When Europe's railroad dining cars were the height of luxury

The Orient Express' opulent passenger experience was later immortalized in popular culture by authors like Graham Greene and Agatha Christie. But dining on the move was very much a triumph of logistics and engineering.

On October 4, 1883, the legendary Orient Express departed Gare de l’Est in Paris for the very first time, slowly winding through Europe on its way to Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known. During a seven-day round trip, the service's 40 passengers — including several prominent writers and dignitaries — lived in mahogany-paneled comfort, whiling away the hours in smoking compartments and armchairs upholstered in soft Spanish leather.

The most luxurious experience of them all, however, could be found in the dining car.

With a menu spanning oysters, chicken chasseur, turbot with green sauce and much else besides, the offering was so extravagant that part of a baggage car had to be repurposed to make space for an extra icebox containing food and alcohol. Served by impeccably dressed waiters, guests sipped from crystal goblets and ate from fine porcelain using silver cutlery. The restaurant’s interior was decorated with silk draperies, while artworks hung in the spaces between windows.

As newspaper correspondent Henri Opper de Blowitz, one of the maiden journey’s passengers, wrote: “The bright-white tablecloths and napkins, artistically and coquettishly folded by the sommeliers, the glittering glasses, the ruby red and topaz white wine, the crystal-clear water decanters and the silver capsules of the Champagne bottles — they blind the eyes of the public both inside and outside.”

The Orient Express’ opulent passenger experience was later immortalized in popular culture by authors like Graham Greene and Agatha Christie. But dining on the move was very much a triumph of logistics and engineering. Just four decades earlier, the very idea of preparing and serving hot meals aboard a train would have been almost unthinkable.

In the early days of rail travel, passengers would either bring their own food or, if scheduled stops permitted, eat at station cafes. In Britain, for instance, meals were served in so-called railway refreshment rooms from the 1840s, though the quality was often questionable. Charles Dickens, a frequent traveler on the U.K.’s railroads, recounted a visit to one such establishment, where he purchased a pork pie comprising “glutinous lumps of gristle and grease” that he “extort(ed) from an iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil.”