Traveling Outside of Time
Two hours out of L.A. with Santa Barbara up ahead, the scenery is all tall palms and pink stucco houses. Beyond the manicured backyards, each with its own swimming pool, lies the Pacific, smooth and pewter gray under suddenly stormy skies. Inside, lunch is being served from a menu that includes quiche Lorraine, jambalaya, a roast beef and muenster sandwich, grilled chicken, and a salad of field greens, tomato, hard boiled egg, olive topanade and white asparagus spears topped with a piece of dill-seasoned salmon.
Brian Rosenwald understood many things about long-distance train travel, not the least of which was the importance of the meal. One of his tonier innovations for the Coast Starlight was the Winemaker Dinner, with California and Oregon vintners invited onboard to talk about their wines, conduct tastings and, with guest chefs, orchestrate special meals. Rosenwald, himself a card-carrying oenophile, arranged more than a dozen of these, meeting with predictably excellent response. But the logistics of scheduling turned out to be too tough and time-consuming.
More successful was his plan to change the dining car menu into a series of regional specialties highlighting California cuisine and Northwest seafood. One of the great moments of Rosenwald’s tenure with the Coast Starlight was when Saveur magazine, in its “100 favorite things from the world of food and drink,” listed “Dinner on the Coast Starlight.” The meal, Rosenwald fondly remembers, was halibut in a pesto crust.