WILL AMTRAK'S CONTEMPORARY DINING REMIND PEOPLE OF SOCIAL DISTANCING?

Brian's Travel Spot offers a lament on "The Demise of Amtrak’s Full Dining Service."  His main points are familiar to my regular readers.

Although the new service is touted as an “upgrade” by Amtrak, it’s anything but. Having experienced (and loved) the full service dining car, what’s replaced it is vastly inferior, as Amanda and I discovered when we took the train from New York to Atlanta at the start of this month. Instead of a bustling dining car, full of happy passengers, we found a near empty carriage, grumpy staff and, while the food was good, the menu was limited (particularly if you don’t eat meat). As an experience, it was an immense disappointment, fundamentally detracting from the enjoyment of our journey.

The bulk of the column recites many of my observations (it's useful, though, for people who are not hardcore ferroequinologists to point them out).  What occurred to me, though, is that the act of picking up your meal, or having it delivered, imitates the experience of dining out during these days of shelter in place.

Under the old service, you would book your slot in the dining car then make your way down to the dining car when the time came. Unless there were four of you, you’d be sat on a table with a selection of your fellow passengers, the waitstaff making up tables of four on the fly. I met some very interesting people as a result and never had a bad experience.

One of the touted benefits of the new system is its supposed flexibility, allowing you to eat in your sleeper compartment if you want (with your attendant fetching your food) and doing away with the need to reserve your dining slot. However, the reality of the new system turned out to be quite different.

Our attendant came to take our dinner orders in mid-afternoon. If there was the possibility of having our food delivered, it wasn’t mentioned.

These days, if you're ordering take-out, the people running the eateries that are still open are probably happy for the business, and it's good manners to tip generously.  The demoralized staff of the table cars, not so much.

On previous trips, the dining car was a hive of activity, full of conversation and with a warm welcome from the waitstaff (on one particularly memorable journey, everyone, regardless of age or gender, was endearingly referred to as “baby doll”). This time, we arrived to find an empty dining car, bereft of any atmosphere, plus one extremely grumpy, uncommunicative member of staff.

Even though we clearly didn’t know the routine, we had to go and ask for our dinner. Amanda went up and was wordlessly handed a large white bag with sleeper car and compartment number written on it. And that was the sum total of our interaction with the staff.

The food itself was pretty good, although my vegan Asian noodle bowl (the only thing I could eat on the entire menu) was spicier than I’d have liked and resulted in my lips going numb. Amanda similarly enjoyed her red wine braised beef, although she wasn’t a fan of the polenta (which, in its defence, I quite enjoyed). The chocolate brownie (Amanda) and toffee crunch blondie (me) were also good, but a far cry from the desserts I’d enjoyed and previous trips.

Yes, although simply taking a brownie, or one of those ready-to-mix oatmeals off a common table isn't worthy, as the author notes, of "a breakfast buffet that many budget hotels would be embarrassed to serve."

Perhaps in current times we don't have to be singing about bluebirds over the cliffs of Dover.

In closing, the new dining service is a massive downgrade from what went before and I wish Amtrak would reverse its decision. It’s a loss, by the way, not just for the sleeper car passengers: with the old full service dining car, coach passengers were also allowed to eat in the dining car if they wished, paying for their meals. That option has also gone with the new system. Sad times indeed.

Dinner in the diner: nothing could be finer, than being reminded of the days of social distancing.