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Telegraph
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
A direct train from Paris to Milan is a game-changer for travellers. I was on the first service
The problem with catching a train from Paris is that you have to go to Paris, which has Parisians in it. I was born in Paris to a local dad, so I'm allowed to say that. Tough crowd. Or rather, they used to be. Because something odd happened when I arrived on the 8am train from St Pancras last week. People were smiling. Waiters were affable. Things looked clean(er). That ain't the Paris I know. 'A 'be nice' memo must've gone round ahead of the Olympics,' I thought, as I sipped on a comfortingly bad, perversely expensive coffee in the Gare du Nord. I was due to catch a high-speed direct train to Milan on relaunch day. In 2023, a landslide covered the tracks in France's Maurienne Valley, halting the service. Following a €13.5m restoration project, the line has reopened with five services daily. My plan: stop and scoff in underrated Turin before checking into super-swish Portrait Milano at the end of the line – all the while feeling smug that I'd be making an 80 per cent carbon saving by not flying. The sun was shining in that sharp, vernal way that makes Haussmann look new, so I committed to the low-carbon schtik by cycling over to the Gare de Lyon – 17 minutes instead of 34 in a taxi and a damn sight cheaper. Follow the new 'Paris 2024'-stencilled cycling paths and you've got yourself a lovely pootle that takes in the new Notre-Dame along the Seine. For lunch, I had intended on treating myself to some rococo lamb at Le Train Bleu in the station, but it was booked until Judgement Day, so I sauntered into Marius, a smart new brasserie immediately below, for its prix fixe. Beaming staff served three neat, nourishing plates and a demi for under €40. By this point, it felt as if Paris was gaslighting me. But the day just continued unfolding like a musical – Les Agréables. My train, Trenitalia's Frecciarossa 1000, was an exciting Golden Age of Speed -looking thing. Inside, its sporty grey bucket seats were surprisingly comfortable, with a dignified amount of leg space. It was fast (up to 300 kph), quiet and, because it's Italian, there was decent coffee for €1.50. Speaking of reasonable prices: tickets start at €29, while a journey from London to Milan, booked through the Trainline app, starts at £122.89. I'd pay double to avoid the 5am shakedown at Stansted. 'The Paris to Milan line is part of a wider success story across Europe,' said Sarah Helppi, Trainline's UK country director. 'As more rail lines open up to new operators, competition is increasing, prices are coming down and demand is going up.' The train through France is especially lovely for its rapidly changing scenery: flat arable turns to forest to vines to the snow-cloaked splendour of the pre-Alps. It's like a very long postcard. We slowed down considerably in the mountains – all the better to look out and up at those dusky peaks – and I called my mother with an update. 'You sound like you're in a good mood,' she replied. Exactly six hours later, I was walking over the road from Turin Porta Nuova station to the recently revamped Turin Palace Hotel. Bags were dumped and I hopped on an Uber scooter to the new Madama Piola Vini e Piattini for an avalanche of Piedmontese small plates and ballsy barbera by the glass. Their plin – veal-filled fresh pasta – with caramelised Normandy butter sauce was unbearably good. The beef-cheek bon bons with hazelnut mayonnaise too. I woke up still full, so skipped breakfast and went for a walk along the city's arcades with local guide Stefano Ricca, who didn't miss a beat in his account of the city's story. House of Savoy, who built and ran the place for 900 years, had a penchant for pared-back baroque, so the city is all straight lines and easy to navigate. 'Everything about Torino is square,' said Stefano, 'even its people.' (Read: less hot-blooded than other Italians.) Go to Palazzo Madama to see the history of the city in one place. Roman ruins are visible beneath a glass floor and above it is an exhibition of hand-drawn maps showing how the city's progress over the centuries. Up in the view-porn lookout tower, Stefano pointed to a set of unassuming blue doors near the Royal Palace: 'San Lorenzo, the city's most beautiful church, is hidden in there.' Architecture anoraks will swoon for the slightly unnerving Torre Littoria opposite, built to house Mussolini's cronies, now Rationalism's best effort. Turin also has a thing for cars, chocolate, clothes, cinema, vermouth and Belle Époque coffee shops. We stopped at Stratta, a family-run confetteria on the theatrical Piazza San Carlo, for a civilised espresso and some hazelnut chocolate. 