Express InterCity Trains Dining, Poland

OMG, I rode on a train.  A real train!

Ok, now that I got that out of my system, I can do this review.  Yes, trains are novel to me as an adult.  I grew up in a state without them (literally, the government converted all railways into nature trails long ago), I went to college in an area with out them, and basically have only been on a (non-subway) train 2-3 times in my life (once was just last year, as you read about my adventures on the Amtrak Acela between New York and DC).  Let's just say, I was pretty excited about our mode of transportation between Krakow and Warsaw during a recent business trip to Poland.

Our journey was on the Express InterCity Premium train (EIP), and we were seated in First Class, which meant, we even got a meal.  And thus, this blog post.

Dining Card.

Dining cards were handed out to us once underway.  The cards told us that we'd get a snack, exclusive to us in First Class (others could go to the cafe car to order food of course).

Menu,

The other side of the card listed our options.  Croissants, two kinds of salad (one vegetarian), or two kinds of mini sandwiches (one meat, one veggie).  This ... didn't feel very premium.  But it was something I guess.

I knew I didn't want the sandwiches (either tofu with beetroot or ham), and I don't like chicken so the salad topped with chicken wasn't really appealing (although it had a black sesame dressing, that sounded maybe interesting?), and I had already had a slew of pastries that morning (two different muffins at breakfast, and then ALL the donuts from Dobra Pączkarnia (zomg, so good!), so the croissant wasn't catching my eye either.  Thus, the other salad it was, sorta as the last resort, even though I'm not excited for blue cheese, nor vinaigrette.  We had literally just finished lunch anyway, so I didn't really care about this random "snack" anyway, besides research purposes of course.

Our orders were taken immediately, but not orders for drinks, only the snack.  Drinks came later from a cart, with coffee, tea, or a few bottled drink options.  I had a bottle of sparkling water, it was, well, a bottle of sparkling water.

Salad with Blue Cheese and Walnuts.

"Blue cheese, salad mix, tomato, cucumber, walnuts, vinaigrette."

The meal came exactly one hour into our train ride.  The cart came back through, delivering all the salads first.  Then it did a pass with all the sandwiches.

The portion size of this was pretty funny.  Yes, a snack. Definitely not a meal salad, but barely even an appetizer salad really. Nothing more was served with it - no roll, no salt & pepper packets, no little piece of chocolate or candy, nothing.  

It came pre-dressed with the dressing.  Luckily, not over dressed, and I didn't mind it.

The salad too was actually fine. The greens and tomato and cucumber all pretty fresh.  The cheese did not have any blue cheese funk, even though it looked like blue cheese, it really tasted like a fresh cheese.  A bit uncanny, but I sorta liked it.

Overall, fine, but so small, and such a random "snack".  ***.