From the Dining Car: The Recipes and Stories Behind Today's Greatest Rail Dining Experiences

- Sweet and Spicy Alaska Spot Prawns
- Autumn Pear Salad with Gorgonzola and Spiced Pecans
- Chicken Breast Stuffed with Wild Mushrooms and Smoked Gouda
- Bread Pudding with Butter Bourbon Sauce

Is this a menu from one of North America's great restaurants? Yes and no. It's actually a menu from four of North America's great restaurants, some of which whisk you along at speeds upward of eighty miles per hour. This enticing meal, just right for crisp fall weather and featuring the great foods of North America, comes straight from the dining car menus of four of the greatest trains traveling the rails today: The Midnight Sun Express, which travels through Alaska between Anchorage and Fairbanks (the prawns); The Belle Vista, which often takes diners through the Montana Rockies (the pear salad); The Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, which gives diners views of the Seattle skyline (the chicken breast); and My Old Kentucky Dinner Train, which travels the old Bardstown line and passes by the Jim Beam distillery (the bread pudding).

All across America, as trains speed through mountain passes, wend their way along the shores of crystal-clear lakes, and roll across blistering deserts, riders are enjoying some of the best that the North American table has to offer. Complete with serious wine lists, crisp table linens, heavy silverware, fine china, gleaming crystal, and impeccable service, these dining cars bring the age-old romance of dining well on a train into the twenty-first century.

Riders on the Napa Valley Wine Train can feast on California crab stacks, smoked Sonoma range chicken, and crème brulee, sip the local vintage and watch while small towns like Yountville roll by. Those waking up on the luxurious American Orient Express can watch everything from the autumn foliage of New England to the sun-basted Pacific Ocean surf pass by while enjoying fluffy omelets, freshly brewed coffee, pastries, and fruit juice.

James D. Porterfield, author of the now-classic Dining by Rail, takes readers into the kitchens and dining rooms of the great trains and rail cars, both public and private, to discover the secrets of the great railroad chefs. He talks to them about how they prepare meals that would be the envy of a conventional restaurant while working in a kitchen one-half or one-third the size.

Featuring more than two hundred recipes and just as many behind-the-scenes stories, James D. Porterfield's From the Dining Car brings the food of the great trains from the dining car to your dining room table. All aboard!