Throughout my history as an independent traveller I have always loved train travel. As if you couldn’t tell – I spend my life taking groups of tourists around Europe travelling entirely by public transport. Completely mad or the somewhat romantic notion of a vagabond traveller? I’ll let you decide.
Aside from incorporating train travel as a fundamental part of my “day job”, I’ve also had plenty of train experiences while gallivanting around on my own adventures.
In India, somewhere between Darjeeling and Amritsar, I shared grapes with a well heeled local family while seated in the icy air conditioning of the AC3 class. In France, I sat on the platform and spent the afternoon indulging in French wine and cheese from the local store, as I waited for the train that never came thanks to striking train employees.
But the funniest perhaps was in Vietnam, on a train somewhere between Sapa and Hanoi. In the dark of the night I was snacking on those awful “Choco Pie” biscuits that are seemingly popular there, as I witnessed a local man come into our cabin and get into bed with C – much to his amusement, as you can imagine.
But never in my history of train travelling have I had quite the gastronomic experience like I did in Australia, travelling between Sydney and Adelaide on the Indian Pacific train.
The Outback Explorer Lounge is the hub of activity during the Indian Pacific train ride, so it’s only fitting that my journey on board starts off here.
With a glass of white wine in hand I witness the change of scenery. We go from the inner city urban dwellings to Sydney’s suburban outskirts. The buildings slowly become spaced further apart, the backyards bigger, and the trees denser. Soon enough, there are barely any buildings to be seen, and the train is winding through the dark, leafy green hills of the Blue Mountains.
We head further inland, where the trees become sparser and the landscape becomes dustier. When we arrive near the outskirts of Bathurst, New South Wales, it’s time to head for dinner in the onboard, classically styled dining carriage, known as the Queen Adelaide Restaurant.
Tonight’s menu has a selection of four starters, four main courses, and four desserts.
Everything on the menu is described in a way that makes me want to try them all. For a girl who’s used to the Spanish way of writing menu descriptions, where the most interesting of combinations can be described simply as “grilled pork”, the menu sounds incredibly exciting.
I am secretly glad that my choices are limited – I need to stick to the dishes that are gluten free – so I figure this will make my choice easier. I immediately know what I will be ordering to start. It jumps right out of me, I don’t need any brain power to make this decision.
The smokey eggplant stack is described as a “smokey marinade of garlic, ginger, prairie dust and olive oil, oven baked and then layered with buffalo mozzarella on hand picked baby leaf spinach with spiced tomato relish.” I have a penchant for smokey eggplant – my favourite risotto to make at home is cooked with smoked eggplant – so I conclude that I must try this ingredient in a different form.
But when it comes to the main course, I have a bit more decision making to do.
There are two dishes that appeal, and I have a hard time choosing one of them. In fact, I decide to play that game where I just stop thinking about it, and see what my brain blurts out of my mouth upon ordering.
The “Eastern Seaboard Catch”, which consists of grilled tommy ruff fillets with green lip mussels, lemon infused rice, handpicked baby leaf spinach with ginger, lemon myrtle, coconut and tomato bisque, and served with grilled lime, sounded very enticing. But for some reason, one that in hindsight I still don’t understand, I opt for the trout.
The first course arrives and is polished off with success. The eggplant, cheese, and tomato relish balance each other out perfectly. The spinach adds just that little bit of crisp freshness to the plate, which turns a good dish into an excellent one.
Next, the Petuna Ocean Trout is brought to the table.
The crispy skinned fillet is served on a bean and zucchini salad, with lemon aspen and coconut dressing, and again, grilled lime. It’s good, definitely good, which is a compliment to the chef, as I do think fish like salmon and ccean trout can be hard to pull off perfectly.
Perhaps the Trout was a little on the dry side. Or perhaps it was my palate that has adjusted to the Spanish version of cooking everything in a hearty serve of olive oil, with more olive oil to finish – atnd if it’s not the olive oil, it’s drowning even the most flavoursome of fish in a rich sauce. This happens particularly in regions such as Catalunya, or across the border in France.
