Avocado Toast on a Train? Beware of What You Ask For and Where You Ask for It

It wasn’t that long ago that avocado toast wasn’t a thing.

And then it was, literally “the toast of the town”. (I know, bad pun, I couldn’t help myself!)

And then it (unfairly) became a symbol for wretched excess. I wrote about that a while ago when I shared our delight with Bobby Flay’s avocado toast recipes.

That was a while ago, October of 2020, when we first tried avocado toast at home. Now, it’s a regular menu item at Glover Gardens.

Fast Forward to Now

I found myself in first class on a train in Scotland recently, and discovered that breakfast to order is free with your first class ticket.

Well, that was good to know, especially since I didn’t get up early enough to have breakfast, or even coffee.

I wasn’t very hungry since I don’t usually eat breakfast, but it was a day that didn’t have a time slot for lunch in-between meetings, so I went for avocado toast with a poached egg and grilled tomato.

My friends, that’s exactly what I got.

The toast was an English muffin, halved and not very toasty, and there was a schmear of mashed avocado on each side, with a poached egg perched atop them. There wasn’t a speck of seasoning wasted on that meal! It was so exactly what it said it was—and nothing more—that it made me laugh out loud. Although I’m not sure that the tomato was ‘grilled’, unless someone had interrogated it for being unripe.

This isn’t really a complaint: I grabbed the tiny packs of salt and pepper that were hidden in a slot in the red napkin and went to town. The egg was actually cooked perfectly, and with salt and pepper, the dish was edible if not noteworthy.

And, I learned a lesson: don’t order a trendy meal on a train. Stick with the traditional English breakfast, or better yet, just toast and coffee.

Back to Our First Avocado Toast Trip

Here’s a picture of our take on Bobby Flay’s recipe back when we first made it in October of 2020.

And, not quite so beautiful, when I made avocado toast and an over-easy egg with our leftovers. I guess this is what I was thinking I would get when I ordered avocado toast on a train, something a little more colorful, with a frill or two and some pepper.

Meals on Trains Used to Be Elegant, At Least in Movies

Perhaps in the back of my mind, I was thinking of the dining cars in the classic movies I watch on Turner Classic Movies when I ordered breakfast on that train in Scotland. You know, you’ve seen the scenes: the service was exquisite, the silver was silver, the china was china and the food was equivalent to what you’d have in a nice restaurant. Like what Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall (Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint) enjoyed in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when they were flirting and verbally sparring.

And look at that table between Guy Haines and Bruno Antony (Farley Granger and Robert Walker) in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train when Guy thought Bruno was being funny about switching murders, and Bruno was (dead) serious. There isn’t a plate, utensil or condiment missing, and that china is real.

It’s funny, I didn’t pick two Hitchcock movies on purpose, they’re just two dining car scenes that are quite memorable and popped into my head. I’ve realized while writing this that Hitchcock made quite a few movies with train scenes, and in some, the train was almost a character, like The Lady Vanishes. But that’s a bit off the point of this post, so I’ll put on the brakes and get off this train (of thought). 😁

Bottom line for this post: beware of your surroundings when you order avocado toast.

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