CATERING
Long hours, huge appetites in frozen tundra of northern Canada
A catering avalanche feeds De Beers's remote Gahcho Kué Canadian mine, writes Allan Seccombe
To feed 377 people living in an isolated mining outpost in the frozen tundra of northern Canada, it takes a team of 11 including two bakers, to deliver healthy and interesting food daily. "Our menus are pretty good, restaurant-quality food. While we try to be nutritious, a lot of the guys get a little tired of that. They want burgers and fries or pizzas or tacos. "So, usually on the weekends, when the upper management goes away, we do fun stuff for them," says Mark Plouffe, one of the head chefs on a two-week rotation at Gahcho Kue. The camp goes through 544kg of bacon, 2,400 eggs and 3,000 loaves in that period. Staff imbibe 2,500 litres of coffee a week and 20l litres of chocolate milk a day from dispensers in the canteen. The mine staff drink an additional 96 cartons of chocolate milk daily. "It seems like a lot to me," Plouffe says. His team makes up to 900 sandwiches a day. Apart from the main canteen, there are eight lunch rooms on the site. Every week, an articulated truck tr...
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