'This is where the precursor to Ferrero Rocher was born,' waxed Stefano, as I made one disappear. 'Some say the reason Turin became the first capital of united Italy was because of its favour-making chocolate.' Lunch was more delightful pasta – mezzi paccheri with braised onion cream, veal and Parmesan – at Stefano's favourite spot, Pastificio De Filippis. Turin has 52 museums, but I was swayed by actor Linda Messerklinger (a friend of a friend) to visit the National Cinema Museum. We met in the art nouveau glow of the Galleria Subalpina after her day on the set of Paolo Sorrentino's latest film. 'I'm a star, you know?' she declared as we wandered through the museum's brilliant James Cameron exhibition (on until June 15). The building is worth the visit alone. The most Italian day of all time then red-lined when I visited Osteria Rabezzana for dinner paired with live opera (every Wednesday). Butter-soft mountain lamb and gale-force Puccini is quite the way to finish a stay in Turin. Milan was Milan: brash, beautiful and – with Design Week about to kick off – busy. But that's why you go. At the historic, high-fashion Portrait Milano, you're ushered through a late-Renaissance stone portal into the cloistered courtyard of what was once Europe's oldest seminary. I parked myself at the bar for a spritz (did you know Milan invented happy hour?) and some first-rate people watching. Couture-clad patrons give the place genuine swagger, while design cues call on the blonde walnut and rattan panels of 1950s Milanese living rooms. A walk around the first-floor colonnaded loggia felt like a waltz through time, and my suite – with its tonnes of marble – looked like the sort of place cardinals repair to during conclave. My second-favourite activity was a session in the Longevity Spa's -90°C cryo chamber, because it afforded me the necessary extra life points to drink 'Tobacco' Manhattans upstairs. Dinner was down the road, at uber-trendy La Specialità, where the Culatello di Zibello ham with Andria burrata will make you wish your mum had married an Italian instead. If you can be bothered to leave the hotel, check out free-to-enter Cortile Del Museo Della Moda, and see what Armani and Chloé were making in the Eighties. Then rush back to your suite, crack open some Franciacorta on one of its two balconies, and toast Trenitalia's dignified return to form. Portrait Milano offers rooms starting from £890 per night, based on two adults sharing and excluding breakfast. London to Milan, booked through the Trainline app, starts at £122.89.
New York Times
02-04-2025
- New York Times
Train Stations Are for Dining, Too
Scallop-and-oyster tartare. Black soy sauce ramen in fish stock. One-of-a-kind 'hot dogs' with an herby rémoulade. Train stations aren't just for departures and arrivals — they're also for dining. Here are five urban train stations where you can find a fabulous meal, whether it's a multicourse, two-hour dinner in London or a delicious quick lunch in Copenhagen. Gare St.-Lazare The belle epoque magnificence of Le Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon in Paris has made it one of the most famous restaurants in the world since it opened in 1901. It isn't the most Parisian of the French capital's train station restaurants, though. That honor goes to Lazare, which the chef Eric Frechon opened in 2013 at the Gare St.-Lazare, one of the busiest train stations in Europe (trains here serve mostly Normandy and the western suburbs of Paris, including Vernon, the stop for Giverny and Monet's garden). 'I love the Gare St.-Lazare, because as a boy growing up in Normandy, it was my portal to Paris,' Mr. Frechon said when Lazare opened. Remembering those empty-pocketed days, he wanted to design a modern brasserie with many different price points. 