Eating during a hectic day of plane travel can feel like the search for the least terrible option: mediocre overpriced food on the plane or mediocre overpriced food from the airport? That calculus changes on the train; facing a multi-day journey, many opt to bring homemade options along. For Eater, Nylah Iqbal Muhammad talks to picnic-minded folks onboard Amtrak’s California Zephyr—and in the process teases out some fascinating links between the Anabaptist and Black Southern culinary traditions. Food for thought.
Train food, like any other genre of food and perhaps more so, offers sociological insights into the culture and land that the track runs through, and the passengers who choose to travel this way. Today, you can catapult yourself through the sky and cross the entire continent of North America in five hours, while a train would take you 90 hours to get from New York to LA — 144 hours if you’re crossing Canada by VIA Rail. Train travel isn’t convenient or particularly cheaper than air travel, and feeding yourself for days on a moving train is a pain. So anyone who chooses slow travel thinks carefully about not just that decision, but what they’ll eat: It’s a slower, simpler way of life.
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