Amtrak Diner and Food Service Discussion

That menu is terrible. Ugh!

American Airlines in the late 1930s when they introduced hot meals aboard DC3s had a limited menu far superior that what Amtrak is proposing. It was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, english peas, and apple pie. That's what I would call an all American traditional dinner that most Americans would still love to eat today. We could modernize it and use chicken tenders, substitute potato salad for the mashed potatoes, replace the peas with a salad, and substitute an apple turnover for the slice of apple pie. The turnovers could be warmed in a toaster, the tenders kept warm in an oven, and both salads could be kept cold in the fridge and not heated at all. At least it would be a traditional American dinner instead of a poor attempt of serving cold gourmet food.

bostontrainguy wrote:So this is a Charcuterie Plate:

Not bad . . . . for an appetizer!

charcuterie.jpg

Now where is my dinner?

One problem , a fair slice of the population probably don't like Celery and/or olives, they probably need a bland choice as well.

Believe Amtrak is changing over to the"Panera Bread" model for Food service,Bread,,Vegetables,some dairy products,and Deli Meats.
and doing this change system wide!

What makes you believe that?

Except without hot food, soup, pastries, or made-to-order beverages. This doesn't even measure up to a Starbucks bistro menu, let alone a Panera.

Seriously, the new menu looks so bad it's like they're not even trying, or more like they have to be intentionally trying to kill off the trains by making them completely unappealing to customers.

At the least, they're trying to kill off the meal service and first-class lounge.

Seriously, just make the Viewliners into cafe-lounges with a $500 Dutch door:

That article just makes me angry, since I and others here have been advocating that concept for years. It's frustrating that Amtrak first spent millions on diner-only cars, then decided, nope, they'll just be picnic tables and ice boxes.

bostontrainguy wrote:Actually there were plans to make them into both diners and lounges. See excerpt below.

This article is pretty interesting:

https://csanders429.wordpress.com/2011/ ... e-limited/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I got excited (earlier Boston arrival, cool diner/lounge concept) until I realized it was 2012ish that this was written.

According to that link, coach passengers make up 47% of meals served in the dining car. That seems to contradict the assumption that most dining car patrons are sleeping car passengers.

While on topic, would the recent loss of 28002 (2/4/18) affect the Amfleet II fleet of (now) 24 diner/lounges? The Amfleet IIs were really pressed hard, given that they were pushed into diner service on the Lake Shore in addition to their assignments on the other eastern routes.

The "Panera Bread" was used as a reference point as it's a national chain,that seems to "where" food service is going at this point in time.