'Everyone should have the right to some good food,' he said, which explains the breakfast prix fixe menu for 12 euros (about $13); the €8 buttered-baguette-and-ham sandwich or €6 sugared crepe served from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.; and the €22 daily special at lunch and dinner. With its copper bar and brass-rail-backed banquettes, Lazare evokes a traditional Parisian brasserie, but registers as modern with its exposed ductwork overhead and wall units filled with stacked white plates, pitchers, vases and other objects. Similarly, the stylish comfort-food menu includes Normandy oysters, onion soup and roasted sausage with buttery potato purée, as well as contemporary dishes like scallop-and-oyster tartare with curry oil, and pineapple carpaccio with lemon-mint sorbet. Usefully for a city with hidebound serving hours, Lazare is open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday, and Sunday from 11:45 a.m. to 11 p.m. There's also seating at the bar for solo diners. One way or another, the people-watching is first-rate. Starters from €11 to €24, main courses €22 to €42. — ALEXANDER LOBRANO St. Pancras International London's St. Pancras International station, a Victorian Gothic Revival icon that barely escaped demolition in the 1960s, is a daily crossroads for tens of thousands of travelers, thanks to rail connections that run across the metropolis and as far as continental Europe. The station offers uplifting architecture, an international vibe and a chance to watch sleek trains slow to gentle stops in the cathedral-evoking train hall that once formed the world's largest enclosed space. The station and its environs also offer some excellent opportunities to drink and dine. Attached to the station, in a red-brick-and-wrought-iron pile you'll recognize from 'Harry Potter' films and a memorable Spice Girls video, is the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Enjoy a Purity — an alcohol-free concoction that includes orgeat, jasmine tea and Everleaf Marine, a botanical aperitif (14 pounds, or about $18) — amid the classy-camp grandeur of the hotel's restored Gothic Bar. Next door is Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand, which recently opened in a space renovated by the Paris-based designer Hugo Toro in 2023. Bathed in the glow of the station's facade and only yards from the humming rails that lead to Paris, this graceful dining room is a fitting London home for modern French cuisine. The vast mirrors and windows are arranged to suggest the ricochet of light and perspective within a moving railway carriage. Mr. Toro said that reimagining such a classic space was like finding your grandmother's old coat and cutting it into something new. Victor Garvey, the chef, did a stint at Copenhagen's groundbreaking Noma and earned a Michelin star at Sola, in London; his grandmother cooked for Charles de Gaulle. The menu recently included duck breast served with blood sausage, quince and a Calvados-based sauce, and an all-French cheese cart. Entrees from £32; a seven-course tasting menu is £139. After dinner, stroll along the station's serene upper terrace, past the words — 'I want my time with you' — that the artist Tracey Emin traced in pink neon beneath the stately railway clock. — MARK VANHOENACKER Central Station For the past decade, a sausage stand like no other in the Danish capital has drawn locals and tourists alike to Copenhagen Central Station. Hot dogs are Denmark's sole indigenous form of street food, and from the outside, Johns Hotdog Deli appears no different from any of the other food carts that provide Danes with a quick lunch or a good fatty sponge with which to soak up a night's revelries. But it's what John Michael Jensen does inside that stall that makes the difference. Mr. Jensen eschews industrial wieners and mustards and instead works with a butcher to have most of his sausages made to his own recipe. He also makes his condiments himself. 'When I started to develop my own sausages, my own sauce rémoulade, pickle my own cucumbers, people were laughing at me, saying, 'You idiot, you're going to go bankrupt,'' said Mr. Jensen, a former pastry chef who also cooked at a U.S. military base. That was 18 years ago, the last 10 of which have been spent in front of the train station. In addition to the classics, Mr. Jensen offers an ever-changing weekly special that draws from what's in season; a recent edition featured onion confit, an herby rémoulade (Danes love rémoulade) and crunchy Jerusalem artichoke chips — all made, of course, by Mr. Jensen himself. (Most hot dogs, 37 kroner, or about $5.35; weekly special, 60 kroner.) Asked if he ever feels confined by the canvas that is bun, ground pork and toppings, Mr. Jensen, 67, demurred. 