Unlock Editor’s Roundup for free
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Preparing a Michelin-worthy meal in an inappropriate luxury hotel is challenging at the best of times. There are special diets to deal with, and high-maintenance guests who won’t settle for less than the best. But throw in a country that’s permanently frozen and where your kitchen is closer to the International Space Station than the nearest supermarket, and the logistics of supply become hairy.
These are the challenges the chefs at White Desert face when preparing menus for the 300 or so guests who visit its luxury and adventure camps each Antarctic summer season, which runs from mid-November to early February. Located on Queen Maud Land in East Antarctica, each camp consists of six bedrooms in the frozen wilderness and are only accessible by guests via a five-and-a-half-hour chartered flight from Cape Town. Most of the cargo arrives by polar supply ships and requires another 800 km of land transport. A can of Coca-Cola has racked up $37 in shipping costs by the time it’s opened at the camp’s communal dining table.
But despite White Desert’s remoteness, its guests don’t have to live on bannock and pemmican. Days can start with mushrooms and eggs baked with Parmesan on toast, or shakshuka with Danish slices and fresh basil. Lunch might include herb-crusted salmon or ricotta ravioli, while glacier hikes or emperor penguin safaris come with gourmet stuffed sandwiches and thermoses of creamy tomato soup. Evenings begin with chilled avocado gazpacho or crostini with duck liver parfait, all served alongside ice-cold cocktails. These segue into multi-course dinners ranging from artfully plated duck dressings to family-style Indian feasts of silky butter chicken.
The team has cooked in similar remote kitchens at Everest Base Camp and Elbrus Base Camp in Russia. In addition to catering for guests, they must prepare around 22,000 meals for the 150 staff each season, so preparations begin in April, months before the first adventurers arrive each November.
From a central kitchen in Cape Town, the team oversees the creation and delivery of almost 45 tons of food shipments per season. Where possible, meal ingredients – such as boeuf bourguignon, garlic mashed potatoes, croissant dough or meringues – are prepared in advance and frozen, then stored in naturally chilled “igloo” refrigerators at White Desert Base Camp before to cook and crack. Eggs, vegetables and other fresh ingredients, along with any last-minute guest requests, arrive on the weekly flight from Cape Town and are kept in insulated boxes with faux fur to keep them from freezing, while the ice glaciers, melted and double filtered, provides drinking water.
“We’ve spent years refining our menus to see how different ingredients react to freezing, and we regularly test all meals for taste and visual appeal,” Louis Jansen Van Vuuren, food and beverage manager on my trip, told me. As in an airplane, the extreme dryness of the continent’s atmosphere affects key taste receptors such as the nasal mucosa. To balance out those low flavor profiles, the dishes are deliberately robust, drawing heavily on bold flavors from Thai, Indian and Greek cuisines. The extra salt compensates for the flavors of the spices lost during the freezing process.
The wine, of course, flows freely: both at the dining table in the heated common camp hall and at the igloo-like ice bar at base camp. But combining any dinner with the perfect drink is not simple. “A bottle of premium wine usually weighs about a kilo,” says Ingrid Motteux, founder of Cape Town-based wine consultancy Winewise, who has curated the camp’s concise but compelling wine list. “Carrying individual bottles would not only add to the aircraft’s load, but would also require empty flights to Cape Town.”
Motteux has worked with leading South African wineries to produce 30 liter casks of their finest wines. These reduce the equivalent packaging weight of 40 bottles to just 1.4kg, with casks recycled back in Cape Town.
Amazingly, flavor profiles can change in sub-zero temperatures, and Motteux has tailored the wines to the unique conditions of Antarctica. “With its rarefied atmosphere, extreme dryness and generally high altitude, Antarctica is a particularly challenging environment for wines,” she says. “In whites, especially sauvignon blancs, the acidity is pronounced and the wines can have a bad taste. In big reds, the oak tannins can come across as strong and overly astringent, easily overpowering the fruit character.
For Stellenrust Wine’s award-winning chenin blanc, she added a botrytised portion to enhance its mouthfeel and honeyed richness, ensuring it retains flavor in sub-zero temperatures. Similarly, it worked with Journey’s End to tweak its high-end chardonnay.
Every Antarctic operation has an environmental cost, but White Desert aims to keep its footprint as small as possible. Dry goods are repackaged to eliminate unnecessary cardboard and plastic, and preventative measures – such as peeling potatoes and carrots in Cape Town – reduce solid waste that is sent for recycling or responsible disposal at the end of each season. White Desert also powers its aircraft with a blend of sustainable aviation fuel produced from waste oils and greases, offsets all of its operational emissions, and is investing in carbon-absorbing seagrass meadow restoration projects.
The one thing guests might not find on White Desert’s menu? Ice cream. For all its frozen wilderness, even Antarctica isn’t consistently cold enough.
Chris Schalkx traveled as a guest of White Desert; from $71,500 pp for a five-night stay, with transport from Cape Town
