Passenger Trains > A Reheated Breakfast Option

Breakfast is being served on VIA's westbound Ocean departing Sainte-Foy (Quebec City) at 6am. This meal was prepared about 24 hrs earlier, chilled and put on board in Halifax the previous day. Meals are then reheated in Convection Ovens....not Microwaves and IMHO very good. There is no Chef onboard to cook the bacon & eggs....but the toast is fresh made!!

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The Ocean is a train very similar to the Lakeshore...covering 840 miles overnight between Halifax and Montreal. It's not a 'Tourist Train' and does a respectable business stopping at the smaller stations especially through northern New Brunswick and eastern Quebec....and BTW coach passengers can eat in the diner.

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The quality would appear to be high and the presentation looks good, not like crummysnackbar-grade stuff on disposable fast-food trays.

Providing this kind of food and service to Coach passengers is important, too. Barring them to Coach is tantamount to fomenting class warfare and may figure into a strategy to marginalize First Class accommodations and services. That may sound strange but all kinds of weird ideas come out from inside the Beltway all the time, and Amtrak is definitely an inside-the-Beltway political animal.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/20 06:54 by GenePoon.

That does look halfway decent. I wouldn’t mind doing that train trip someday.

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/20 06:52 by lordsigma.

Even Amtrak itself does a better job with Acela first. I don’t understand why they just don’t make flex dining identical to the Acela First menu. More people would accept it.

Posted from iPhone

The powers to be want to drive away ridership, after 2 plus years it can’t be any more obvious. Serving Acela meals would solve the whole issue and bring food service up to at least acceptable parameters. RPA should be demanding it, not throwing in the towel and accepting the flex dining as the new normal which they admitted to on last Friday’s update.

From RPA 1/10/20  “Love it or hate it, this is Amtrak’s wave of the future.” 

lordsigma Wrote:
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> Even Amtrak itself does a better job with Acela
> first. I don’t understand why they just don’t
> make flex dining identical to the Acela First
> menu. More people would accept it.
>
> Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/20 07:02 by Flyer92122.

that breakfast looks good to me.  and thanks for posting that coach passengers can ALSO eat in the diner.............

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ghCBNS Wrote:
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> ...but the toast is fresh made!!

Remember when Amtrak stopped offering toast many years ago because the toasters kept breaking?

I love the marketing name “Mom’s Scrambled Eggs”. 

My mom, when pressed for time, would indeed serve yesterday’s eggs warmed over the next day. I serve leftovers myself, and am often delighted with the results. 

I recently rode the Ocean, both westbound and eastbound. Some of the meals I had were okay, others were good. One thing the Ocean has over Amtrak's new contemporary dining, is each meal and each direction had a different menu. Even the breakfast items were a little different.

To me, it appears the only reason why the Ocean serves reheated meals is because the Renaissance equipment has no dining cars. On the eastbound trip, which was a full train, there were two chefs preparing meals, one in the sleeper service car and one in the coach service car (sharing the space with the cafe attendant). There were also at least two waiters. In Amtrak's case, the contemporary dining was solely a labor reduction. Nothing else. 

Precooked food can be very good. Most of us are not demanding everything be cooked on board. But noodle bowls and cat chow is what Amtrak wants to drive off ridership. 

Cat chow? What about Dog chow?  My dog eats better than what Amtrak is passing off as "enhanced" food. And as someelse well noted. The Ocean doesn't  cater to the tourist market. It's filled mostly with Canadians trying to get from place to place with lots of intermedciate business with no other travel options than driving....not a great expereince in eastern Canada winters (yes, it still does get cold in Canada). 

I have been asking the same question as well, particularly in the case of the Capitol leaving DC.

lordsigma Wrote:
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> Even Amtrak itself does a better job with Acela
> first. I don’t understand why they just don’t
> make flex dining identical to the Acela First
> menu. More people would accept it.
>
> Posted from iPhone

I despise the new banning of coach passengers from the dining cars. There is already an theme in some comments here about how bad coach is that I find overblown. I travel coach more than I travel sleeping car, because of the cost, and plenty of other perfectively ok travellers do the same. When I do that, breakfast and lunch are reasonably priced in the dining car and sometimes I choose to get them instead of the junk in the cafe. Dinner is outside of what I'd like to pay to generally only eat it when I'm in a roomette. But as a coach passenger I've paid for meals plenty of times, and that is all lost revenue now on many trains. Shoot, my girlfriend and I took the Sunset from El Paso to Tuscon, which is just a 4 hour trip, but it coincided with lunch so we ate in the dining car. I guess in the east I'd no longer be able to do that.

I rode round trip Montreal-Halifax in September of 2018.  I enjoyed the trip very much.  Both the food and service were good.  The only complaints I had were those on the last setting for meals sometimes had limited options.  I had this situation twice.  The only meal item I did not like were the scrambled eggs.  The texture was weird I thought.  This may have just been a one off, I don't know.  Otherwise everything great.  I recommend the trip.  While in Halifax take in the Halifax Immigration Museum.  It is the Canadian version of Ellis Island ( less the lady with the torch ).  I thought it to be very well presented and thought provoking.  It is on Pier two and is close to the Via Station.

lordsigma Wrote:
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> Even Amtrak itself does a better job with Acela
> first. I don’t understand why they just don’t
> make flex dining identical to the Acela First
> menu. More people would accept it.

I've said the same thing. Just extend the Acela offerings and diversify what is offered.

Latebeans Wrote:
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> I rode round trip Montreal-Halifax in September of
> 2018.  I enjoyed the trip very much.  Both the
> food and service were good.  The only complaints
> I had were those on the last setting for meals
> sometimes had limited options.  I had this
> situation twice.  The only meal item I did not
> like were the scrambled eggs.  The texture was
> weird I thought.  This may have just been a one
> off, I don't know.  Otherwise everything great. 

Eggs are one of the easiest things to cook and the hardest to rewarm. No reason to not just bulk cook scrambled eggs in the morning.

abyler Wrote:
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> Latebeans Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I rode round trip Montreal-Halifax in September
> of
> > 2018.  I enjoyed the trip very much.  Both
> the
> > food and service were good.  The only
> complaints
> > I had were those on the last setting for meals
> > sometimes had limited options.  I had this
> > situation twice.  The only meal item I did not
> > like were the scrambled eggs.  The texture was
> > weird I thought.  This may have just been a
> one
> > off, I don't know.  Otherwise everything
> great. 
>
> Eggs are one of the easiest things to cook and the
> hardest to rewarm. No reason to not just bulk cook
> scrambled eggs in the morning.

Because then you would need a full galley kitchen with it's associated costs.
While you can reheat them with just a convection oven.
And remember, the bean counters are calling the shots.

Rod the Ocean round trip from Montreal last May and it was a very good trip.  Food, sleeping car service and time keeping was very good.  The only problem was getting a taxi upon arrival in Halifax in a heavy rain.  The station was being remodeled which created a little havoc.  You need to put this trip on your bucket list.  I have now traveled Halifax to Prince Rupert and Vancouver and recommend VIA over Amtrak any day.