The Hindu : Front Page : Now a different feast every day aboard the Rajdhani

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 02, 2006

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Now a different feast every day aboard the Rajdhani

Sandeep Joshi

NEW FRONTIERS: Now a different treat aboard the Rajdhani every day.

NEW DELHI: Travelling by Rajdhani Express trains turned into a whole new experience for passengers on Tuesday. With the promise of a new menu for each day of the week and a well-trained catering staff in attendance, Indian Railways are now all set to compete with the new generation of low-cost-no-frills airlines.

Instead of the routine paneer-dal-chicken-icecream menu, passengers travelling by the Howrah, Mumbai and August Kranti Rajdhani trains were on Tuesday evening treated to a wide variety of mouth-watering preparations.

"Our in-house catering experts have prepared an eight-day menu card based on feedback from passengers. Each day a different menu will be served. We have prepared the eight different menus keeping in mind weekend travellers," said Vinod Asthana, Group General Manager (Operations) of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC).

The new variety of starters includes "almond soup", "hot and sour soup", "spinach cream soup" and "ministrone soup". "Paneer do-pyaja", "malai kofta", "paneer jalfrezi", "methi chaman", "murg malai curry", "murg begum bahar", "chicken jalfrezi" and "chicken sagwala" will be served in the main course.

A variety of Indian breads ranging from "methi parantha" and "lachcha parantha" to "dhania parantha"and "pudina parantha" have been introduced. Also, passengers will get an opportunity to partake of "fruit-with-custard", "kheer", "phirni" and ice-creams of different flavours as dessert.

Noting that the new menu has been introduced on an experimental basis, Mr. Asthana said: "We will wait for eight to ten weeks to analyse the feedback. Then we will introduce the cyclic menu on all the 18 pairs of Rajdhani and 12 pairs of Shatabdi Express trains with changes if required."

Accepting that poor service and lack of variety in food had been the two main problem areas for Indian Railways so far, Mr. Asthana said the staff had now been provided with a new set of uniforms. "We now have different uniforms for four types of catering staff -- supervisors, servicemen, cooks and cleaners -- so that passengers can easily identify them."

The colourful uniforms have been designed by experts. Chefs from the country's two biggest hotel chains -- Taj Group and ITC -- have trained the catering staff. "We have also decided to recruit about 200 more trained catering staff through India Tourism Development Corporation to make our service more people-friendly."

Mr. Asthana said new feedback forms had been introduced on trains along with an "opinion poll" about catering services on its website. Also, 80 quality-check inspectors have been appointed to give a regular feedback on the changes introduced. A renowned private firm has been roped in to conduct third party inspection for IRCTC, which has been managing catering services on all the trains since 2001.

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