More Yummy Dining Car Food News

As a brief follow-up to my last post, it turns out that omelettes (or omelets, in the variant that Amtrak spells it) are no longer pre-prepared.  They are now freshly made aboard the train, which should represent a major improvement in most cases.  Scrambled eggs, which are newly offered on most routes after a long absence of regular egg dishes, are in fact pre-prepared in bulk.

We had also erroneously reported last week that dining car menu cycles will change every three months.  In fact, the actual cycles of the menus between trains will change every six months.  The good news is that the various specials offered at each meal may change more frequently.  In any case, Amtrak has still scored a winner with its new formal dining offerings.  Now they just need to update their web site to show off the commendable menus!

Meanwhile, north of the border, VIA Rail Canada is continuing a Canadian railroading holiday tradition in the dining car, and the Toronto Star is there with good coverage:

When the federal government’s carving knife first scraped VIA’s carcass a quarter-century ago, the plum pudding fell by the trackside for budgetary reasons. Now, with trains back “in” with the public and politicians alike, the tradition is being revived for Christmas week on the stainless steel dining cars of VIA’s transcontinental streamliner, The Canadian.

VIA’s Vancouver director of customer experience, James Kleiner, says the inspiration for the holiday-only dessert came from one of the railway’s Winnipeg chefs, who sent him a Canadian National (CN) cookbook from the 1950s containing the original recipe. “I did my apprenticeship with Canadian Pacific Hotels,” says Kleiner.

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“I’ll bet there hasn’t been a railway that’s ever made money on its dining cars. But you have to do it and do it well because it’s the one thing, above all, that people expect and remember. You’re helping to create an experience that will last them a lifetime. That’s a challenge and a pleasure. Bringing back the old CN plum pudding is one of those pleasures,” Kleiner says.

This year he received a call from a Winnipeg woman whose father is terminally ill. One last thing he wants is to taste the CN plum pudding again. It has been arranged.

Amtrak officials are known to follow VIA’s customer service practices, and should especially take note of the lore of the plum pudding.  Imagine if any item in Amtrak’s dining cars could become such a cherished national tradition that Americans request it on their deathbeds.

—Matthew Melzer