New French And Nikkei Dining On Oceania Sonata 2027

Published on Dec 4, 2025, 12:01 pm CST

8 min read

Key points

Oceania Sonata will debut in August 2027 with two new specialty restaurants, La Table par Maitres Cuisiniers de France and Nikkei Kitchen
La Table will seat just 18 guests per night with rotating menus from Master Chefs of France and a Dom Perignon six course tasting experience
Nikkei Kitchen will showcase Peruvian Japanese fusion cuisine developed with chef Gustavo Sugay and will operate as an included, capacity controlled venue
Both venues build on Oceania Cruises existing culinary program across ships like Vista and Allura and signal how Sonata will lean even harder into food focused itineraries
Travelers interested in La Table should plan early around limited seating and likely high demand while using Nikkei Kitchen as a flexible alternative on longer voyages

Impact

Who This Matters For: Travelers who choose cruises primarily for cuisine and are considering booking Oceania Sonata from 2027 onward
How To Access La Table: Expect tight capacity for the 18 seat La Table and plan to use pre cruise tools and early onboard reservations to secure at least one night
Using Nikkei Kitchen Smartly: Treat Nikkei Kitchen as a flexible, included option by targeting earlier or later seatings and being ready to queue on sea days
Balancing Dining Across A Voyage: Map out the full mix of Jacques, Toscana, Red Ginger, Polo Grill and the new concepts so signature nights do not clash with key ports or excursions
What Travelers Should Do Now: Talk with a travel advisor about likely reservation rules, compare Sonata to sister ships on similar routes and book early if these restaurants are a deciding factor

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Oceania Cruises is sharpening the food story for its next new ship, Oceania Sonata, by adding two tightly focused specialty restaurants that lean into French fine dining and Peruvian Japanese fusion. The ultra intimate La Table par Maitres Cuisiniers de France will seat just 18 guests per night, while Nikkei Kitchen will bring an open kitchen and seafood heavy Nikkei cuisine to the evening lineup. For travelers eyeing Oceania Sonata restaurants 2027 sailings, the message is clear, serious food fans will want to start plotting how these venues fit into a limited number of cruise nights.

In practice, the Oceania Sonata restaurants 2027 lineup introduces a very small, fee based fine dining room alongside a more relaxed but still experimental fusion venue, which matters for guests who book Oceania mainly for its culinary reputation and need to understand how many chances they will realistically have to try each concept.

La Table, A Master Chefs Of France Project At Sea

La Table par Maitres Cuisiniers de France is billed as the most exclusive fine dining restaurant at sea, anchored in a formal partnership with the Maîtres Cuisiniers de France, the association of Master Chefs of France that promotes French culinary arts. According to Oceania, this will be the only restaurant at sea launched with the group's seal of approval, and it deepens a relationship that already includes both of the line's executive culinary directors, Alexis Quaretti and Eric Barale, as members.

The room itself will seat just 18 guests per evening, making it more like a chef's table concept than a conventional specialty venue. Menus will rotate, with Quaretti and Barale collaborating alongside invited Master Chefs of France to create multi course experiences that are meant to evolve across the season rather than repeat the same tasting set every voyage.

La Table will also host a new iteration of Oceania's Dom Pérignon Experience, a six course tasting menu paired with three vintage champagnes. The food will be included in the cruise fare, consistent with the line's specialty dining model, but there will be a wine experience surcharge and reservations will be mandatory, with capacity capped at those 18 nightly seats.

For travelers, that means La Table behaves more like a once per cruise event than a restaurant you can wander into on a whim. On a typical 7 to 10 night sailing, even if the space operates every night, only a small fraction of guests will be able to secure a place, and demand from repeat Oceania cruisers who prioritize food is likely to be high. Anyone for whom French gastronomy is a core reason to sail Sonata should plan trips early, track when reservations open in the online planner, and be ready to move fast once the system or travel advisor access goes live.

Nikkei Kitchen, Peruvian Japanese Fusion Without A Cover Charge

The second new venue, Nikkei Kitchen, is designed as a more relaxed but still ambitious concept built around Nikkei cuisine, the fusion style created when Japanese immigrants in Peru began combining local ingredients with Japanese techniques in the late nineteenth century. Oceania describes the onboard version as an evening restaurant that emphasizes fresh seafood, citrus, soy based sauces and peppers, with a bright, airy interior and modern open kitchen that echoes the freshness of the dishes.

