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Date: 10/13/2021
CHESTER – Although the annual Hobo Dinner has been a popular event at the Chester Railway Station and Museum for at least 10 years, the dinner had to be cancelled in 2019 due to COVID-19. Last year, the Chester Foundation decided they would make it a Hobo Dinner to Go, serving the traditional menu, with hobo re-enactors from Storrowton Village and Shaker Village setting up camp and bringing out the containers.
It was so successful they are doing it again. Meals at the second annual Hobo to Go will be available to pick up each half hour from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 23. The home-cooked buffet menu will include “Trackside Beef Stew,” corn pudding – a traditional recipe from the New Haven Railroad Cookbook – rolls and butter, and homemade apple or pumpkin pie, packed and ready in containers for people to pick up.
This year, people may take their food to go, sit inside the station, eat on huge granite blocks outside, or hang out with the hobos. The Railway Station and Museum at 10 Prospect St., Chester, which was recently dedicated as a National Historic Landmark, will also be open that afternoon from 11 a.m to 3 p.m.
“There will also be a hobo re-enactor encampment during that afternoon at the station. People can hang out and hear hobo stories about what life was like for the real people who lived that life. In addition, the re-enactors stay in character and help us get the meals out when people come to pick them up. We did the same last year and it was great!” said chief cook and bottle washer Barbara Huntoon, treasurer of the Chester Foundation.
Huntoon and her crew of volunteers started the hobo fundraiser, which used to be cooked in the Blue Caboose kitchen train before the event grew too big, and served inside the station. Huntoon said the volunteer crew follows all safety protocols, and she is ServSafe certified.
The menu, which is wildly popular, hasn’t changed, especially the traditional corn pudding. Chester Foundation President Dave Pierce calls it “the thing that we love that we only get once a year.”
Meals are $12 per adult, $6 per child ages 7-12, free for children 6 and under. Diners should bring their own beverages. Reservations are required and must be made by Oct. 20. To reserve a meal, call 354-7878 or email dave@chesterrailwaystation.net. Leave a message with a name and phone number, the number of people in the party, pie choice and preferred pickup time.