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Special Report


Gourmet meals on wheels


Ever wonder how that portobello manicotti with sherry-mascarpone sauce ended up on your Amtrak trip? Matt Amis, dining critic for Delaware Today, met the masterminds behind it


There’s no fryer onboard the galley car of Amtrak’s City of New Orleans train. Yet a porter will gladly present you a plate of crispy hot chicken and fluffy rice pilaf with a glass of Pinot Grigio on your next trip from Wilmington to the Crescent City. Thank executive chefs Christian Hannah and Daniel Malzhan, who ply one of the more unique culinary trades from the Amtrak Training Station near Frawley Stadium in Wilmington. Their jobs, along with the rest of Amtrak’s small but dedicated F&B division, involve soup-to-nuts oversight of the dining experience onboard Amtrak trains. Hannah handles Acela Express service, a famous (former) daily ritual of one Joseph R. Biden, as well as state-supported trains in the northeast corridor. Malzhan handles food and drinks on long-distance and cross-country routes. But before a meal winds up on a train, it must be


conceived, something Amtrak chefs do at a grand powwow several times a year with a handful of carefully selected celebrity chefs. The most recent Amtrak Culinary Advisory team included renowned chef Michel Richard, owner of Washington, D.C.’s


38 www.onboardhospitality.com


Citronella, and Wilmington native Tom Douglas, who owns six highly touted restaurants around Seattle. The team will create more than 100 dishes during their meeting - everything from portobello manicotti with sherry-mascarpone sauce to steamed mahi mahi wrapped in banana leaves - then try to re-create them in a diminutive onboard kitchen during a bumpy train ride. “We wind up with terrific, creative ideas,” Malzhan


says, “but we have to ask: Can it work in our world?” The guys hit the test kitchen in Wilmington to


find out, working on equipment that’s installed in various galley cars. From there, the job moves to the administrative realm, seeking out food vendors and producers to supply the ingredients. Some items are pre-made, then reconstituted onboard. Others, like omelettes and steaks, are cooked fresh. The chefs then release their inner-food network


chef, creating service guides and videos for both regional chefs and onboard chefs scattered across the entire country. They monitor and mentor regional chefs along the way, before the entire


process starts all over again. “It’s a great mix of everything,” says Hannah, whose previous local stops include the Bourbon Street Café and Christiana Care Health Services. Malzhan, who previously worked in kitchens in


San Francisco, commented: “That’s one of the things that appeals to me about what we do here. It’s still about love of food and ingredients and making things taste good - and that can’t be forgotten.” Certainly, when a passenger can sit snugly and dig


into brioche French toast with apple compote or a New York strip steak smothered in smoked paprika butter, he likely won’t forget. Nor do Wilmington socialites, when they attend


the Evening With the Masters fundraiser dinner, and see the Amtrak chefs situated next to some of the best chefs in the region, as they have been for the past two years. “It’s great to have people realise that, yeah, there


are culinary things happening at Amtrak,” Malzhan says. “We are the original meals on wheels.” (Article previously published in Delaware Today)


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