Kosher food on Amtrak long distance trains

Its probably double wrapped airline food. Thats what cruises offer if you take a regular cruise (as opposed to a Kosherica cruise where its fresh kosher) and what you can get in disney world.

While I forgot the exact hashgacha of the ones I got in Disney world, It was a national Hashghcha (ou, ok etc) and not some local one.

My only experience is with the “Auto Train”, a long distance nonstop Amtrak route between northern Virginia (near DC) and central FL (near Orlando) where you can load your vehicles and bring them too. Kosher food was available for dinner in both the sleeper passengers’ dining car and the coach passengers’ dining car. The meals were frozen double-wrapped chicken and rice airline style meals heated in an oven before serving. Breakfast was also served in the dining cars the next morning, and consisted of Kellogs cereals (served with non-CY milk), fresh whole fruit, and orange juice. There were muffins that were not kosher, and the servers (seeing that we were frum) offered us heated bagels that came from a package bearing an OU, but since they were not in a sealed container (nor double wrapped when heated), we politely declined them. I would certainly recommend packing extra snacks, or even your own meal if you dislike plastic wrapped frozen dinners.

Make sure to let Amtrak know that you need kosher meals for your trip, so they can have them ready for you.

BTW – the train cars I traveled in had outlets, but not sure if they had enough juice to operate a kettle. I’d doubt that would even be allowed. It might be better to bring a small cooler with sandwiches.

zahavasdad,

Do NOT bring MRE’s onto the trains without asking. It might set off smoke alams or scare other passengers especially with the smoke

I agree that it’s a good idea to ask first, but I don’t think that self-heating MREs produce any smoke. They use a chemical reaction that heats the food to not much more than 100 degrees F. The kettle is much more problematic due to the required voltage and temperatures (but they don’t produce smoke either).

zahavasdad,

I was once going to use one on a plane and the flight attendent stopped me from using it

A plane is a completely different animal from an Amtrak train. I’m surprised (and a little horrified) that your self-heating bag made it through the TSA security checkpoint with no problems. The trains on the other hand do not have a security checkpoint, and the range of activities permitted on a train is much larger than on a plane. I’d still ask the attendant in the train car first before using the self-heating MRE bag, but I’d be surprised based on my experience if the answer wasn’t “sure, go right ahead.”

Yes I have received a kosher meal on an Amtrak train. You do have to preorder it.

While I never ordered the Amtrak kosher meals, I have brought LaBruite Meals aboard. While warming them does not cause smoke, it does cause steam, which can frighten other passengers. I placed the meal in a paper bag to minimize the steam, and warned my neighbors (who were interested to see how it worked). The containers do say clearly not to use on an airplane. When flying I would warm it up before the flight, so while it would not be hot, it would still be warm.