Do you know what all are you entitled for when you book a ticket in any Rajdhani, Shatabdi or Duronto train? Well, there are some fixed and some variable services that each passenger reserves while train ticket booking. We will specifically talk about different food menu, food items and rate card for these trains and their classes.
To start with let's talk about the food being served in second & third ac coaches of Rajdhani and chair car coaches of Shatabdi trains. Both these class entitles same food menu:
1. Welcome Drink
Any packaged fruit juice tetrapack.
2. Morning Tea/Coffee
Sugar Pouches, Coffee Pouch, Tea Bag, Biscuits, Creamer, Napkin, Water Thermo.
3. Breakfast
Bread Slices, Fruit Jam, Butter Chiplet
Veg:- Vegetable or Paneer Cutlet, Finger Chips and green peas or Boiled Vegetables OR
Upma-Vada or Idli-Vada with sambhar and chutney
Non-Veg:- 2 Boiled Eggs or Cheese Omelette or Omelette of 2 eggs, Finger Chips and green peas or Boiled Vegetables.
4. Lunch/Dinner
Soup (tomato/sweet corn/rasam/vegetable), soup sticks, butter chiplet.
Main Course
Jeera rice or plain rice or pulao, dal dish, Veg (Paneer dish) or Non-Veg (Chicken dish), curd in kullad, parathas or rotis, salad, pickle sachet. Followed by ice-cream or gulab jamun.
5. Evening Snacks
Fruit drink tetra pack, samosa or paneer pakora or cheese patties or kachoris pre packed in butter paper bags, cheese or vegetable sandwich triangle, sweet, ketchup, tea/coffee.
There is even an option of continental food where one gets noodles, pasta and some boiled veggies along with cutlet and bread slices. This is an optional menu and one may ask for it when the railway employees ask for your meal preference. This is provided in all the class of Rajdhani trains.
Breakfast is served along with beverages of your choice. The food menu remains more or less same for second ac, third ac and chair car while for first ac and executive classes there are some extra add-ons like the milk and cornflakes and fresh fruit for morning breakfast, one extra vegetable in lunch/dinner menu, roasted dry fruit in evening snacks along with refreshing tissues and some mouth freshener too.
The cutlery used to serve food in first ac and executive class differs in quality and mostly bone china cutlery is used while for other classes, food is served in trays with disposable mats, disposable foil containers and stainless steel cutlery wrapped in paper napkins. Also, one can ask for tea or coffee in 1A and EC at times which is fixed in other classes.
This is more or less the same for all Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains in India and the price for all meals is already included in the fare. For Mail/Express trains, one can buy food from the IRCTC vendors. There is again fixed menu and fixed tariff for these train menus. Below picture depicts the food items and rate card for paid food.
Apart from these, one may also opt for food available outside railway stations from different food joints via different mobile apps and irctc’s e-catering service. These services allows one to have food of their choice from any food chain ...be it KFC, Domino’s Pizza, Chai or even milk at some of the stations. For ordering food through IRCTC e-catering one can check out their website and opt for food from a list of available items at various stations.
So next time you travel in train and find degraded service quality, less number of items or if you have any grievance against food served in train, you can register your complaint and sue railways at several contact points. And lastly, IRCTC always discourages to tip the railway staff for the services they provide. They are well paid by the government and one should avoid paying them even if they ask for it. You already pay for every service you undertake while booking a ticket and is included in ticket cost. So tipping the staff is a negative practice and one can complain for that too if the staff forces passengers to pay the tip.
Also do refer our previous article on various apps and contact numbers available to register any kind of issue, Click Here
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