Eurostar: what does the extra £250 buy you

I have just been to Paris on Eurostar in Business Premier Class, because I thought I wanted the flexibility of changing tickets. In the event, because of the wrong kind of snow on the line in France, the timetable was rubbish anyway, so the timings made little sense. There is a £250 difference between the cost of the most expensive standard class fare and the business premier. What it buys you is a meal and the right to use the business lounge and ticket flexibility.. On Wednesday when I left, the lounge was so packed in the morning, that it was frankly unpleasant, and on the way back, because of timing of the trains, I did not even use it. The lounge provides complimentary snack food and drinks, somewhere to sit, and wifi and magazines which you would not normally want to buy. They make a lot of fuss about their catering on the train, and the question is whether it is worth the extra? The service is wildly successful, and the business class is pretty full. The carriages appear to be a bit past their sell-by date, and are frankly showing wear and tear.

So, for a morning departure, you get a hot or cold breakfast which looks like the airlines used to provide in the good old days. The dish is a fritate with egg and ham. Otherwise it looks exactly like airline food, and was hot enough (8 on the CHOF scale) and tasty, but the fritate was a bit on the heavy side. The orange juice came out of an individual carton, and there was a volante tea and coffee. One way or another, because of the time zone change, this became an early lunch.
On the return journey, an early dinner was served.
A menu told us that the starter was flakes of salmon: broccoli puree, dill dressing (sic)

The main course was pickled mackeral or duck, aubergine and potato pie. No contest.

This was rather like a high class cottage pie, but was actually quite tasty and scored a 9 on the CHOF scale. The desert, which I did not care for was a pear and almond frangipane tart. They used to serve nice chocolates with the coffee, but maybe that is only on the Belgium run.

So the balance is paying for a high class airline meal and flexibility or saving and sorting out your own catering. Based on the occupants of the carriage, I would guess it depends on whether you are paying for your own ticket out of your own taxed income, and most of the passengers in my carriage were clearly not.