Every dining venue onboard Scenic Eclipse II

By Neil Porten

NZ Herald·

17 Apr, 2025 12:00 AM8 mins to read

The Chef’s Table offers an 11-course degustation, complete with blowtorches and massage stones. Photo / Supplied

Intrigued by fine dining at sea? Neil Porten eats his way around all eight dining venues aboard the Scenic Eclipse II discovery yacht. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.

What does dining look like on a discovery yacht catering for only 228 passengers? Surely it’s a piece of cake to get around all the restaurants in seven days and six nights? Surprisingly, I found it a challenge, but certainly worth the effort. So sit back and enjoy a digest of Scenic Eclipse II’s dining delights.

Elements

Elements is the main restaurant on board, with a la carte dining. The Italian menu changes daily but there is always pasta, a red meat option and a seafood option. And a cannoli. I dined at the bar, on a swivel chair with alternating views of the huge wine racks and a gorgeous sunset over the Marlborough mountains.

The service was attentive, the wine matches perfect for my chorizo risotto, osso buco and lemon cannoli. A flotilla of great side dishes - creamed spinach, mushrooms, creamy mashed potatoes, green beans, cauliflower, and carrots - and the best vanilla gelato, were the best accompaniments.

I confess I snuck back late on my last night aboard just for dessert: a coffee-cream filled cannoli, more vanilla gelato and a perfetto espresso. Magnifico!

Elements is the main restaurant on board. Photo / Supplied

Yacht Club

Making it safely past the twin-carb temptations of the daily pasta station and the baked goods display, you’ll find yourself in a bright and wide space where casual dining is so easy, inside or outside.

My first meal onboard was lunch here, and the blue cheese and black olive bread roll, and a glass of chardonnay recommended by the waiter were excellent with the meaty marlin fillets from the hot-food station.

At breakfast, I had no qualms - and neither should you - in asking for a glorious sourdough loaf to be cut into just so I could have a small wedge of crust. Mild disappointment that the daily rotation of gelato flavours was only available at lunch and dinner, was overcome with a custard tart and a pain au chocolat.

Other highlights: The kippered herring and smoked salmon for breakfast; a lamb Navarin stew - a dark delight of tender morsels; the limoncello gelato, which was served up with the best faux apology: “sorry, it’s soft because it’s got alcohol in it!”.

Yacht Club, Scenic Eclipse. Photo / Supplied

Lumiere

If French equals fine dining for you, then Lumiere will become a favourite. The seven-course degustation included soup (oxtail consomme), poultry (chicken terrine), seafood (scallops and grouper) meat (a stunning individual beef Wellington) and ended with a cheesy twist - a gruyere croissant with a hot fromage sauce.

Details such as the luminous copper-coloured tableware and the waiters co-ordinating to serve each diner at exactly the same time, made this a wonderful meal.

Chef’s Table @ Elements

If you are fortunate enough to snare an invitation to dine at Chef’s Table, you are a very lucky person. Just 10 guests share a black granite table in a private room within Elements restaurant for an 11-course degustation. The experience is equal parts food theatre and culinary excellence.

Executive chef Ashish Dabre and his team served up treat after treat. Tafadzwa, Scenic Eclipse II’s self-titled best assistant sommelier, had a running joke about not knowing what was coming next, all the while hoping his wine selection (from France, Portugal, Chile, Spain, and California) would fit the bill. He needn’t have worried.

Each diner got a “toolbox” - a pestle, timer, brush, tongs, and spray bottle were included - in order to take part in the show. First course was Houdini Pumpkin, a glossy orange gel pouch of silky mousse.

Each dish that followed wowed: the colours, textures, flavours and presentation. It’s not giving away the whole show to say heat, smoke and flame each play a dramatic part.

Hot massage stones cooking the underside of a wagyu beef minute-steak is impressive enough, until the chef unholsters a pair of blow torches to sear the top right under your nose. Foie gras lollipops, purple salmon and a banana dessert finale displaying amazing technique all made this meal unforgettable.

