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.
Paris
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
Lazare, Gare St.-Lazare, rue Intérieure, Eighth Arrondissement.
London
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
Gothic Bar, St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Euston Road.
Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand, St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Euston Road.
Copenhagen
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
Bernstorffsgade 18, Copenhagen.
Kyoto, Japan
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
Kyoto Ramen Koji, 10th floor, Kyoto Station.
New York
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
Inside the Farley Building, 421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets.
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