How Much A First-Class Dinner On The Titanic Would Have Cost You

The Titanic really is the ship of dreams for history buffs. But how much would diners have to have paid to sit in the ship's first-class dining room and down a Filet Mignon Lili with Molly Brown? It turns out that dinners on the Titanic were bundled into the general ticket price for every single passenger that sailed on the ship. First-class passengers were given the additional option of buying their own meals in a special restaurant that exclusively catered to the upper crust on top of the £870 maximum fee they would be required to pay for a suite.

For those who chose to eat in the sumptuous À la Carte Restaurant — located on the B-Deck and in a separate location from the main dining room — dinner cost 5 shillings, which in modern British pound sterlings amounts to £12. To recalculate that total into American dollars, first-class passengers paid roughly $16.25 per meal. For suppers that could include dishes like lamb with mint sauce, oysters, and sirloin of beef, that's astoundingly cheap compared to how much you might pay for a sit-down meal at an overpriced chain restaurant these days — that is, without taking inflation into account. 

It appears that passengers ate many foods on the Titanic. In the first-class restaurant (overseen by head chef Pierre Rousseau), the dinner menu on the day of the sinking included common everyday staples that modern folks would recognize. Roast duckling with apple sauce was offered, alongside sides like boiled rice and creamed carrots. But the menu didn't stop there. Other items included gourmet French dishes such as Sauté of Chicken Lyonnaise — a pan-seared chicken dish topped with a sauce made of onions, white wine, vinegar, garlic, and a rich demi-glace — and over-the-top, knockout extravagances like Pâté de Foie Gras, which is still linked to luxurious living to this day. There's no sign, however, of Chicken à la Maryland, aka the chicken and banana dish that wowed first-class passengers earlier that afternoon during luncheon. Diners could also enjoy desserts like French ice cream and éclairs.

Titanic's À la Carte Restaurant was no average food stall when it came to aesthetics, either. Patterned china, silver-plated servingware, and menu cards were used and changed up daily. The dining room was also heavily decorated in a Louis XVI style, filled with gold gilding, wood panneling, and rich fabrics that carefully decorated seats. Orchestral music even played as diners ate. All of that luxury did little to cosset the over 1,500 or so who passed away in the icy wreck that eventually claimed the Titanic on April 15, 1912. But the memory of those lives — and the food they sampled — lives on.