I am a Million Mile+ flyer. I love to fly, and for me the flight is part of the vacation, the visit, or the best part of a business trip. Airline food, in my opinion, is only OK. Domestic first class / business class food on US airlines is only OK.- even on most international flights everything (salad, main course & dessert) is served all at once on one tray.
I am a several million mile BIS flyer, but that actually has very little bearing on what is happening in Business/First Class today. That would happen regardless of how much I flew or not.
The single tray serving was certainly the case during the COVID years. But as airlines evolve from the COVID years to more normal year, they are slowly starting to deliver the basic place setting in a tray together with the Appetizer and Salad, and as those are consumed they are removed and replaced by the main course, and then finally the Dessert. At least that was my experience in Business Class over the last three weeks on United, Air India, Lufthansa and Vistara. But in the case of US airlines that is still far short of what was the norm.
United in Polaris though did a strange hybrid, they laid down a table cloth and delivered the pre-meal snacks on it, and then delivered the meal setup on a tray with its own table cloth, and delivered the dessert separately on the original table cloth setup after removing the meal tray. I am told in a discussion on flyer talk that this is new this week, so things are evolving I suppose.
Admittedly this may not be uniformly the case and perhaps it is only the case on very long fights on US airlines. OTOH Vistara and Air India (both now managed by the Tata Group, Vistara in collaboration with Singapore Airlines) served excellent full meals (Dinner and Breakfast respectively) in Coach (Air India) and First Class (Vistara), on what amounted to a domestic flight in India of around 2 hours duration.
With very little additional effort Amtrak could even serve the Flex meal in a more presentable form on a tray which is somewhat more elaborate than the ridiculous frame of a tray that they are supposed to use with the Flex Meal but seldom do. Regardless, they need to add a second server if they intend to have a food service that is not a laughing stock meant to just tick mark :food service" instead of actually being a credible service.