Wake up and smell the coffee, Eurostar
Took the train to hols in Italy this year. A mixed blessing. Railway stations are infinitely preferable to airports but lumping the luggage around to make connections in Paris and Milan is not anyone's idea of fun. But perhaps the biggest disappointment came in the first few minutes of the entire 1100 mile trek.
Get this. The Eurostar pulling out of the magnificent station at St Pancras and heading for the Continent could not muster a decent cup of coffee. I mean, come on, this is not BR we are talking about. There was no Gaggia machine and what I was given as an excuse of a latte (for some reason my preference, a cappuccino, was not available) was an all-purpose brown slop that tasted more of UHT milk than the mighty coffee bean. Unforgivably it was made from a sachet of instant powder. And the final insult? I was asked to hand over £2.50.
So my message to Eurostar boss Richard Brown is this: Sorry, just not good enough. If you can provide a Caffe Nero in the departure lounge at St Pancras (hopelessly undermanned by the way) it is surely not too much to ask for a decent coffee on board.
The Italian state railway, TrenItalia, which as we discovered has many shortcomings of its own, gets it. The charmingly old fashioned and ramshackle buffet on the sleeper to Rome boasted a gleaming coffee machine that spat out an immaculate espresso for Euro1.20 - about a quid. Of course you would expect that in Italy, but let's face it getting a decent cup of coffee in Britain is not the challenge it used to be.
Come on Richard. Wake up and smell the coffee. And not out of a packet.
Count your blessings. At least you weren't travelling with Ryanair, who currently charge £3.50 for a Cuppasoup!
Posted by: Elllie | 02/09/2009 at 02:37 PM
Spot on - I have always been surprised by the dreary catering on Eurostar economy. There is a real opportun ity being missed to smarten up the onboard buffets. That said, the French TGV buffets are also disappointing even if, in both cases, the staff do their best.
Posted by: Richard Coltart | 02/09/2009 at 04:09 PM
Agreed...it's pathetic in this day and age not to be able to get a decent cup of coffee. I remember being served a plastic cup of brown dishwater on a BA flight to Rome of all places. I felt embarrassed. I'm sure the coffee machines that they use on trains in Italy are available to be bought outside Italy. But this is at a time when train companies are closing their buffet cars in favour of trollies so I'm not going to hold my breath. If we had decent catering on trains, people would actually buy things, and we might not have to pay such ridiculous sums for our train tickets in the first place; and it would make the whole experience of public transport far more pleasant. It's just basic common sense really.
Posted by: Chris | 14/09/2009 at 11:01 PM
Thanks for all your comments. Chris, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Train travel is all about ticket paying bums on seats. Proper restaurant and even buffet cars are regarded as "non revenue generating" and are being scrapped. They are fast becoming an endangered species across Europe. Shame on you rail bosses.
Posted by: Jonathan Prynn | 01/10/2009 at 09:37 AM