It is a constant source of joy for me to compare France and Germany in culinary terms and to keep tending towards Escoffier instead of towards Knorr. But this time it’s “Bonjour, Tristesse”: Welcome to the French on-board bistro.
It starts with the fact that there is only a small counter here, where everyone jostle to take their cardboard packaging to their seat. And the bad thing takes its course in terms of taste: the croque monsieur is a warmed cheese mousse with around 600 calories, the spelled salad could well be sold in hardware stores as a filling. But maybe this culinary debauchery is also due to the fact that France’s trains are so fast that you just have to hold out for two hours – to then have a really good meal at your destination.
I recall with scorn the celebrations when the Berlin-Munich high-speed route was opened: 600 kilometers in 4 hours 15 minutes. Paris-Bordeaux is exactly the same route, but takes only 2 hours and 4 minutes – every hour and on time. This is how it works when you don’t travel by air.
But after four hours, I get a little hungry, and so it happens that I often eat in the German on-board bistro. And I have to admit – when it’s open because the electricity supply works and the delivery has come and there are enough staff on board – that it doesn’t taste so bad on the red leather seats.
The cheese and ham sandwich, for example, is a real classic – the railways once took it off the menu and immediately reaped angry storms of protest. So now they’re toasting again, and both the chord of crispy baguette, decent ham and melting cheese, and the tart mustard cream are really well done.
The chili con carne is similarly solid, contemporary with little meat and lots of beans – and if you spoon down the far too sweet industrial tartar sauce beforehand, then it’s a really good dish. Just like the Spirelli pasta with Bolognese sauce. And recently the new dish, a kind of Zurich sliced ????meat on three crispy rösti. The sauce is very wine-heavy, the acid brings aroma and not even the potato pancakes are to be despised.
It is always important to ensure that the mostly friendly waitresses always leave the goods in the oven a little longer than they intended to, a hint from the guest is enough. Otherwise it could happen that the sandwich has a very cold core lurking in the middle or the chili is boiling hot at the top and freezing cold at the bottom – and that’s pretty scary.
It is completely unclear to me, however, why I recently found a couple next to me who enthusiastically ordered the currywurst with fries. “We always take them here,” they said, nodding and chewing at the seat in 1st class. So I ordered the dish for the second time, maybe something had changed. Long story short: It wasn’t.
The currywurst is ok. Rather Bochum than Berlin with the hot, rather thin sauce. Not a Konopke replacement, far from it. But the fries? In the absence of a fryer, they come directly from the combi steamer, the so-called convection oven. And there is exactly one period in which they are edible: the first twenty seconds after delivery. Then they collapse, the crusty feeling disappears and what remains are yellow sticks that somehow taste like potatoes, Greetings from McDonald’s fries, which you find on the back seat of your car after two days of vacation with your children.
Recently I had missed the ICE to Hamburg for good reasons and found myself in the Eurocity of the Czech railways. A lot has been written about it – but all the hymns of praise are true: the beer comes on tap – and the Wiener Schnitzel are really beaten on the train and fried in hot oil. Excellent, as was the goulash soup. So there is still room for improvement for Deutsche Bahn, but in terms of gastronomy they are already much better than in terms of punctuality.
Tip: The wine accompaniment in the on-board bistro is currently really good: the Rheingau-Riesling from Leitz (7.50 euros for 0.25 liters) has a great minerality and gives you a nice buzz when it takes a long time from Frankfurt to Berlin.