta are reliable, and the rest has room to improve. Call it 6.4 out of 10 — the same number this site’s dining guide gives her Included Dining.
Then Seashore went into a statutory dry dock at the Grand Bahama Shipyard this spring and came back to Port Canaveral in May with two complimentary restaurants it didn’t have before. The Chicken Man sits on the main pool deck on Deck 18. Red Cactus BBQ & Ribs sits near the aft infinity pool on Deck 8. Both are walk-up counters with their own shaded seating. Both are included.
Neither is trying to be a specialty restaurant. That’s the point.
A specialty restaurant has to justify a cover charge. A counter by the pool only has to be worth putting your shoes back on for.
The Chicken Man: about that name
Let’s deal with the elephant on the pool deck.
I live near Walt Disney World, which means I live near a Chicken Guy!, Guy Fieri’s counter-service spot with chicken tenders, chicken sandwiches and a long wall of dipping sauces. MSC’s new venue is called The Chicken Man. It serves chicken tenders, chicken sandwiches and a selection of dipping sauces.
I’m not suggesting anything. I’m a man who noticed.
Whatever inspired the name, the food is what matters, and the food is good. My wife and I worked through all three things on offer: the original sandwich with lettuce, tomato and a sauce I took for a flavored mayo; a second sandwich topped with jalapeño slaw; and the tenders. The original was my favorite. I’d happily eat the other two again.
You don’t wait. Food comes off the line continuously, so you walk up, take what you want, and go back to the pool. No pager, no standing in a wet swimsuit watching a fryer.
Then there are the fries.
They’re flat and wide, like a steak fry that’s been through a press, and all that extra surface does exactly what you’d hope — they come out crispier than any steak fry I’m used to, and they’re seasoned properly. We both thought they were the best thing on the tray, and I say that as a man who ordered a chicken sandwich and got upstaged by the potatoes.
That’s the whole review of The Chicken Man. It’s included, it’s beside the pool, it’s fast, and I’d go back. On a cruise ship, that combination is rarer than it should be.
Red Cactus BBQ & Ribs: the sides nearly stole it
Red Cactus is the more ambitious of the two, and the only one of the pair that also does breakfast. It’s a walk-up counter near the aft infinity pool. At lunch the menu runs to pulled pork, barbecue chicken, beef brisket, pork ribs and sausage, with burnt-end mac and cheese, baked beans and buttermilk coleslaw alongside, and banana pudding or a cookie pecan butter pie to finish.
We tried everything except the pulled pork, which I didn’t see when we were ordering. It may well have been there. I may well have been distracted by ribs.
The chicken was the standout. Very good — the second time on this ship that MSC handed me excellent chicken at a counter with no cover charge, which was not on my bingo card.
The rib was the other winner. It came clean off the bone and was a considerably better piece of barbecue than the brisket sitting next to it.
The brisket was my least favorite thing on the tray, by a wide margin. The barbecue flavor was fine. The meat wasn’t. Brisket should give way to a fork, and this didn’t. It was tough, and fatty in a way some people enjoy and I don’t. One portion isn’t a verdict on the smoker. It is the one item I’d skip until I hear it’s changed.
The sausage I enjoyed, with a footnote: it wasn’t the smoked sausage I’m used to from barbecue places back home. Different, not worse.
Then the sides, which I’d go back for on their own.
The burnt-end mac and cheese was delicious. The potato salad was legitimately good — a side you’d order on purpose, not a scoop to fill the tray. The cornbread was good for what it was. The baked beans were my least favorite, though still fine. My wife had the corn and rated it good but not great; she’s a buttered-and-grilled corn person, and this one had been dressed up as something else.
I finished with the banana pudding, which was good. My wife had the cookie pecan butter pie.
So Red Cactus wasn’t a clean sweep. But when the misses are one tough brisket and a side of beans, and the hits are the chicken, the rib, the mac and cheese and the potato salad, that’s a barbecue counter I’m glad to have on a ship. And because none of it costs anything, you can build a tray of six things and find out what you like without paying to be wrong.
The Marketplace buffet, and a marital pizza dispute
Marketplace is still Seashore’s big casual hub, and I walked through it on this sailing to see what was on offer. It’s enormous. There’s something for almost everyone.
I didn’t eat a meal there this trip, so I’m not going to rate it as though I did.
What I can speak to is the pizza, because my wife and I have a long-running disagreement about it. She prefers the pizza she picks up at the buffet to the pizza we’ve had delivered to our Yacht Club suite, and she’s told me so more than once. On previous sailings she has deliberately walked to Marketplace to get it. Why she prefers it is the open question. It may be fresher off the oven. It may be that she’d rather take two slices than commit to an entire pie.
I like the delivered pizza. The whole pie that came to our suite this trip was fantastic. But a whole pie is a lot of pizza when all you wanted was a snack.
She didn’t try that one. The dispute survives, as the best marital disputes do, on incomplete evidence.
We ate very little pizza this cruise, which for us is unusual. Between Yacht Club, two Ocean House lunches and the two new counters, we were rarely hungry enough to go looking for it.
Will the new counters help the buffet crowds?
