Riding the Rails
Author: Carolyn Koenig
July 2008
Chef's Table
At four- and five-star restaurants, discerning diners are focused on their meal—the presentation, the quality of the ingredients, the creativity and the overall expertise of the front and back of the house.
On board the Rocky Mountaineer, luxury excursion trains that journey through Canada’s West and the Canadian Rockies, chefs face an additional daunting challenge: getting the guests to divert their eyes from the gorgeous scenery outside their domed railcar long enough to pay attention to the food.But when they do—expectations run high. After all, the renowned company has set the standard for luxury train service for more than 18 years. (In fact, the company just celebrated its millionth passenger last month.) Your incentives or other groups board the train and travel only by daylight, all the better to focus on that view. No pull-down bunks and prepackaged sandwiches here.
So diners expect perfection, regardless of the vicissitudes of preparing top-quality meals as the train climbs and dips, stops and starts, at altitudes that vary widely.
“We meet expectations by the way we design the menu and make sure attention is paid to every detail,” says Frederic Couton, one of four world-renowned chefs from British Columbia who formed Rocky Mountaineer Catering last fall. “It’s every single detail, from the flower on the table to the way we cook the meat to the tablecloth and how we serve the plate.”
Couton’s partners in this culinary “dream team,” which began service on the trains in January, are Joseph Lassaga, Jean Pierre Guerin and Raoul Prigent, top toques who have created spectacular cuisine in kitchens around the world, including Paris, Geneva and Spain.
The chefs are recipients of many awards, and Couton is also the author of The Cannery Seafood Restaurant, which details his creations as executive chef of the eponymous restaurant. Each has his own specialty that applies to the railroad catering business, from working with large groups for airlines to being good with numbers—in addition to being whizzes behind the stove.
The culinary team’s approach to their cuisine is “West Coast Canadian” with a touch of Asian/Pacific flavor. And, “It’s low-cal as much as we can,” Couton says, including “a wonderful low-cal cheese from a dairy in Kamloops.”
One signature dish is the Coho salmon, marinated with a soy-ginger blend (pictured here). Other specialties are a warm vegetable salad with raspberry vinaigrette, and braised ribs with garlic mashed potatoes.
The entire crew consists of 70 chefs, which accounts for all departures in season (April to October). “The kitchen is like a galley, long and narrow. Three employees work there, plus the sous chef. Everybody has a task to do and knows where to stand,” Couton says. “It’s a rolling kitchen, which can be quite challenging. Sometimes you go fast or slow. It’s a moving hub, but you get used to it after a while.”
It’s also a lot of fun, Couton allows. “All the team, everyone working together, it’s a good crew. Some people have been working here for 10 years. They’re on the road, it’s not the same as a restaurant or hotel. One day they’re in Kamloops, another in Calgary,” he says. “Imagine when it’s a nice blue day in Jasper...beautiful.”
The biggest surprise to working on the rails is how absolutely different the experience is than on land, he says. “You’re always moving, there’s always movement going on. One thing people told me in the beginning was that, at the end of a day when you’re in a hotel and take a shower, don’t close your eyes or you’ll lose your balance. I tried that, and it’s true. It’s called having train legs.” [rockymountaineer.com]
