Kosher meals and contemporary dining

[WhartonAndNorthern]

Seems like it would make sense to get meals double-certified kosher and halal, wouldn’t it?

I don't want to get too deep into a discussion of religion, but let's just say for vegetarian meals it's very doable. For meat, I won't say impossible but there may be some slightly conflicting practices.

[danib62]

Some but not all muslims will accept kosher-slaughtered meat as halal however, I don't think there are any mainstream Jewish viewpoints that accept halal-slaughtered meat as kosher. Definitely possible to do a vegetarian meal that pleases everyone though.

[mtuandrew]

W&N and danib: thanks for the lesson! I’m not aware of the intricacies and it’s nice to have a guide.

[WhartonAndNorthern]

Some but not all muslims will accept kosher-slaughtered meat as halal however, I don't think there are any mainstream Jewish viewpoints that accept halal-slaughtered meat as kosher. Definitely possible to do a vegetarian meal that pleases everyone though.

Basically that!

[BandA]

There are a significant number of people who practice Kosher eating in the US, and especially in NY (kind of a focus city for Amtrak lol), but also in the Boston area. The number of people who are Halal are much less. You can literally cater to 10% or even 1% of your customers, but if you get below that it may not be worthwhile. I don't have actual numbers however.

[StLouSteve]

For many years, Amtrak has served Hebrew National hot dogs in the cafe. While not acceptable to observant Jews or Muslims, they may pass muster for some folks. It’s interesting that the bun is not kosher certified or the food is not packaged in a kosher kitchen so the fine print on the package indicates it is not kosher.

I usually just go vegetarian. Recently the contemporary dining car on the Cono was out of veggie meals but the crew kindly nuked a veggie burger for me.

[danib62]

Let us know how you do, and if they do provide any of the Kosher Meals what do you think of them.

Ken

Got back today and the trip was great! This was my first time taking a LD train and my first time on Superliner equipment so it was a real treat. The food was on the train for me. Dinner I got the beef and it was so so. A bit tough. Breakfast was pretty good, had a cheese omelette with a ratatouille that had a good kick to it. One issue was the cold parts of the meals don't seem like they had enough time to defrost so certain items were still frozen/inedible but it wasn't a huge loss. I'll try to post pics of my meals tonight after I get home and find a place where I can host them and share here.

[danib62]

Also forget to mention, kudos to the dining car attendant who was on top of her game and knew about the kosher meals and how to prep them.

[Riverduckexpress]

Have you tried mentioning that to them? I bet two separate departments are involved... and not once did anyone think about this. I'll use a mild form of Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by unawareness.

This is totally their MO. One hand has no freaking clue what the other hand is doing. A few days ago in Albany, one busybody started lining people up on the left side of the pedestrian bridge for my train, the other busybody started lining people up on the right. Neither had any idea the other was doing the same. Don't bother to tell them that nobody lines up the hundreds of thousands of passengers at Grand Central or Secaucus... the horror...

Not that I'm fond of this process or anything, but whenever I saw attendants separating people into two separate lines at Albany, it was usually because there were two trains headed in different directions situated on opposite platforms at the same time (e.g. 280 and 63, whose arrival and departure times overlap). You sure it wasn't something like that? That's at least somewhat more understandable than making two separate lines for a single train.

[danib62]

Alright here we go. First I'll analyze dinner:

Dinner wrapped up
hot tray unwrapped
cold tray unwrapped

Dinner was ok. The beef was kind of tough and reheated rice is always kind of meh. The cold tray did not seem like it was taken out for enough time to thaw out so the couscous salad was basically a frozen brick. The dessert in the back right corner was an apple cake and it was ok, though a bit cold. Had a Fat Tire to go with my dinner after explaining to the dining car attendant that vast majority of beers are kosher.

Next let's do breakfast:
breakfast wrapped up
breakfast unwrapped

Breakfast was pretty good. The ratatouille that went with the omelette had a good kick to it. Took a bit for it to heat through though. Again the cold tray hadn't been given enough time to thaw out and was basically still frozen.

Overall the meals were alright, not the best airline kosher meals I've ever had, but far from the worst. The dining car attendant was great and definitely on her game and knew all about how to heat them up. She even had dinner heated up and ready to go for when I showed up for my sleeping car's dinner seating and I tipped accordingly.

[JimBoylan]

Looks like you got the Kosher meals that are served in a real Dining Car, instead of a Kosher version of the Contemporary snacks.

[danib62]

Yea, I wasn't really expecting a change, even though they said improved kosher options in a press release somewhere when they rolled out contemporary dining.

[ryanov]

I'm confused. The Capitol Limited does not have real dining service. So what happened here?

[danib62]

I'm confused. The Capitol Limited does not have real dining service. So what happened here?

Long story short kosher meals are still an option with contemporary dining if you give advance notice. For some reason the switch to contemporary dining messed up the system that lets the phone agents enter special meal requests so it was a little dicey over whether or not I'd actually get my meal. It took about 40 mins on the phone with an agent in order to manually process the request. She had to actually call the commissary and have them manually enter a note to load the meal on the train in Chicago.

[BandA]

So the meal was partially frozen but you were still happy that they were "on top of their game?" Sounds like they lowered your expectations, then met them!

I assumed a cheese omelette wasn't kosher, but apparently it is.