Life in the kitchen is never easy—being a chef is a profession that involves an incredible amount of precision, creativity, and the ability to keep your cool in this uniquely stressful environment, even in the best of conditions. In a place like Antarctica's Concordia Station, one of the most isolated research facilities in the world, where day and night can last months on end and temperatures generally hover between -30 and -60 Celsius, the already stressful task of being a chef begins to sound downright hellish.
This however, is not the opinion of Luca Ficara, who has been serving as the base's resident chef since November.
When I Skyped with Ficara last week, he was well into the first full week of perpetual darkness at the base, but despite the fact that he wouldn't be seeing the sun for another three months, he was all smiles and jokes. Ficara must operate in an environment which is a far cry from "the best of conditions," yet despite all the hardships his job description entails, it's the small things that he misses most: "It's been three months since I've had a orange," he told me with a melancholy that only three months without a orange can warrant.
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