Amtrak Acela Food Review

A first class ticket at $500 from where to where? Washington D.C. to New Haven?

Love Le Diplomate and several of Starr's Philadelphia restaurants. If he can get to 75% of the quality of food and service he has in his brick and mortars, it may be enough for me to book a trip by AMTRAK just for fun.

Oh, that stuff looked way too disgusting! At least I will never have to eat it.

He traveled from Washington to Philadelphia.  For the prices he is quoting, I suspect he bought his tickets very shortly before he traveled.  I went on the Amtrak website, and for travel on August 22 and 23 (random weekday dates I picked more than two weeks out), I found first class tickets each way for $173, or about a third of what he paid.

I have traveled first class on Acela only once and I enjoyed the food service.  I got my ticket using Guest Rewards points, so there are ways to avoid the "sticker shock" effect of the article.  Other than that, I thought it was an informative article and I am glad to see Amtrak doing innovative things to improve the onboard experience for passengers.

If you plan ahead, one can easily travel for much less. I visit my mother a few times a year and I take Acela from Boston to NYC first class (typically between $100 to $150) and then NJT out to Port Jervis. The meals in Acela first class are top notch. I also travel two or three times a year to Philly from Boston and again Acela First Class can be had for under $200, with two meals! This is non-peak travel times and planning in advance, of course. The food, free drinks, lounge access and friendly staff make it worthwhile. I do make sure to wear an Amtrak shirt or hat as well, the train staff like seeing a rail fan and I usually get an extra sweet treat for being nice and for being an Amtrak rail fan 🙂

Thanks for posting this. I haven’t done any rail travel in the US ever, but have done some in Europe. I’ll be looking at ways to convince the boss to do this.

We’ve gone first class on United between Houston and Newark many times and can assure you the meals on those flights are far less interesting than the ones from the article.

Regarding prices, between Washington and NYC we typically pay $200 for a non-refundable one-way Acela business class ticket. A fully refundable ticket is about $300 and a first-class one is $400. My fine dining on Acela usually consists of a nuked hotdog and a Coke.