Our First Speciality Restaurant - P&O Cruises Sindhu

For a long time, we didn't venture into speciality restaurants and stuck to the main dining rooms. The main reason for this was because we felt guilty! We had always chosen fixed dining, with the largest sized table we could opt for and met so many lovely people by doing this. We'd end up enjoying their company so much that we wouldn't want to miss out, which meant we didn’t venture into the speciality restaurants.

This changed for us in 2018 on our Canary Islands cruise onboard Aurora. We were allocated a table for 8 as requested, but nobody else turned up! Instagram followers might remember this story, but essentially we ended up merging our table with another group nearby and once again enjoyed great company. One of the group we were sharing with had an allergy and had to choose his food a night ahead. This meant we got a sneak peak of the following nights menu and one night we all agreed that the following nights menu wasn't that exciting. Someone in the group suggested we all went to Sindhu together, and the restaurant manager was kind enough to arrange it.

We're from Birmingham, so we know a good curry when we taste one and Sindhu did not disappoint. Every course was tasty, well spiced and there were also little extras in between that made it feel special. We had a brilliant experience, it was well worth the cover charge and we almost felt disappointed that we hadn't taken the plunge before. Since covid the Sindhu menu has changed and its now charged per dish. This has its benefits, if you've ran out of space for desert you can skip it and save a bit of money, but it does take away from the simplicity of the experience. Previously if you'd pre-booked online you'd pay in advance and have no charge once onboard. Now you still pay a charge when pre-booking, this also gives you a 20% discount in Sindhu onboard and the amount you've already paid is taken off the bill, the remainder is then charged onto your onboard account.

We've visited Sindhu on 3 ships now; Iona, Ventura and Aurora and our experience is that Iona's Sindhu isn't quite as good as the others. That might sound a bit crazy as its the same concept on all of the ships but there was something about it that wasn't quite the same. This could have been because of the covid restrictions at the time, but we missed all of the little extras that you get in Sindhu on the other ships. Also on Iona, there are so many options of places to eat, that we don’t see Sindhu as a must visit while on board. On the smaller ships we wouldn't want to miss it and look forward to visiting again.