bread lobster decoration at the breakfast buffet
Holland America Zaandam doesn’t have an extensive variety of eateries like some huge ships have, but there’s plenty to eat and nobody ever need go hungry while sailing on any cruise ship, even a smaller one like the Zaandam.
best dessert of the cruise
Food that is included in the cruise fare can be found in the dining room, the buffet, and in the poolside grill and taco bar. Between them all there is a variety of options available.
flourless chocolate cake in the dining room
There are just two pay-extra eateries on the Zaandam, the Pinnacle Grill and Canaletto. These are the standard premium restaurants on Holland America’s ships.
Pinnacle Grill
The Pinnacle Grill has its own space, which is open during lunch and dinner. Suite guests can have breakfast there, but it’s not open for everyone then. Lunch there is about half the price of dinner. The Pinnacle Grill is Holland America’s upscale steak house, though it offers other options besides steak. If you want to pay for it in the dining room you can try some of the Pinnacle Grill’s meals without actually going there, but if you’re going to pay extra for food on a cruise ship you might as well actually go to the place and get the whole experience rather than just an expensive plate of food in an otherwise free dining room.
appetizer in the dining room
Canaletto is pretty clever in that it’s located in a corner of the buffet and only used as a separate restaurant at dinner. This works out well because the seating is available for people eating at the buffet for breakfast and lunch when a lot of people eat there, but then sectioned off during dinner for their specialty Italian restaurant when less people eat at the buffet so they don’t really need the extra seating. It saves from having a space on the ship dedicated just to a restaurant that is only open during dinner.
Explorations Cafe coffee bar
We did not eat at any of the specialty restaurants on the Zaandam, unless you count the coffee bars of which they have one in the Explorer’s Cafe on deck 5 and another in the Crow’s Nest on deck 9. We did occasionally get specialty coffee for John and dairy free hot chocolate for me in those places.
dining room eggs benedict
We also didn’t try the pool grill, though they do offer both gluten free and non-beef options. We did have lunch at the taco bar next to the pool grill one day, which has a variety of serve yourself toppings and fillings to choose from, and chips, tortillas, or taco shells to put them in or on.
pastries at the buffet
The buffet did not make anything gluten free on site, but they did have some pre-made items available for the asking. Different stations serve different things with breakfast having stations for eggs benedict, omelets, or waffles as well as grab and go pastries, and the main line with things like scrambled eggs and breakfast meats. Fruit, yogurt, parfaits, and hot and cold cereals are also an option at breakfast.
parmesan crusted chicken
Lunchtime in the buffet had a pizza station, sandwiches, various hot dishes that changed from day to day, some sort of distant lands option, a main line with meat and sides, and of course desserts.
appetizer at the Alaska brunch
The dining room had limited options for breakfast or lunch, but they did change the lunch menu daily. One day they had an Alaska brunch, but even there if you wanted anything gluten free it had to be ordered the night before. They did not make anything as simple as gluten free pancakes on the spot without a pre-order.
Dutch Tea
The dining room served tea each afternoon. They called it Dutch Tea, but it seemed like a basic afternoon tea with little towers of little tea sandwiches, scones, and pastries. Each table had a little tower on it that people there could take things from. Each item was different. They would bring something gluten-free on request at the tea without pre-ordering, but it didn’t have all the things like the normal one in the photo above has.
shrimp taco
Mostly we had breakfast and lunch in the buffet and dinner in the dining room, which is pretty typical for a lot of cruise ship passengers. We did have lunch in the dining room one day. I ordered a salad which came with some sort of balsamic vinegar dressing. I don’t know what was in it, but one bite of that dressing set me into a coughing fit with my throat feeling like it was closing up and I couldn’t hardly breathe. Guzzling a bunch of water eventually cleared things up, but needless to say I did not eat any more of that. During the rest of the cruise with any other salads that came with a little square pot of brown dressing I avoided the dressing even if it didn’t look exactly like that first one. I haven’t eaten any brown salad dressing on a Holland America ship since.
pork dinner
Other than the scary salad dressing the food was good. There were a variety of choices every night. A lot of the options involved seafood which is not my favorite thing, but most of the other people at the table generally ordered it. There was always some sort of poultry or pork and you can pick the main from one dish and have it with the sides from a different one if you ask, which was nice because what comes with their everyday roasted chicken is not as good as things that come with meals that are only offered once.
lamb chops
When we first got on the ship the itinerary in the app was not showing any formal nights, but they ended up having one formal night and one orange night. Orange is not a color I generally wear, but I did have one shirt that had a bit of orange in a dragonfly printed on it and John had one that had orange in some ducks so that was what we wore. Some people went all-out orange, but most were more subtle. They did not serve lobster at the formal night, though it was on the pay-extra for stuff from the Pinnacle Grill menu every night.
porpoise (internet photo)
Our most memorable dinner was the last night of the cruise. Our table was by the window, but we were on the inside end of it with two people between each of us and the window. It was somewhat of dinner and a show with orcas appearing outside the window early on in the meal, followed a bit later by humpback whales, and finally by a pod of porpoises. The couple on the seats next to the window had their phones out filming the various creatures. The lady in the middle on my side of the table was quite large and popped out of her seat looming directly over the poor lady by the window and just about completely blocking my view any time there was anything worth seeing so I didn’t see the orcas at all and just one spout from the humpbacks. The porpoises were right outside our window playing in the ship’s wake repeatedly popping up completely out of the water in sets of 3 so they were fun to watch even through just a small spec of window space not blocked by other people. They were pretty small so it was easy to see the entire animals, even the whole group at once. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any photos since other people had all the window space. Figures a night we weren’t seated next to a window would be the only night there was any marine animal action to see.
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