Meet the chef who cooks gourmet meals in the most remote corner of the world at -51.3°C

Marco Smerilli remembers the last time he had a fresh banana with the kind of memory power that one usually reserves for life’s unforgettable moments. “March,” he says, without skipping a beat. In fact, it’s been seven months since he’s had fresh fruit, although he does have a few months’ supply of apples, which is of some consolation.

Smerilli is a chef at Concordia Research Station, a French-Italian research facility in Antarctica, which has been described as the ‘most remote corner of the world’. When we speak via Zoom, it’s the middle of the winter campaign so the research base is inaccessible and isolated from the rest of the world. Its closest neighbour, the Russian research station Vostok Station, is about 560 km away. “It is pretty cold,” he adds. “Now it’s - 51.3°C and the wind chill is -68.8°C.”

Still, there is much to be cheerful about — just last night, Smerilli watched the spectacular Northern Lights, and the 13-member team at the research base has just emerged from three months of total darkness. “The last sunset we saw was on May 5 and the next time we saw the sun was on August 10. We are very happy now.” The summer campaign begins in November, so in about two months’ time, planes will come roaring in, loaded with glorious fresh fruits, vegetables, meat delicacies and more people.

Living in isolation

The research base, according to its website, was built 3,233 metres above sea level on the Antarctic Plateau and has scientists from the European Space Agency. One of its two towers, called the noisy tower, has a gym, TV room, kitchen and living room. The ‘quiet tower’, on the other hand, has a hospital, the sleeping quarters and laboratory. Besides glaciologists, astrophysicists and meteorologists, there is also a doctor to study the residents’ sleep patterns and how their brains function in such extreme conditions.

Smerilli first arrived here in 2018. “Initially, it felt like a very strange, different world and it took me some time to adapt,” he recalls. After all, Antarctica is a far cry from Sardinia, where the Italian chef was working in a restaurant and bar when he first heard about the job. “My friend asked me whether I wanted to go to Antarctica,” says Smerilli, who has worked in restaurants around the world, including a Michelin-starred one. One has to undergo a medical test and psychological evaluation before coming to the research base, he adds.

The day we speak to Smerilli, the surface pressure there is 650 hPa. Simple tasks like breathing, sleeping and walking can feel a bit like an Olympic sport. “We never sleep well — it’s not like in the normal world,” he says. And then, there is the unimaginable cold. “In the winter, temperatures can go down to - 75°C. It’s so cold that even fuel gets frozen, so nobody can come here and take you away. But our winters are getting warmer — it’s very worrying. Climate change is no joke,” cautions the 40-year-old.

The team meets every Saturday to talk and share about their week so far. Rules at the research base include: respect meal times, keep rooms clean and, interestingly, don’t pee in the shower. “That’s because we use recycled water here for everything,” the chef explains.

Cooking in isolation

wknd@khaleejtimes.com