Ships with high-end restaurants

Video compliments of the Travel Channel

Most seafaring newbies imagine cruise ship dining as a blend of endless buffets, stale breadbaskets and exploitive cash bars. And in some cases this description is spot on. But many luxury cruise lines sail ships with reservations-only, high-end restaurants, in addition to the usual serve yourself fare. Decorated chefs climb aboard and create days worth of mouthwatering menus, or put their trademark on dramatically designed high-end restaurants that could be at home on land or at sea. If you're a gourmand who's planning a cruise vacation around what will appear on the menu each day, these cruise ships' premium offerings are well-worth a reservation.

The Queen Mary 2: Todd English Aboard the $800 million Queen Mary 2 is the namesake restaurant of Todd English, a former "Rising Star Chef" of the James Beard Foundation and host of TV's Cooking In with Todd English. For $30 extra, you can award yourself with a break from the buffet and enjoy English's Mediterranean cuisine—served alfresco on deck if you choose—which mixes influences from Greece and Italy with American flavors and attitude. Menu standouts include lobster and corn chowder with black truffle and potato, or beef tenderloin with toasted garlic spinach. Never thought you'd be sinking your teeth into roasted rack of lamb with black olive jus at sea? Think again.

Crystal Cruises: Silk Road by Nobu Matsuhisa Imagine slipping into port in Osaka while dining on stir-fried lobster with truffle-yuzu sauce. Book a table at Silk Road on Crystal Cruises' Crystal Symphony or Crystal Serenity and you'll get the chance to sample menus designed by star chef Nobu Matsuhisa (who put Japanese fusion dining on the map). If it's something lighter you're craving, Matsuhisa has also crafted a sushi bar on both ships that serves traditional sushi rolls (think spicy tuna or California) alongside more creative dishes like Wagyu sashimi and salmon tartar with caviar.

Celebrity Millennium: The Olympic On the port side of Celebrity's Millennium cruise ship is The Olympic, highlighting the fare of Michel Roux, a three-star Michelin chef at his La Gavroche in London. The finer-than-fine interior décor stems from the dining room of the Olympic, an English cruise liner that was a sister ship of the Titanic and carries all of the elegance and glamour you'd expect. The food is even more classic, with Roux's traditional training highlighting seasonal flavors and the finest of the surrounding seas. You won't want to return to the communal suppers in the main dining salon, that's for sure.

Regent Seven Seas' Paul Gauguin: La Veranda The Paul Gauguin is famous for the waters it cruises—the South Pacific and the Society Islands, which are the former stomping grounds of the French painter for which the vessel is named. It's appropriate, then, that the fine dining restaurant on this luxury cruise ship takes its direction from top cooking school Le Cordon Bleu, whose chefs consult on everything from the menu to the wine service. Feast on escargot with garlic herb butter or truffle risotto. Then take your dessert of Tahitian vanilla bean crème brulee to go—all the better to watch the sun dip behind the Marquesas Islands, which were the stars of so many Gauguin masterpieces.

Silversea Cruises: Relais and Chateaux Why choose one chef when you can sample the food of many? This luxury cruise line (which offers some the most refined Mediterranean cruises around) partnered with Relais & Chateaux to overhaul the menus at its fine dining venues (simply called The Restaurant). Designated Culinary Arts Voyages benefit further from having a master chef from a Relais and Chateaux restaurant on board and in the kitchen for the whole cruise, so you can dine on fresh pasta made by a world-class Roman chef, then go ashore to taste more of the same on land.