Eurostar menu: We were first to try the new food – was it good?
As the debate rages about whether it’s okay to drink pints of lager at 5am before boarding a Ryanair flight (how else are you supposed to get through it?), we at CityAM turn our thoughts to an altogether more refined method of transport: the Eurostar.
Readers of CityAM hardly need to be educated on the advantages of taking the Eurostar (especially Eurostar Premium, naturally) but for the last couple of years there’s been another selling point: a menu designed by a two Michelin-starred chef, one of the most lauded pâtissiers on the planet and a top sommelier.
More specifically, the mains are the work of Jeremy Chan, whose two-Michelin-starred Ikoyi has helped make West African cuisine some of the most zeitgeisty in London; desserts are overseen by Jessica Préalpato, who was the first woman to win the World’s Best Pastry Chef award; and Honey Spencer the author and sommelier behind Restaurant Sune on Broadway Market.
Eurostar: the connoisseur’s choice
Food served on trains and planes shook off its reputation for being inedible slop long ago, with operators now competing to offer the most luxurious offering at 200km/h and above. Still, Chan, Préalpato and Honey is some line-up by anyone’s books. Last month they released an updated version of the menu, featuring 24 separate options – different elements available on different journeys – to ensure frequent travellers don’t get bored. I took a trip with a Michelin starred chef the day it launched, rattling through the countryside to Brussels and back, to try two iterations of the new food. Does it live up to the hype?
I’ve travelled on the Eurostar plenty of times and I’ve never quite overcome that smug feeling when waltzing past the queues to join the Premium check-in desk. Within 25 minutes of arriving at Kings Cross I’m sitting on the train (you can cut it fine when you don’t have to queue and skip the lounge), with a glass of biodynamic Champagne Fleury, a rich and slightly saline fizz that’s ideal for drinking before noon, no matter what Michael O’Leary thinks.
What makes the perfect train meal?
Half an hour spent idly gazing into the inky blackness of the Channel Tunnel (and several top-ups of champagne) later, and it’s time for the food. It begins with an amuse bouche of pickled carrot with goat’s cheese before moving on to Chan’s main courses, which are divided into three options: Creative, Classic and Aromatic.
For this trip that was, respectively, salmon and greens on an extravagant smear of beetroot puree; roast beef with smoked aubergine and a runner bean salad; and lorraine potato and celeriac salad. I went for the former, which is perfect train fodder – light, interesting without being too interesting, and just the right size to line the stomach for a couple of glasses of the breezy Villa D’Oriola 2025.
My chef travelling companion, who knows his way around a cut of meat, went for the beef and reported pleasant surprise that they managed to pull it off without it a) drying out or b) merging with the other ingredients into a kind of stew. Take that as high praise.
After that there was a little roundel of Bleu de Bresse, and things were rounded off with a dainty little tarte. Quality stuff, given by this stage we’d reached a top speed of around 300km/h, with the French countryside whizzing past in streaks of green and yellow.
The new Eurostar menus
Let’s allow some artistic licence at this point and fast forward to the return journey: queue skipped, glass of Champagne Fleury in hand, slightly tipsy. This time the amuse bouche is honey roasted carrot with jalapeno and pea mousseline (very nice).
Chan’s options are beef short rib with black bean rice, spinach and cabbage (Creative); salmon with broccoli salad, green beans and almond slaw (Classic); and green bean and olive couscous salad (Aromatic). The chef and I both go for the beef, which is another minor wonder of logistics, parting at the touch of a fork, the rice fragrant. There’s also blue cheese and chutney, and what’s described as a cherry and almond baba but isn’t really a baba, rather another tarte, and a solid one at that.
And with that – blur of countryside, inky blackness of the tunnel, low-rise creep of outer London – we’re back in King’s Cross, well fed and well lubricated.
As ever, the Eurostar is a delight. Would I recommend travelling to Brussels and back just to eat the food? Probably not; leave that to the professionals. But it’s certainly another reason to avoid the airport and jump on the train.
• Fares start from £245 each way (based on return journey); visit the website here