Guests receive a “toolbox” for the Chef’s Table experience, including brushes, timers and tongs. Photo / Supplied

Koko’s Asian Fusion

A beautiful space, Koko’s has a sushi bar up front, the main Asian Fusion restaurant which includes Japanese-style sunken seating, and a private rear room where the Night Market magic happens.

The Asian Fusion menu changes often and encourages shared plates. I chose vegetarian, and the green papaya salad - cool, crunchy and mildly chillied, and the juicy chunks of mango in the Maldivian curry left me refreshed and replete.

Koko's - the main Asian Fusion restaurant. Photo / Supplied

Night Market @ Koko’s

L-shaped counter seating for just eight diners, all with a close-up view of the chef’s station: this could be a stall in any bustling Asian night market, if you ignored the beautiful room, attentive wait-staff and a 4m Foveaux Strait swell rolling past the large windows.

Indian, Asian, Filipino, and Middle Eastern cuisine rotate on the menu, and the food I’m treated to by Chef Starlin is a dizzying eight courses, inspired by the island archipelago of the Philippines. Tropical and Latin ingredients and flavours combine and delight.

A pork belly taco, where the shell is chicharron, deep-fried pork crackling, and calamansi lime adds a sour bite. A cured salmon sinigang soup is spicy, fresh and flavoursome.

The smoky reveal of a beef-filled bun, the applewood tasted in the dried-beef crumble on top. The eggplant and shrimp dragon roll was off the scale, and every diner hacked clean the encrusted rice at the bottom of their individual paella pan.

For the finale, Chef Anthony from the Philippines took over making dessert, a thumb-sized block of sticky rice inside a golden tube of mango gelato, topped with squiggles of coconut sauce. Night markets will never be the same…

Sushi @ Koko’s

I sat at the end of the counter away from where the chef prepped my meal, so the pretty presentation when it arrived was a pleasant surprise. There’s a selection of both traditional and Western sashimi and sushi and you can order what you fancy from either or both, or do what I did: let the chef decide then order more of your favourites.

The aburi hotate - torched scallops - were perfect, as was each slice of the tuna, kingfish and salmon sashimi. The barbecue beef roll and the shrimp sushi filled me up, before the wonderful dessert - a custardy coconut-orange soup with scorched fruit and a scoop of mango sorbet.

Azure

Azure is open early and closes late, and is the go-to for a post-excursion meal, a light snack or a decadent treat. It does great coffee, foam art included, and you can sit on the aft terrace or inside, preferably near the food cabinet: all the better to select your next pastry.

Grilled lamb chops were suggested to me by the helpful waiter for my first breakfast here, and it was the breakfast I didn’t realise I needed in my life. Remembering you are onboard a luxury discovery yacht means discovering the joy of an Aussie burger, complete with fried egg and beetroot, matched with a glass of cold champagne.

Scenic Lounge

The hotel manager thinks the coffee in the Scenic Lounge, the heart of the ship, is the best onboard. He’s almost certainly right, because the last hospitality I enjoyed before disembarking was a perfect double espresso.

There’s a bar snacks menu here, and canapes are served before dinnertime, but a couple of “courses” from the “liquid food” menu (Mango Mule? Lamington? Oh My Cucumber?) is my recommendation.

Sky Bar

Intimate indoor seating, poolside loungers and cabanas make this topmost venue a haunt to seek out. You can get nuts and chips, but order a creamy, fruity cocktail over the marble bar top and drink your calories, like any sane vacationer.

Observation Lounge

It’s usually a tranquil spot to make yourself a hot drink and dunk a freshly baked cookie or three 24/7, but when the ship’s in peak sightseeing mode this forward lounge and the huge observation deck can be heaving with guests. Then the urns of hot chocolate and coffee, and more substantial baked goods, are wheeled out to sustain the masses.

And don’t forget…

There were bars I didn’t get around to trying: the Yacht Club and Azure each has one; Koko’s has a sake bar, Lumiere’s bar features Champagne, and check out the cheese selection at Elements’ bar.

Despite every effort, I could find time for in-suite dining, which is always available. And coming soon - it’s already available on sister ship Scenic Eclipse - Chef’s Garden is a dining experience featuring cuisine and wines of the places you are cruising through.