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Team Gourmet goes all in for RAGBRAI meals

 

Chefs Maggie Amerpohl and Joe Gill prepare the evening meal for Team Gourmet at the home of Del and Lois Henry in Charles City Wednesday morning. Press photo by Bob Steenson
Chefs Maggie Amerpohl and Joe Gill prepare the evening meal for Team Gourmet at the home of Del and Lois Henry in Charles City Wednesday morning. Press photo by Bob Steenson
By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Everyone knows one of the most important aspects of RAGBRAI is the food. From church dinners and roadside smoothies to Mr. Pork Chop and pie, pie, pie, bicycling across the state takes a lot of fuel.

One group takes RAGBRAI cuisine to a whole new level. Team Gourmet members spend each night of the ride enjoying a meal that makes fellow bicyclists drool with envy.

A team of chefs and helpers arrived at Del and Lois Henry’s home on Sunset Place in Charles City Wednesday morning, unpacked and went to work.

Joe Gill, from Woodbridge, Virginia, and Maggie Amerpohl, from Chicago, are the chefs for Team Gourmet.

Gill said he got involved in 2010 when Team Gourmet joined Team SNIFF on RAGBRAI and a friend invited him to help. He’s been back each year since.

Gill said he and Amerpohl arrive at the host’s home each morning of the ride and begin prep work. They have freezers on the truck for meat and bring other ingredients they aren’t sure will be available in the overnight town, but they also shop locally.

“We stop at Hy-Vee every day for fresh produce,” he said.

They bring a large grill to cook most of the meats and bring their own utensils and other equipment,  but they rely on the host’s kitchen and stove for everything else.

“Sometimes it’s a challenge,” Amerpohl said. “You don’t know what you’re getting until you get there. This is pretty good,” she said of the Henrys’ kitchen.

Gill said he and Amerpohl work together to come up with the menu for each night of RAGBRAI.

“We consider requests,” he said, “but we don’t want anything too heavy, too rich” for people who have been riding bikes all day.

On the menu for Wednesday evening: hanger steak with molasses, braised leeks and cabbage, Danish meatballs with a beer and capers sauce, sweet corn and summer vegetable soup and maple bacon cupcakes.

Gary Gard, of Darien, Illinois, said he is the longest current member of Team Gourmet at 21 rides and counting. The team was formed about three years before he joined, but none of those original riders take part anymore.

“This was originally founded by three families who were tired of eating spaghetti dinners and decided to do their own cooking,” he said. “It started out simple, with a campground grill, then moved into people’s homes, then became a banquet every night.”

There are 34 riders on the team this year, plus the two chefs and three support people who travel by vehicle. The team is based in Chicago, but members hail from Texas; Colorado; Washington, DC; Florida; and Kansas; as well as Iowa, Gard said.

“Every year we get some new people,” he said, but the team isn’t open to just anyone.

“You have to know someone,” Gard said. “Be a friend of a friend or a member of a family.”

Lois Henry said she got involved with Team Gourmet the last time RAGBRAI was in town, when neighbors John and Jean Newton were hosts and she and Del were co-hosts.

This year they are the hosts and the Newtons are co-hosts.

Asked the difference, Lois said, “The host provides the kitchen.”

In addition, the host and co-host provide indoor space for the team members to camp out.

“Typically they’d put a tent up” to serve the evening meal, she said, but because of the forecast they planned to serve the buffet-style meal in the Henrys’ large garage.

 

 

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