The general consensus on board seems to be that all of the four dishes were great, and while I enjoyed my trout, like I said, in hindsight I probably should have got the Eastern Seaboard Catch. That really sounded amazing, and at this stage I don’t know that I will also order trout at breakfast in the morning.
The ever attentive waitress points out to me – without me even asking – that a couple of the desserts are gluten free.
I figure it would be rude not to squeeze in a dessert too, so I decide to finish my meal off with a cake. It’s an almond and orange cake with a passionfruit curd centre, and finished with double cream and blood orange coulis.
I am accustomed to not being able to order these type of desserts, as cakes are more commonly prepared with wheat flour, so this makes the dessert a real novelty for me.
The next morning I awake at 6am. Although I declined the wake up call with a hot cup of coffee at 5.45am, the light creeping into my cabin between the blinds with new, even sparser and dustier scenery outside, is enough for me to sit up and take in the moment.
Before our very early stop at Broken Hill the bar top in the lounge is adorned with a selection of fruits, pastries, coffee and tea, in order to have an early morning snack before the stop. The full breakfast is to be served later on, once we depart Broken Hill.
Two breakfasts, you say? This is my kind of place.
The train pulls away from Broken Hill station, and I retreat to the Queen Adelaide restaurant, once again. A cooked breakfast is on the menu this morning, and again, there are four different options to choose from. The options range from a full breakfast with all the trimmings to a cinnamon and raisin bagel, but I go for something in between.
The dish I opt for is called “Tasmanian Eggs, Petuna” which consists of toasted sourdough (or gluten free bread for me) topped with creamed egg and lightly smoked ocean trout, with a side of rocket, and dashings of cracked black pepper and Murray River pink salt.
Quality is not skimped on with the ingredients here, and even the simplest of ingredients have been selected with great care.
I decide to ignore the fact that I had the trout the night before – after all, that was a trout fillet and this is smoked, they are different – because this dish just sounds really good. And it was.
I leave the Queen Adelaide Restaurant suitably full, once again, wondering how I am going to fit in lunch in just a few hours.
I begin to feel that life on board the Indian Pacific just moves from meal to meal, and the time in-between is some sort of void where I look forward to what’s coming next. And I kind of like it.
I pass a couple of hours watching the world go by out the window. The scenery around Broken Hill is dusty with sparse green shrubs, but as we move further away from the New South Wales outback and make our way down into into South Australia, there is more greenery on the horizon.
As the trees grow in number, so does the wildlife. Out the window of the train I spot kangaroos, as well as sheep, goats, and even the occasional herd of cattle. At one point I spot a flock of ostriches, which is something I have never seen in the wild before.
Lunch time rolls around and I head back to the Queen Adelaide Restaurant once again, but not before I stop by and have a quick chat with Ash, the Chef de Partie on board the train today.
I want to understand a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes here, as it’s not everyday a restaurant is serving up gourmet food in a carriage with wheels.
One of the first things I ask him is, of course, the ability to cater for dietary requirements on board. I had let Great Southern Rail know about my dietary requirements in advance – remember, I am not used to travelling in a gluten free friendly country like Australia – but I am aware not every passenger on board would think to do the same.
Ash explains that on every menu there is at least one gluten free and one vegetarian option by default, but when there are more difficult dietary requirements to cater for, nothing is too much trouble. He assures me that despite their obvious limitation of being able to source additional ingredients at the last minute, they are able to create almost anything in the kitchen.
Not only that, it “keeps it interesting” to have to whip up something that is outside of their normal menu arrangement. Now that is service.
But whether it’s a special request or a dish from the regular menu, all of the 300 dishes served each day in the Queen Adelaide Restaurant are prepared a la carte. As I am talking to Ash he is par cooking the beef medallions for the upcoming lunch service, so I am curious to know he figures out the correct quantity of food to prepare.
The logistics already seem difficult enough. The restaurant receives a whole lot of guests at once, the kitchen have no idea what they are going to order and the meals are all cooked in the moment. And to top it off, all of the stock for every meal is loaded on the train at the beginning of the journey, and of course, any business wants to minimise wastage.
“Well, most of the time it’s fairly even”, says Ash, talking about how many of each of the four dishes will be required.
