I like to eat on a train: it’s extremely pleasant watching the world roll by as you eat good food.
Eating in the dining car always feels exceptionally civilized, though it’s unlikely you will enjoy any genuinely good food there. It’s not that the food is bad or inedible; it’s just not that good – certainly not destination cuisine. The dining car is fine for eggs over easy, a sandwich or a green salad, or fancier though pedestrian options like steak or vegetarian pasta, but it won’t be cheap and it likely won’t be memorable.
Having been on the California Zephyr (Chicago to Denver to Oakland), Coastal Starlight (Oakland to Seattle) and Empire Builder (Seattle to Montana and back to Chicago) in the last two weeks, I can say with some authority that it’s the same damn menu on all Amtrak trains. During a trip like this, if you rely exclusively on the Amtrak dining car for your consumables, you will have a lot of the same meals (many times) — and I doubt you’d grade any of them higher than a C, or maybe C-.
Being veterans of the rails, we now know what to bring that will make it easy and enjoyable to eat meals and snacks. In the way of tableware, we suggest:
- Hand wipes. Using the bathrooms on trains is maybe my least favorite part of the trip. It’s even challenging performing simple actions like washing hands in a swaying train car. A package of antiseptic wipes makes life on the rails much easier. We also brought a roll of paper rowels, but if you want to reduce baggage, you can get napkins in the lounge car of any Amtrak train.
- Plastic plates and cups. You don’t want to bring paper plates and cups (too flimsy and eco-insensitive), so sturdy, reusable plastic plates and cups enable you to bring only the amount you need; they can be wiped off and reused indefinitely (you can wash them at your destination for the return or continuing leg of your journey). Plastic cups are also available in Amtrak lounge cars.
- Actual silverware. Yes, bring plastic cups and plates but bring metal forks, knives and spoons. Metal utensils are way more pleasant to eat with and like plates and cups, you can clean them and carry just what you need throughout the trip.
Rail food should not be too complicated; here’s what we brought:
- Walker’s Oat Biscuits. These excellent biscuits are hardy, have clean grain flavor, and don’t fall apart easily (reducing the hassle of crumbs); they’re good for either meat and cheese or honey and jam. They’re versatile, and the boxes that contain the biscuits are divided into several envelopes so that you can open one and keep the others fresh. When we ran out of these biscuits, we bought some French bread…but I wish we’d brought more Walker’s. The biscuits are that good.
- Formaggio Bandaged Cheddar. This is an excellent aged cheese that you can break off with your hands; you don’t need a knife to cut it. What you don’t want to bring along are softer, fresh cheeses that may require refrigeration. For a day or two on the rails, a hard cheese will keep best. Incidentally, if anything, rail cars are over-cooled, rarely ever too warm, so this helps preserve the freshness of your food.
- Pepperoni from Carnivore. Brad Knaub and his crew make a pepperoni that will redefine your notions of the sausage. It’s meaty and delicious and will last a long time with minimal refrigeration (we had freezer packs in our cooler bags, but they were largely unnecessary; we don’t bring anything that will go bad in less than three days).
- Wine. If you’re very concerned about spills, you’ll want white wine; we took a “row” of XoG single-serving wine-filled glasses, which were super convenient: each cup has a plastic pull-off lid. The XoG cups came prefilled with Moscato, a good light wine and also very versatile (just as when you pack clothes for travel, when you pack food for travel, you’re looking for versatility). Red wine, however, is really our favorite, so we brought a bottle of Alonso de Yerro (2010), a reasonably priced Spanish wine with the guts to stand to flavorful cheese and sausage. We hung onto the XoG cups throughout the trip; their wide base and low center of gravity made them ideal for train travel.
- Vegetables. With the relatively high-fat cheese and sausage, you’re going to want some veg, so we brought both cut-up celery and carrot and whole pea pods, all very easy to eat with fingers and none really requiring dressing or dip (though that’s obviously an options…but beware spills!).
- Chocolate. We brought a few bars of chocolate because it’s compact and delicious and makes one feel like one has had a meal.
We brought many pounds of food with us on the train, perhaps too much (such is our way). Aside from watching the world go by, which is a marvelous pastime, eating is something you will want to do to pass time on the rails, so bring good food…and some good books.
NEXT: How to Read on a Train
