Amtrak pushes back against cuisine critics
WASHINGTON — Rail enthusiasts may find themselves nostalgic over the preAmtrak days when trains from Connecticut to Maine and other points featured dining cars with real silverware, cloth napkins and table cloths, and food more or less cooked to order.
And they may recoil at subsequent experiences on Amtrak trains, with ungracious airlinestyle food served on functional tables. Even a trial upgrade on at least one line — prepackaged meals in boxes — got less than boffo reviews from passengers.
Now, executives of the federally subsidized rail line are here to tell you those days are over, and meals on Amtrak are not “dumbed down.”
“That was the perception, but it is simply not the reality,” said Peter Wilander, the Amtrak official in charge of “product development and customer experience.”
“There is cost savings over time, but it is absolutely not in the quality of food,” Wilander said.
Amtrak’s new foodservice configuration enables the line to save on labor and inventory control, but food expenditures are actually going up, he added.
To emphasize the point, Amtrak hosted reporters and photographers at Union Station here on a tasting tour of new hotfood options that included braised short ribs and polenta, Asian noodle bowl, and Creole shrimp.
Breakfast will be buffet style, with muffins, yogurt, fresh fruit, hardboiled eggs, cereal, oatmeal and breakfast sandwiches.
This remake of the food on Amtrak longdistance trains gets rolled out on Oct. 1. “Flexible dining service,” as they call it, will not be available on Amtrak trains that go through Connecticut.
But they will be served on onenight trains leaving New York City for Miami, Chicago, and New Orleans.
The difference, said Wilander, has less to do with the food itself than the presentation.
In addition to traditional dining room service in which passengers might be seated with unknown fellow travelers, Amtrak is accommodating younger millennials who might prefer meals alone with laptops and other devices. Those meals might be taken in the club car, or back in roomettes or full bedrooms or coach seats.
“What you’re seeing here is us not dictating how you receive your meal,” he said. “The customer is dictating.”
In addition to regular menu offerings plus the usual selection of wine, beer and spirits, Amtrak will offer “healthy” options as well as vegan and glutenfree fare.
“I give them points for trying,” said Jim Cameron, a Connecticut media trainer and transportation watcher who writes a column for Hearst Connecticut Media newspapers.
In some ways, Amtrak is responding to market demand for superior service. “If the Queen Mary started serving frozen food on ocean crossings, people would say to themselves ‘I’d rather fly,’” Cameron said.
Amtrak is investing in 25 new sleeper cars and refurbishing existing ones with “soft improvements” including new sheets, towels, and blankets. The configurations remain largely the same.
Roomettes sleep a maximum of two, with upper berths folding up during the daytime. Full bedrooms are more spacious and have jump seats for daytime use in addition to a folddown upper bunk. The bedrooms have full bath while the roomettes have them a short walk down the sleepingcar aisles.
Since its startup in 1971, Amtrak has a long history as whippingboy of Congressional conservatives who decry its perennial moneylosing services. Its chief nemesis, Rep. John Mica, RFla., (who lost his 2016 reelection bid), called Amtrak a “thirdworld rail system” and a “Sovietstyle operation.”
Amtrak says it runs about 46 trains a day through Connecticut. Among them are the Acela and Northeast Regional between Washington, New York and Boston; the Vermonter between New York and St. Albans, Vt., and the statesupported lines between New Haven, Hartford and Springfield, Mass.
On Aug. 30, the new Valley Flyer extended the Springfield line all the way to Holyoke, Northampton and Greenfield.
In 2017, a total of 1.5 million passengers boarded or exited trains at Amtrak stations in Connecticut. The two highest were New Haven (with 627,065) and Stamford (with 410,953).
Amtrak has 716 employees in Connecticut. In addition, it is planning a new bridge across the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme to replace the current one that dates back to 1907. Trains across the bridge now are restricted to 45 mph.
In more recent years, the eastern corridor lines between Washington and Boston have proven profitable but the longer distance routes have operated at a loss.
Roger Harris, Amtrak chief marketing and revenue officer, said the line expects to break even for the first time next year. Twenty years ago, Amtrak operated at a $1 billion deficit.
Amtrak will continue to rely on the federal government for its capital improvements, including stations, tracks and rolling stock.
Amtrak serves 32 million passengers each year. Only 4.7 million take Amtrak’s longdistance routes.
President Trump’s 2019 budget suggested cutting the federal subsidy for Amtrak in half, from $1.4 billion to $738 million. But members of Congress, most with districts or states in which Amtrak operates, generally are loath to cut the budget too lean.
“We believe the right way is to deliver a company that pays for itself,” Harris said. “We are for the first time in history in sight of covering all our operating costs on an annual basis.”