A Fresh Model for Dining by Rail

Part of the mission of the Millennial Trains Project is to inspire ideas for a prosperous and sustainable American future by connecting Millennials to America’s landscape and history through the experience of cross-country train travel. And nothing complements a train journey quite like good food. That is why MTP brought on board Christian Ortiz and Simone Carvalho, the husband and wife team behind New York City-based C.C.O. Consulting Group to prepare meals for the close to 40 people on board using ingredients that are sustainably grown and raised in the regions through which the train passes. I had a chance to sit down with Ortiz and Carvalho to discuss their impressions of procuring and preparing meals on a moving kitchen, which was a first for them.

“Cutting vegetables on a moving train is harder than one would anticipate,” Ortiz said. “Harder than doing so with a Michelin three-star chef looking over your shoulder.” But the train was equipped with refrigerators, freezers, and multiple ovens, and Ortiz brought his own fryer. All of that helped them “keep it simple, local, regional and delicious.” Ortiz said his least favorite part was searing chicken because the train lacked the necessary power capacity. Using residential equipment for commercial-scale cooking was also a challenge. But Carvalho compared the Silver Splendor kitchen’s size to that of a typical New York City restaurant, except that all the equipment was electric (no natural gas). 

Ortiz and Carvalho reached out to food producers and vendors in the communities in which our train would stop in advance, and found that they were all excited about being a part of the MTP endeavor and giving people from around the country and world a chance to sample their products. “There was real synchronicity,” Ortiz said. They met with 72 food purveyors in all, about a dozen at each stop. One thing they all had in common, Ortiz observed, is that they were “obsessive about quality.” “The fruit of their labor is absolutely what you get on your plate,” he said. 

Their on-board offerings usually included salads with locally-produced lettuces, tomatoes, carrots, nuts and cheeses. There was generally a vegetarian main course, including (in various combinations) potatoes, green beans, roasted peppers and squash, corn and collard greens. For carnivores, entrees ranged from Pacific Northwest salmon to Montana bison and Midwestern ham and bacon. Breakfast featured spinach or broccoli frittatas with local eggs and cheeses. Desserts included huckleberry cobbler from Montana and a blueberry lavender crumb cake. 

The chefs had read a little about the history of railroad dining, and Carvalho said she was “excited [about] connecting Millennials with a positive, old-time, plush experience.” Both chefs wish that Amtrak could tap into the excitement of the food producers to partner with a train project, and thereby bring more small-scale, region-specific products onto their trains. Amtrak could be a force for bringing tougher a “real local food partnership” on a national scale. 

Sadly, Amtrak has responded to Congressional funding cuts by standardizing menus, dropping regional dishes, and cutting staffs down to just one chef on most trains. But there is so much potential in Amtrak being able to make local, sustainably raised and grown meals part of the package that makes a train trip such a special product for which perhaps more travelers would be willing to pay a premium. Amtrak’s food service management could learn a lot from the Millennial Trains Project’s approach to nourishing train travelers.