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Amtrak "reinvents" catering on its long-haul service. The dining cars are on many routes. "Flexibility" is at the rendezvous.
Driven by cost savings and the desire to please Millennials, Amtrak will close kitchens on board and adopt pre-packaged meals on many long-distance routes. Amtrak thinks that young people do not want to share a common table with strangers, essential element of the Amtrak dining experience. The new meals will lengthen traditional meal times and allow sleeper car passengers to be delivered to the room.
The change will begin this fall on the roads of an Amtrak night east of Mississippi. In this sense, long-haul meals in many trains will remain … for the moment. But if it succeeds, the new meal program will extend to the entire system. Amtrak is already experimenting with this form of meal service on its Capitol Limited service between Chicago and Washington, DC.
As part of this lawsuit, Amtrak found that passengers still wanted hot meals, but were happy to avoid sitting with strangers and welcomed delivery to their room.
Routes with new meal service
The new meal service will begin on October 1st in the following trains:
Next year, it will expand until the Silver Star, making stops between New York and Miami.
How Amtrak turns it
Amtrak describes the changes as an improvement to the existing restaurant service, touting the words "free room service" and fluid catering schedules:
- A new restaurant menu with hot choices and ready to serve for breakfast, lunch and dinner
- A selection of wines, beers and spirits (the first is on us), as well as unlimited soft drinks throughout the trip
- Free room service provided by the sleeping car attendant
- Exclusive lounge area onboard allowing Sleeping Car guests to dine and socialize throughout the journey
- Flexible catering times without the need for a reservation
But "flexible" meals will result in a significant reduction in the variety of foods available.
New Amtrak meals
In what Amtrak calls "flexible" meals, breakfast will be served as a buffet with a limited selection of hot dishes available to order. Lunch and dinner will include new platters with a hot main course and a salad.
- Breakfast: The deluxe continental breakfast will be served as a buffet consisting of a selection of muffins, yogurts, fresh fruit, boiled eggs, cereals, oatmeal and sandwich at breakfast.
- Lunch dinner: Asian noodle bowl, red wine braised beef, chicken fettuccini with broccoli, creole shrimp and andouille. Optional pasta and meatballs available for children.
- Dessert: Blondies and Brownies.
Sample menu here.
Bus passengers lose
With the elimination of the dining car, passengers in the coach class will be losers. The dining options in the car-café will be extended, but the dining car will either be removed or reserved as lounge-puedo only for passengers in the sleeping car.
My minds
Even as a millennial who usually refrains from talking to his fellow sieges in planes, I'll be sorry to see the dining car leave. During my Coast Starlight trip between Los Angeles and Portland, I came across one of my former law school fellows and his fiance on board. We ended up eating three meals together and had a great conversation.
On my trip with Empire Builder, we sat next to an elderly woman for breakfast and had an interesting conversation about travel, nature and our families. Of course, it's nice to be private, but it was actually a fun part of the train experience.
The new meals above look pretty tasty, but the Amtrak food was pretty tasty and I can not imagine that the meals in the microwave will be better than crab cakes or a steak cooked to order.
The breakfast looks like the biggest cup, depending on your menu preference. The continental buffet looked nice, but it was even nicer to order an omelette or a French toast.
In general, I think that any effort to be "connected" or to satisfy the "millennium" is a bad gesture (and considered by the millennia as superficial and uninteresting).
Empire's eastbound builder begins in Portland and Seattle and joins Spokane. The Portland area in Spokane does not have a kitchen on board, which means I've already experienced canned meals.
They were tasty, but just detracted from the train experience I was expecting; The meals that motivated my decision to book by train rather than by plane.
CONCLUSION
Consider this as an experience. Maybe that will fail and the dining cars will be given another reprieve. But the direction of Amtrak under Richard Anderson is clear: changes are coming. Cars going out.
> Learn more Amtrak Stories:
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