Marketplace can get hectic at peak times. It’s a big ship, and everyone wants lunch at once.
MSC has framed the new venues partly as a way to spread that demand, and on paper it adds up: two more places to eat, in two separate pool areas, neither of which requires going inside. I didn’t count heads before and after, so I can’t tell you it worked. I can tell you that two genuinely appealing alternatives now exist, and that’s two more than the ship had in April.
The main dining room: what to expect, and where my read comes from
I didn’t eat in the main dining room on this cruise. We were in Yacht Club, and that’s where we ate.
My read comes from an earlier seven-night Seashore sailing, when we had dinner there every night. It was genuinely good. There were a few misses, which is true of every cruise-ship dining room I’ve sat in, and at the time I’d have called it roughly on par with the other mainstream lines and a small step behind in places.
When in doubt, order the pasta and the bread.
It holds in the main dining room, the buffet and everywhere else on board. Across every MSC sailing I’ve taken, those two have been consistently good. The pastas are where I’ve found some of the best food on the ship, and the bread has never let me down. If you’re staring at a menu and can’t decide, that’s your answer.
What I won’t do is tell you the main dining room has improved, because I didn’t retest it. The reports I’ve seen are encouraging but not unanimous — better service than MSC’s reputation would lead you to expect, with consistency still the sticking point. That matches my own earlier experience closely enough that I’d trust it until I’ve eaten there again.
Worth knowing either way: much of what you’ll find written about eating on this ship was published before the dry dock, so none of it accounts for the two counters. A fair amount of it describes a version of her that is no longer sailing.
My Yacht Club restaurant improved dramatically on this sailing, which makes me curious whether the same thing is happening in the other galleys. That’s a question for a future cruise, not a conclusion I can hand you from this one.
Where this leaves the scorecard
This site’s own MSC Seashore dining guide scores her Included Dining at 6.4. Until this sailing, so did I.
That number covers everything included across an eighteen-venue ship — the main dining rooms, the buffet at its worst as well as its best, and a deliberate deduction for MSC's uneven consistency, applied line-wide. It isn’t wrong. It’s answering a wider question than the one I’m answering here.
Mine is narrower and more personal: is there included food on this ship I would choose to eat? Before the dry dock the honest answer was pizza, pasta and a decent main dining room. Now it’s those plus two counters I walked half a ship for. That moves me from 6.4 to 8.
The guide already calls this the strongest complimentary casual tier in the class. The category score is the part that hasn’t caught up, and it’s the one I’d expect the next update to move.
So has Seashore’s included food actually improved?
For me, yes, and the two new counters are most of the reason.
The 8 isn’t a claim that every dish is excellent. The brisket certainly wasn’t. And it isn’t the result of re-eating my way through every venue in four nights. It reflects several Seashore sailings, with the newest additions giving me a reason to look at the whole picture again.
What changed is the range of included food I’d actually choose to eat.
Marketplace still has the huge spread and MSC’s excellent pizza. The main dining rooms still offer a proper sit-down dinner with pasta and bread worth ordering. Now, on top of that, there’s good fried chicken by the main pool and a barbecue counter by the aft infinity pool with two standout sides and another standout chicken.
The result is a ship where you can spend the day at either pool, pick up something you’d want to eat anyway, and never have to choose between the buffet crush and a specialty bill.
Try both new counters on your first sea day, before you decide which pool is yours.
The Chicken Man’s original sandwich and fries are the safe bet. At Red Cactus, get the chicken, the rib, the burnt-end mac and cheese and the potato salad, and skip the brisket for now.
If you’re in Yacht Club and think none of this applies to you, we thought that too. We went anyway.
And anywhere on the ship, when you’re not sure what to order: pasta and bread. It has never steered me wrong on MSC.
Series · MSC Seashore Yacht Club 2026 · entries 01–04
Keep reading
Should You Sail on MSC?
Four sailings in, and the honest answer to the question I spent years getting wrong — plus where to go next depending on what you’re weighing.
The Logbook · Entry 03Is MSC Yacht Club Worth It?
Three sailings, three interior suites, and the $950 balcony upgrade we turned down twice — with the numbers behind the decision.
The Logbook · Entry 01MSC Yacht Club Dining Got Better. The Menu Didn’t.
The other half of this sailing — the private restaurant, two Ocean House lunches, and the dish that changed my advice.
Seabound Dining ScoreMSC Seashore Dining Guide
All eighteen venues scored and ranked. Included Dining sits at 6.4 there — the number this entry makes the case for moving.
Ship GuideMSC Seashore
The whole ship: cabins, layout, both pool decks, who she suits and who she doesn’t.
Suite EnclaveThe MSC Yacht Club, Decoded
What the upgrade actually buys, and why we left it twice to eat by the pool.
Line GuideMSC Cruises, Decoded
What MSC is built to solve, and why the included food matters more here than on most lines.
Port GuideOcean Cay MSC Marine Reserve
The island this sailing overnighted at, and what is worth doing there.
I booked and paid for this cruise myself, in full, more than 18 months before sailing.
Some journeys take you places. Others stay with you forever.Journey further.
