We absolutely love Virgin Voyages cruises! We’ve travelled with them twice in the last two years; the first time on our honeymoon around the Greek islands and the second on a longer journey along the Mediterranean from Barcelona to Athens. Both of the experiences were incredible; we saw so many beautiful places, had lots of fun on our days at sea and also ate some amazing food!
We were nervous about booking our first trip with them; we’d heard some horror stories about dining on cruise ships, but after doing some research, we reassured ourselves that we’d be able to eat safely and once we were on board, we couldn’t believe how many coeliac safe options there were!
We’d highly recommend a Virgin Voyages cruise to anyone who wants to see more of the world whilst having a relaxing time without worrying about dietary restrictions. My experience on board genuinely reminded me of my pre-diagnosis days since I really didn’t need to worry about food the whole time!
As with all of our travel guides, this post is about our experience. Always check menus and coeliac safety protocols with the restaurant when you get there.
With that said, this is our guide to gluten free options on Virgin Voyages.
Restaurants
The Wake
The Wake has consistently been one of our favourite restaurants on Virgin Voyages! It’s an upscale steakhouse that serves a huge range of options; we went for the chicken and salmon. We’d recommend ordering something from the grill (all can be made gluten free) and a selection of side dishes to share; we tried a number of the sides and they were all lovely! The desserts here also deserve a special mention – the lemon cheesecake can be made gluten free and it was honestly one of the best desserts I’ve ever had!
Though the best thing about this restaurant is it’s position at the back of the ship and floor to ceiling windows resulting in an incredible view of the wake of the ship! Because of this, we’d recommend looking at your itinerary and booking at a time that you know the ship will be moving so you can experience dinner with this view!
We also visited for brunch which we’d definitely recommend, again most of the dishes could be made gluten free and if you book on a day at sea, you’ll get a lovely view of the sea out of the window!
Test Kitchen
Test Kitchen is an experimental restaurant decorated to look like a science lab, serving a tasting menu of lots of small plates. We found it to be a really fun experience and the food here was some of the best we had on the ship! They have three different menus that they rotate across the different nights, all of which can be adapted to be gluten free. We ate here twice on our cruise and had menu A and C. Both menus have a vegetarian and a non-veggie option and you can pick and choose what you want from each one.
We absolutely loved all of the food we had, even the more unconventional dishes. All the waiters were fantastic at taking us through the experience too and we also ordered the wine pairing which made it extra special! The highlight was definitely being invited into the kitchen at the end of our meal to meet the chefs and see how some of the dishes are prepared. We’d highly recommended eating at Test Kitchen on Virgin Voyages for a really special experience!
Extra Virgin
This Italian restaurant has quite an extensive menu of starters (antipasto), pastas dishes, main courses (secondo) and desserts. The portions are slightly smaller so the idea is you get one of each course, as well as the included Affettati Misti cheese and charcuterie board. Most of the pasta dishes can be made gluten free and there’s a good range of GF options for the other courses. The dessert offering is impressive with the star being an affogato cart which is effectively a choose-your-own-topping ice cream bar. Not all the options were gluten free, but I had a lovely ice cream topped with baileys and cream which I was very happy with. In our opinion, this is one of the best restaurants on Virgin Voyages and is a must for anyone who’s gluten free and planning a cruise!
Pink Agave
Inspired by Mexican street food, Pink Agave serve a huge variety of small plates to share and almost the entire menu is gluten free! Over the two cruises we’ve done with Virgin, we’ve tried the whole menu and our favourite dishes were the Esquites (grilled sweetcorn), Guacamole, Aguachile (tuna), Camaró Amarillo (prawns) and Papas con Chorizo (potatoes). The cocktails here were particularly good with a focus on tequila and mezcal based drinks. We really liked this restaurant and would recommend it to anyone, especially if you’re gluten free!
Razzle Dazzle
We ate at Razzle Dazzle on our first cruise with Virgin and whilst it wasn’t our favourite restaurant on the ship, we did still have a good meal here. It serves classic American food with a bit of a twist. Most of the menu could be made gluten free (even the fried chicken) and the whole experience felt very safe. We’ve also heard good things about the brunch menu here which we’re yet to try. The Scarlet Lady ship has recently changed things up with Lucky Lotus by Razzle Dazzle which is a Chinese inspired menu which we’d definitely be interested in trying (we’ll just need to book another cruise!)
The only restaurant we didn’t try was Gunbae as we figured the combination of Korean food, which is usually difficult to make gluten free, plus the format of sharing a grill with strangers would just be too high a risk. This didn’t prove to be a problem though, since we loved the other restaurants and had plenty of good food during our time on board!
The Galley
Anyone travelling with dietary restrictions knows that buffets are a nightmare for cross contact and this is where Virgin really stand out. The Galley is Virgin’s answer to the traditional cruise buffet; except everything is made to order!