Executive culinary directors Quaretti and Barale are working with chef Gustavo Sugay, a Nikkei specialist with more than 20 years of experience, who has already helped develop a slate of Nikkei dishes for Oceania's existing pan Asian restaurant, Red Ginger, over the past year. That test run gives Sonata an interesting advantage, because the team is not starting from scratch but from guest feedback on dishes already served across the fleet.

Operationally, Nikkei Kitchen will be capacity controlled but treated as part of Oceania's always included specialty dining program, which means there is no cover charge and, based on current information, no formal reservations requirement. Instead, access will be on a first come basis, which can be a double edged sword, easier for guests who dislike planning every dinner, but potentially frustrating on peak nights when many passengers decide to try the new venue at once.

Travelers who want to sample Nikkei Kitchen without long waits should target less obvious times, such as earlier seatings on port intensive days when some guests linger ashore, or later dinners on sea days when crowds have already peaked. It also makes sense to treat Nikkei Kitchen as one piece of a broader dining strategy, penciling in nights at familiar favorites like Toscana, Polo Grill, Jacques, the Grand Dining Room, and Red Ginger, then leaving one or two evenings open to float between Nikkei and casual options like Terrace Café or Waves Grill depending on appetite and queues.

Background, How Sonata Fits Into Oceania's Food First Strategy

Oceania Sonata is the first of four ships in the new Sonata Class, a 1,390 guest platform that will be the most spacious and amenity rich in the fleet, with about 30 percent of accommodations designated as suites. The ship is scheduled to debut in August 2027 and will become the ninth vessel in the Oceania fleet.

The line has built much of its brand positioning around "The Finest Cuisine at Sea," so the addition of La Table and Nikkei Kitchen is less a surprise pivot and more a sharpening of that promise. On Sonata, those new venues will sit alongside roughly 10 existing concepts, including French bistro Jacques, the pan Asian Red Ginger, the Toscana Italian restaurant, the Polo Grill steakhouse, the Grand Dining Room, and more casual outlets such as Terrace Café, Waves Grill and Aquamar Kitchen, which will reportedly receive expanded space compared with earlier ships.

From a planning perspective, the key change is not the raw number of restaurants, but the way capacity is sliced. An 18 seat room like La Table concentrates demand in a way that will likely feel similar to high end chef's tables on other lines, while a walk up fusion venue such as Nikkei Kitchen relies on flow management and design to avoid long lines at an open kitchen that still has to serve dishes at a high standard. For travelers who pick cruises largely on the basis of how many different dinners they can string together, Sonata's layout makes it even more important to know, before booking, how many nights they realistically want in each tier from ultra formal tasting to casual terrace buffet.

Booking Strategies And Value Questions

Because La Table carries a wine experience surcharge, it will naturally invite comparisons with splurge dinners in marquee restaurants back home. For some guests, especially those already paying premium suite fares, the chance to experience a Master Chefs of France curated tasting menu with vintage Dom Pérignon at sea will feel like a worthwhile one off expense that anchors a special occasion within the voyage. Others may decide that they prefer to leverage Oceania's included specialties instead, especially on itineraries where port days already add cost through excursions and private tours.

Nikkei Kitchen, by contrast, should be easier to justify as a repeat choice, since there is no cover charge and the menu is designed to balance familiarity and experimentation through seafood, citrus and spice. If Oceania maintains the pattern from Red Ginger's trial dishes, guests can expect flavor forward but approachable plates that reward curiosity without feeling gimmicky. That gives travelers a relatively low risk way to explore a cuisine that has been building global profile in recent years, with the bonus of shipboard consistency compared with hunting down Nikkei restaurants independently in ports.

Finally, there is a timing angle. With Sonata still almost two years from launch, Oceania has time to refine menus and table management based on further testing across its existing fleet, and early sailings may be especially interesting for food focused cruisers who want to experience concepts while they are still fresh and possibly evolving quickly. Travelers deciding between Sonata and other premium or luxury ships in 2027 and 2028 should weigh not just itinerary and price, but how important this particular mix of French gastronomy and Nikkei fusion is to their personal definition of a successful cruise.