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Terry Pulliam Burd[_3_]

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:45:47 +0100, (Victor Sack)
fired up random neurons and synapses to opine:

>Okay, I've looked at the Web site and the menus. If it is an attempt to
>keep up the legendary dining car tradition, it looks like it fails
>miserably. It appears to be a mockery of a tradition, instead being an
>imitation of a second-rate steakhouse.

Victor, I don't think they had a single thought about keeping up the
traditional dining car menu. This is southern California, where every
other thing is smoke and mirrors, illusion and puffery. It's something
of a throwback to the 20s in SoCal when "tradition" was being built by
those who had just read about it in books or had seen it on the silver
screen.

We took the Amtrak Coast Starlight from LA to San Francisco last year
and the dining experience was just sad. They tried, bless 'em, but at
least we didn't starve to death. They did offer a wine and cheese
tasting about 4:00 p.m. which was fun, but it took a while for my
taste buds to forgive me.
>
>Railroad food, once the Pullman dining car had made its appearance, used
>to be the glory of American dining - unmatched anywhere but at a few
>special restaurants. It is not for nothing that the first Pullman
>dining car was christened "Delmonico".
>
>According to _Eating in America_ by Waverley Root & Richard de
>Rochemont,
>"Dining car menus on 1870 offered seventy-five cent meals of oysters on
>the half-shell, porterhouse steak, quail, antelope, plover, fresh trout
>and terrapin, with second helpings on the house. There was Champagne at
>every meal, including breakfast, and passengers ate in the splendor of
>Turkish carpets, French mirrors, fringed portières and rare inlaid
>woods. The Denver and Rio Grande made a specialty of mountain trout,
>the Union Pacific was famous for its antelope steaks, the Northern
>Pacific for its grouse and salmon."

Where's a robber baron when you need him?

Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd

--

"If the soup had been as hot as the claret, if the claret had been as
old as the bird, and if the bird's breasts had been as full as the
waitress's, it would have been a very good dinner."

- Duncan Hines

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