Whilst not every food stall could cater, there were a number of coeliac safe options including:
The Daily Mix – most salad bar options
Diner and Dash – most of the all day breakfast
The Burger Bar – burgers with GF bread
The Sweet Side – a variety of desserts
Bento Baby – some of the sushi
Pops and bubs – ice lollys
Grounds Club Too – coffee!
As always, check with the people taking your order when you get there. The labelling was a bit hit-and-miss but everyone working there was really knowledgeable and happy to help figure out what was safe. Personally, we preferred eating in the bigger restaurants but the galley was perfect for breakfast and grabbing smaller bites when we didn’t want to eat too much. Whilst each stall had different opening hours, some places were open 24/7 and having access to coeliac safe food whenever we wanted was such a relief since I usually worry when travelling about when my next safe meal will be!
Casual Options
Richard’s Rooftop
This is a private bar reserved for Rockstars (people who booked suites). We splashed out for our second trip so had access for the whole time. They have an extensive drinks menu and offer some light food options. The sushi platter and poke bowls could be made gluten free (served with GF soy sauce!). We ordered both and absolutely loved it!
The Pizza Place
This was the biggest surprise of the trip; freshly made gluten free pizzas cooked in a separate oven making them coeliac safe! We ate here so many times throughout our cruise so we could try the different toppings and they were all so good! They also offer grab and go salads you can have on the side.
Sun Club Cafe
This casual restaurant on the top deck serves poke bowls that can be made gluten free. I’ve had both the salmon and the chicken bowls and they were both lovely. This is a good place to get lunch if you’re having a day in the sun up by the pool.
The Grounds Club
The ship’s coffee shop serving a variety of different coffees. I personally like to keep my coffee order simple so stuck with a latte each day but they did have a range of options. They also serve gluten free muffins with a choice of blueberry or chocolate!
The Athletic Bar
The main bar on the top deck serving a range of cocktails and smoothies. They are able to make the smoothies gluten free – just make sure they thoroughly clean the blender. The frozen piña coladas are pre mixed to a gluten free recipe so there’s no cross contact risk.
Lick Me Till Ice Cream
The ship’s ice cream stand. Not all of the flavours are gluten free but they’re well labelled and if you describe your needs as a “gluten allergy” they’ll change gloves, use a different scooper and get your ice cream from a fresh tub; it all felt very safe!
Behind the Scenes Ship Tour
For one of our days at sea, we splashed out on a ship tour which meant going behind the scenes and meeting the crew. It was so interesting to see how things run behind the scenes from the laundry rooms, to backstage at entertainment venues and the bridge where the ship is controlled.
As part of the tour, we were shown around the kitchens on board (which were impressively massive) where all the food is prepared. We were introduced to one of the most senior chefs on the ship who explained all the different things that go into running all the ship’s restaurants. I informed him that I had coeliac disease and he then told us about all the different allergy protocols they have across the ship to make sure the food was safe. He showed us the charts on the wall with the full allergen breakdown of different meals and told us about how they minimise the risk of cross contact through separating preparation area. He asked how my experience was so far, to which I responded that everything had been incredible. He replied “good, let me know if it ever isn’t and I’ll sort it out”!
This conversation gave me extra peace of mind that allergies and dietary restrictions are taken seriously on Virgin Voyages and that the teams work hard to make sure all food is prepared safely.
Eating at Ports
We didn’t need to worry much about finding food at ports since we started each day with a good breakfast and knew we would be having a big dinner. However, on most of our port days we found somewhere to grab a snack or light lunch. We also decided in Rome to treat ourselves to a nice sit-down lunch, given how good we’d heard Italy was for gluten free.
I’m sure other coeliacs will know the struggle of trying to find a coeliac safe option whilst out and about. We have a detailed guide explaining how to find safe gluten free food whilst travelling, which you can read here but the main tool we used was the app Find Me Gluten Free. It’s effectively a Tripadvisor but for people who can’t eat gluten; you can search by location and rank restaurants on their overall rating or coeliac safety score.
The base version of the app is free and additional features are added in their premium version. We’ve been affiliates with Find Me Gluten Free since we started our blog and you can save $5 on a premium membership with code JESS.
Overall, we loved our experiences on our two Virgin Voyages cruises and were blown away by the number of gluten free friendly restaurants and cafes on board!
Have you taken a cruise on Virgin Voyages? Or have you had a positive cruise experience with a different line? Let us know in the comments; we’re going to update this guide every time we go on a cruise with Virgin!
Wherever you travel, we always recommend taking a language translation card to help communicate you needs. Buy our favourite language translation cards
Looking at other destinations? See all our destination guides
Planning a trip with coeliac disease or gluten intolerance? Read our gluten free travel tips
Enjoyed this guide? You’ll find more coeliac-safe restaurants, gluten free city guides, and travel tips on our Instagram @jess_and_martin.
Jess and Martin’s Gluten Free Travel Guide 
Leave a comment