All meals are included when you book a "roomette" or bedroom on a long-distance Amtrak train.
From New York, from where I began my journey to the West Coast, these include the "Lake Shore Limited" to Chicago, which I am riding, the "Cardinal," which heads to Chicago via Washington DC, the "Capitol Limited," the " the "Crescent" to New Orleans," and a few others.
There were more choices than on an airplane, but only barely.
The ticket also includes one complementary alcoholic beverage or soft drink.
After consulting my two table-mates, (due to limited space, community seating is encouraged), I went with the creole shrimp and sausage.
Hal, on his way home to Montana from Vermont, ordered the beef, while Peggy, a retired religious educator on her way to visit her son in California, had the chicken fettuccine.
"It's nothing like it used to be," she told me as we raced through the dark somewhere between Albany and Syracuse. They, too, had heard that Amtrak blamed the changes on millennials, and I took the chance to apologize profusely for yet another death caused by my generation.
The flavor was slightly above that of airplane food, though not being at 30,000 feet could have also affected my enjoyment for the better.
There's not much a splash of hot sauce and plenty of pepper can't fix, in my opinion, but slimy vegetables are not one of those things.=
"1-800-USA-RAIL!," the lone (and very busy) dining attendant quipped to an unsatisfied passenger. "I didn't make the changes."
After a nights' sleep, I had high hopes for breakfast. The menu claimed to feature fresh fruit, granola, and other continental items — and technically, it wasn't wrong.
I took a late breakfast, seeing as we were more than two hours late en route to Chicago, and was met again by microwaved food.
To be fair, I eat a banana and a granola bar most every morning, so even a reheated Jimmy Dean sausage egg and cheese sandwich is an improvement. But for nearly $900 a ticket, I could see why some of my fellow passengers were disappointed.
"Your next train will be better," Hal assured me as we ate our "specialty dessert" brownies and watched the lounge car empty for the night. At this rate, there's only upward mobility possible.
Next I'm headed on the Empire Builder, one of Amtrak's longest and most popular routes where I've been assured by my new traveling companions that the food is still what it once was. Stay tuned!
