World Best French Toast

So I'm interviewing Gene Nopper, one of the volunteers down at Union Station, about his career working at Union Station's laundry building in the 1950s, how he worked in the commissary as well, helping provision the many passenger trains and so forth, and learned many interesting things.

Gene's a great guy. His dad saw the original Union Station burn down in 1923, worked at the new one in 1924, Gene worked there in the baggage room as well as the laundry and commissary shop. He saw the place when it was booming, the industrial center of Ogden.

Ate some good food then, too.

The interviews are for oral histories that we're doing on conjunction with Weber State University. The idea is, get the past down from witnesses while they're still here. While it's fun to ask about the big stuff, what's interesting is the small details of life you pick up.

Such as, on the passenger trains in the dining car they cooked with what we now would call fireplace logs, and charcoal. The logs burned and kept the ovens hot, and the charcoal was to grill stuff. I would have thought electric, on a train, or maybe steam somehow, but wood and charcoal?

He was there, he loaded the cars.

Anyway, what was interesting was that he said he also rode as a passenger and ate on the trains and said the Union Pacific served the world's best French toast.

Most French toast is egg-milk soaked in bread and grilled, right? Mine is. Probably so is yours.

Gene said they used plain old white Wonder bread on the UP, but after soaking it in batter it was deep-fried.

Deep fried? Submerged in grease?

Yup.

"It was sure good," he said. "People loved it."