But, ever curious, I am not satisfied with “fairly even”. Although it works out to be fairly even, surely there must be some favourite dishes on board?
Ash tells me that barramundi is a “clear winner”, although pork and lamb racks “don’t fare too badly either.” In fact, the Queen Adelaide Restaurant goes through 37,000 lamb racks per year. That’s a lot of lamb.
I leave Ash to his par cooking and get out of the way, because in just a few minutes a carriage full of hungry guests will be in the Queen Adelaide Restaurant once more.
Lunch is not quite as large as dinner. There are still three courses, don’t worry about that, but this time the first course is a light dish of damper rolls put in the middle of the tables to share. Damper is a soda bread traditionally cooked over the campfire in the Australian outback, and although this is a very local dish the gluten factor means I sit this one out.
However, the waitress then offers to bring me some gluten free bread, and I accept. I know, the gluten free bread doesn’t quite have the same appeal as the damper rolls, but I don’t want to miss out on trying the warm saltbush dukkah with macadamia oil.
While dukkah (ground up nuts and spices for dipping bread in) is a concept influenced by Middle Eastern culture, the saltbush – a native Australian bush plant – gives the dukkah a very local twist. I have never knowingly tried saltbush before, so figure it is my duty as sometimes-Australian to try it.
When it comes to choosing the main course, I have an easy choice. This time round there are a few dishes able to be prepared gluten free. I skip over the beef medallions, the scallops with noodles, the Barossa Valley chorizo, and arrive at the last option. And right away, I know what I’m eating today.
Lately, I have been craving polenta. I don’t know how, or why, but I really like it. Sure, my days of eating polenta of the BBQ in Italy are behind me, but whether the polenta is prepared soft, almost like a soup, or firm, able to be grilled, I always enjoy it. And it has been awhile since I’ve eaten it.
The polenta comes with a tomato and herb infused vegetable sauce, and then with rocket, parmesan cheese and pesto on top. The polenta itself is not totally firm, but it’s not soft either. For the dish in question it is cooked just right. I carefully savour the sauce, so for the entire duration of the dish I have sauce to go with my polenta.
This is a quirk of mine – I always have to have the “best bite” last, because I figure it’s best to finish a meal on a high note. I’ll use a burger as an example of this. If I am eating a burger, I will eat around the outside of the burger first, meaning the very middle of the burger will be the last bite I have. The bite which, in theory, should have all the different layers of the burger present. But I digress.
The polenta was the last dish I ate in the Queen Adelaide Restaurant, and much like my “best bite theory, it finished my meals on board the Indian Pacific train on a high note. This was definitely my favourite dish.
Reflecting on my experience in the Queen Adelaide Restaurant, I can’t help but think that I’m excited to see what 2015 has in store.
As Great Southern Rail are pushing the focus of the journey to be about the experience itself, rather than just getting from A to B, changes will also be made in the menu to reflect this.
“As much as it’s about getting from A to B, they {the passengers} are also going to be going somewhere, stepping foot in the place”, explained Ash, when I was talking to him earlier, before the lunch service.
This means that coming in and out of Darwin, guests will be served barramundi – which will be locally sourced at Darwin. And guests “don’t want a hot stew going through Katherine, they want something lighter”, so the menu will be adapted to reflect this.
The idea is it will give the customer something to relate to about the place they are travelling through on the train right that moment.
I was pleased to hear that, where possible, they will source the produce at the location where it’s actually from, and not only that, there will be a focus on wine matching – which will show off the great produce of Australia even further.
But no matter what comes in the future, I thoroughly enjoyed my dining experience on board the Indian Pacific train. Dining at 85km per hour in this style is something that I think should be experienced at least once in a life time.
Have you travelled on the Indian Pacific train before? Perhaps you have had other great train dining experiences elsewhere in the world before? Or maybe you can suggest another great train ride for me to take? Tell me all about it in the comments below.
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Disclaimer: Great Southern Rail kindly hosted me for this journey on board the Indian Pacific train, but as always, all opinions and words are my own.
Will Hatton says
Queen Adelaide restaurant was really a hit! Dishes you posted looks delicious!