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| 4/7/2010 9:10:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article
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Chef Merlyn Baker created the Titanic Dinner with historian John Lamoreau.
Staff photo by Kathy Aney |
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Each Titanic Dinner table setting includes eight forks, four knives, three spoons and seven wine glasses.
Photo contributed by John Lamoreau |
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The RMS Titanic sinks anew every year in La Grande, 300 miles from the ocean
The RMS Titanic sinks anew every year in a rural Eastern Oregon town located more than 300 miles from the ocean.
The Titanic Dinner at La Grande's Foley Station is establishing itself as a destination event, with people traveling from out of state, even out of country, for a culinary journey back in time.
In the restaurant's candlelit dining room, diners savor oyster ala Russe, poached salmon in Mousseline sauce, calvado-glazed duck, lamb with mint sauce and chicken Lyonnaise and assorted side dishes, washing them down with seven different wines. The first-class meal on Saturday, including 18 dishes in all, takes four hours.
Each table setting includes eight forks, four knives, three spoons and seven wine glasses. A second-class meal on Friday includes baked haddock with sharp sauce, curried chicken, turkey, roast lamb with mint sauce and five wines.
A chef, Merlyn Baker, and a historian, John Lamoreau, teamed to recreate the last meal eaten by Titanic's passengers on the moonless night the ill-fated ocean liner hit an iceberg and sank on April 14, 1912. Baker, owner and chef at the Foley Station, pored over historic recipes in preparation for the first Titanic dinner five years ago.
"There were menus that survived," Baker said. "A lot of the dishes were French and the Russian influence was huge. Italian cuisine was also important and represented on the menu."
The pace is hectic for Baker as he prepares stock, consommé and various sauces.
"This is old European cuisine - it takes time," he said. "It takes a few weeks to pull it all together."
Baker said all of the cooking staff died in the disaster, save one. Chief baker Charles Joughin was the only person to survive a prolonged dunking in the frigid Atlantic. Joughin, Baker said, was a portly man who admitted later he'd been drinking.
"He didn't have a raft," Baker said. "Anti-freeze and insulation allowed him to survive."
High cuisine is only one facet of the evening.
For his part, Lamoreau gathers together his extensive collection of Titanic artifacts, filling the Foley Station's basement banquet room with memorabilia. The collection contains chunks of Titanic wreck wood, items of clothing worn on the Titanic, hand-written letters from passengers, video and audio and other hundreds of other items.
 | The ill-fated RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk 400 miles south of Newfoundland.
Photo contributed by John Lamoreau |
Upon arrival, each diner receives the identity card of an actual passenger. During the evening, Lamoreau gives historical accounts of each passenger's fate. This year's dinner features a visit from the great-grandson of Frank and Anna Warren, Oregon's only first-class passengers.
This year, Lamoreau will focus on love. During each of the two evenings, he will tell stories of love lost and found aboard the ill-fated ship. Lamoreau will choose one lucky couple at random to sip wine from favorite crystal glasses owned by Isador and Ida Straus, co-owners of the Macy's Department stores who died on the Titanic. The evening will also include a performance of "Lead Kindly Light," a solo performed during a Titanic church service by Marion Wright, a young woman on her way to Oregon to get married.
Though the dinner is expensive ($170 for Saturday's first-class meal and $95 for Friday's second-class dinner), Baker and Lamoreau claim the profit is miniscule, considering the number of courses, pricey ingredients and wines. Even with the down economy, the event is attracting guests from afar.
"People are coming from Canada and California," Lamoreau said. "This has become a destination event."
"We have people making it a meeting place - they make their room and house rentals nine months in advance," Baker said. "This has caught us off guard."
The second-class Titanic meal will be served at 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Viewing of Lamoreau's exhibit starts at 4 p.m. For reservations, call 541-963-9164.
Titanic love stories
(as told by Titanic historian John Lamoreau)
 | Isador Straus and his wife Ida died aboard the Titanic after she refused to get into a lifeboat.
Photo contributed by John Lamoreau |
Lucian Smith, 24, and his new bride Mary Hughes Smith, 18, were honeymooning when the Titanic sank. Mary, the daughter of a U.S. congressman, escaped in lifeboat six. Lucian stayed behind and perished. His body was never found. Mary, chilled in the lifeboat, apparently felt a warm spark. Two years after the tragedy, she married Robert W. Daniel, a fellow first-class passenger who had managed to find a seat in her lifeboat.
Marion Wright, of England, was traveling on the Titanic to get married to a farmer in Oregon. Arthur Woolcott had emigrated earlier and purchased a fruit orchard in Cottage Grove. Arthur raced to meet Marion in New York but could not find her at first. Finally reunited, they decided to marry immediately.
Marion lived to be age 80. She and her husband are both buried in Cottage Grove.
Isador and Ida Straus, the co-owners of the Macy's Department stores, died on the Titanic after Ida refused to leave her husband. As the Titanic took on water, Ida got into a lifeboat, but climbed back out after she realized her husband wasn't going to join her. She is reported to have said, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go."
They sat together in deck chairs as the ship sank out of sight.
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