'If I just sit down and drink a cup of coffee, I'll think of something new. There's no limit.' — LISA ABEND Kyoto Station Wooden, delicate, low-rise, ancient — these are the words that define Kyoto. Invert these ideas, and you basically get Kyoto Station: a dominating steel latticework reaching some 230 feet high, plopped down like an alien craft of capitalism amid the old temples and shrines. The second largest in Japan, the station contains a series of malls and hotels, and within its many labyrinthine corridors (and beside its impressively long escalators) lie more than 50 restaurants, nine of which are ramen shops. They live on the 10th floor, along Ramen Koji, or Ramen Alley. It's essentially an Epcot Center for ramen, with outposts from cities famous for their ramen (prices range from 1,000 to 2,500 yen, or about $7 to $17). You can try Toyama's black soy sauce fish-stock ramen at Men-ya Iroha. You can sample thick-brothed miso ramen from Sapporo's Men-ya Kotetsu. If you don't eat pork, most restaurants will be happy to serve you ramen with the chashu (pork belly) slices removed, but a good chicken ramen can be hard to beat. Thankfully, Gion Ramen Miyako serves a mean tori-paitan, or white chicken broth, perhaps one of the greatest meals to have on a cold winter day. (As with many things, Japan has utterly perfected chicken soup.) If you want something even lighter, the Osaka-based Nakamurashoten's 'Kin no Shio' salt ramen is probably the airiest, its chicken and seafood broth redolent with notes of shiso, a common herb in Japanese cuisine with notes of mint, basil and anise. And if you've ever wondered what happens when you fill a giant pot with pig bones and then boil them for a thousand years, you're in luck. Fukuoka's famous tonkotsu ramen is represented in the alley by Ramen Koganeya and Hakata Ikkousha. These shops cook the bones until they break and dissolve, with soups so heavy they might just be the perfect option if you are looking to sleep all the way to Tokyo on the Shinkansen. — CRAIG MOD Moynihan Train Hall People navigating Manhattan's majestic Moynihan Train Hall may not realize the food hall is a destination in itself. Morning meetings, lunch breaks and after-work hangs attract locals, especially at the sprawling Irish Exit, a first-class bar from the team behind the award-winning Dead Rabbit in the financial district. Day-drinkers segue from mimosas and Bloody Lates (a.k.a. Bloody Marys) to Do Not Disturbs (gin martinis) and Irish coffee (cocktails $16 to $20). Comfy seating and gentle lighting contribute to the lulling effect, but all-aboard announcements won't let you miss that train to Ronkonkoma. There are other reasons all through the day to visit, even if you're not catching the Acela to Washington. Breakfast: Petite Maman's glorious pastries ($4 to $6.50) — croissants, Cheddar scallion scones, pear caramel cruffins (a croissant-muffin hybrid) — and drip coffee ($3 to $4) are quickly handed over, but allow six minutes for the hot brioche with a squishy egg and butternut squash embedded ($6.50). Jacob's Pickles builds towering breakfast biscuit sandwiches until 11 a.m.; the bacon, egg and cheese ($9) is enjoyable but unwieldy and better dismantled with a knife and fork than teeth. Grab a chicken Caesar wrap ($12) for later, each bite hitting juicy, tangy, tender and crisp notes. Lunch: E.A.K. Ramen offers Japanese soul food, including veggie miso ramen ($16.80), a cheek-warming tangle of noodles in a spicy, balanced, satisfying broth. For something meaty, Pastrami Queen's pastrami sandwich ($18.50) is the obvious choice, the lean, well-seasoned, purplish meat thinly shaved and bundled inside soft slices of rye. Dinner: Unwind at the serene counter at Yono Sushi by BondSt, where hand rolls such as Hokkaido scallop with silky avocado or blue crab topped with a fried shishito pepper are freshly assembled and sensational (three for $24). Leave up to 30 minutes for a seated experience (weekdays only; the last seating is at 7:15 p.m.). The full kitchen also turns out crunchy strips of chicken katsu ($17) to go and superb sushi roll packages ($9.75 to $15.75). Grab-and-go items are available seven days a week until 10 p.m. — JULIE BESONEN
