2 days ago
5
The dish travels down the thin passageway in the centre of the Indian Pacific’s Gold-class dining carriage, the Queen Adelaide Restaurant, in the deft palm of a train attendant. The fillet of grilled mulloway sits on a swatch of caper sauce beneath a perfectly plucked patch of microgreens, next to a large coin of potato rosti and two bright-green branches of broccolini.
My main course, one of three different options during tonight’s dinner service, follows a perfectly portioned smoked chicken salad with orbs of beetroot and a pea-and-mint puree. Every day, the train’s team repeats this process three times, turning out 1200-plus dishes across four dining cars and three kitchens for 200-odd passengers on the five-day journey from the Indian Ocean in Perth to the Pacific Ocean in Sydney.
Chef de partie Stacy Walker holds the train’s culinary compendium in her hands, its pages home to the 70-or-so recipes that culminate in the food offering on board this quintessential Australian train route.
“This is our bible,” she says with a smile. She runs her finger over a recipe for an entree. “I’ll just get these bits of parsley off for you.”
In the dining car, my fellow passengers and I experience a smooth display of hospitality that lets us focus on the view outside the window and the convivial conversation with our fellow passengers.
Take Sunday night’s vegetarian main: roasted heirloom baby carrots with South Australian Yorke Peninsula lentils, served with a harissa yoghurt and half-moon scoops of pickled red onion. The dish’s journey starts in Adelaide, two days before the train departs from East Perth Terminal en route to Sydney. Boxes of bright yellow and orange baby carrots, bags of lentils, unpeeled onions and bulbous orange South Australian sweet potatoes are lifted onto the train and head to one of the three on-train cool rooms, one for each kitchen car.
The train then heads to Perth, outbound passengers in tow, and has one hour in the WA capital to refuel, refresh and board the Sydney-bound passengers. Walker and her team prepare the dynamic elements of each day’s dishes – more than 50 unique options between Gold and Platinum classes over a five-day itinerary – and settle in for service, which runs for an hour and a half three times a day.
“It’s a very speedy operation,” Walker says. “You’re doing a plate in less than a minute.”
Two hours before the first dinner guests take their seats, preparations begin in the long, tight kitchens as they rattle and shake. Carrots and potatoes are peeled, the carrot tops combined with basil and sunflower seeds to make pesto, and lentils are soaked.
Whole Dutch carrots and potato slices – the latter dressed with Maggie Beer’s fig vino cotto – are oiled and popped into supercharged commercial ovens, which can climb to 190 degrees in five minutes. Coconut yoghurt is combined with a housemade harissa sauce.
Walker spoons pesto into low bowls, places a potato slice on top, then the harissa mix, then another potato, then the seasoned lentils, then tops it with blanched sugar snap peas and the perky grilled carrots. (Any produce leftover goes to OzHarvest.)
“It can get really, really rough in the kitchen,” Walker says, as the train lurches forward. The other day, she had clocked up 35,000 steps by 4pm. “You’re getting thrown around in all kinds of directions. You have to be very steady on your feet.”
Dishes are picked up off the pass and delivered to each four-person booth, orders taken in a system of squares that identify which diner ordered which entree, main and dessert. In the kitchen, two chefs – standing with soft knees, legs splayed – flow between stations and tuck knives under their chopping boards when they’re not in use. Deep fryers are nonexistent, all stoves are electric, and utensils are clipped in clever crannies so they don’t go flying when the train pulls forward.
After service, Walker stands in the kitchen, post-flurry, and peers out of the window over the sink. The red dirt of the Nullarbor speeds past, punctuated only by lush salt bushes and the occasional emu.
“The Indian Pacific is my favourite train, my absolute favourite,” Walker says, deeming this job the best in the world. “It’s a second home to me.”
The details
Train
The Indian Pacific five-day trip to Sydney departs East Perth Terminal on Saturdays. Fares start from $4500 a person in a Gold Twin, and include all off-train experiences, onboard entertainment, unlimited beverages and 11 meals. See journeybeyondrail.com.au
The writer travelled as a guest of Journey Beyond.
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