The Pie Car feeds the entire Ringling Brothers crew

Published 6:01 pm Wednesday, September 22, 2010

On the Pie Car, the rail-bound dining room for Ringling Bros. and Barnum &Bailey’s traveling city, the servings are clown-shoe sized.

Meals here are much more than bags of popcorn or peanuts. Save the cream pies.

Big bowls of gumbo stick to the ribs of acrobats, animal trainers, contortionists and clowns. Chops come on the bone, big as a plate.

The food that fuels the circus performers, concessionaires, train crews, stagehands and the girl on the flying trapeze is cooked up in the cramped confines of train car number 181, the Pie Car.

“We eat like you’re at home,” said Michael Vaughn, the chef in charge of feeding more than 400 hungry circus workers on the Blue Unit train, the largest of Ringling’s touring shows.

When the Ringling Bros. circus rolled through Everett recently, Vaughn and his seven-person staff invited The Herald into their private world.

Once they had successfully launched the show and fed the circus performers, they treated a few reporters to a special lunch. Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson and Anthony Hoang, better known as a clown proficient in martial arts, joined reporters for a gourmet lunch.

For an afternoon, the circus family invited the outside world in.

“Picture your family 100 times larger,” the chef said. “They’re really not just co-workers, you live with the people. It’s more like a family than just work.”

Car 181 is linked with about 60 others on this, the largest privately owned train in the United States. For nearly 11 months a year, the circus people make this rolling community their home.

“It’s a city with no ZIP code,” Vaughn said.

There’s a mail car, a laundry car, several sleeping cars and, of course, the Pie Car.

Circuses and trains date back to the early 19th century when train travel first began in America, said Janet Davis, an associate professor of American history at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s an expert in circus history.

It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the combination of trains and circuses truly melded.

“The shows became giant, unbelievably big enterprises,” Davis said.

The tremendous growth helped lead to the modern-day circus. Life aboard the train also created a comfortable home for the nomadic tribe of performers, who for the first time were lulled to sleep by the rock of the rail.

More than a century later, Ringling Bros. maintains many of the historical traditions of the circus, including life on the train.

Iverson, the tall ringmaster with a belting voice, shares his train car with his wife, a Brazilian dancer, and their two young children.

While the grownups perform, the kids spend time in day care or school.

“We are a family show,” Iverson said. “It’s like having 300 babysitters.”

Like many families on the Ringling Bros. train, Iverson cooks and eats in the privacy of his own train car. The Pie Car is reserved as a special treat for the kids or as a convenience.

For Huong, the Pie Car is a nearly daily necessity.

“I should get a frequent eater card,” the clown said.

Originally called the Dining Car, the name probably changed to Pie Car during the Great Depression when meat pies were standard fare.

It has nothing to do with two other circus pie traditions.

There’s the Cherry Pie, which is slang for a second job circus people do to help the show.

Take Hoang, the clown. Making people laugh is his number 1 job.

“My Cherry Pie job is walking elephants in and out of the arenas,” he said.

Hoang knows all about the other circus pie tradition — a pie in the face. Work for the circus, and expect to wipe whipped cream off your nose on your birthday.

“We attack you all day long,” Hoang said.

When the train is choo-chooing from one city to the next, Vaughn and his team keep the Pie Car open all the time, giving the circus crew a place to watch TV, relax and hang out with their friends. In cities when the trains rest on the rails, the Pie Car is open before and after the shows. A smaller version of the Pie Car feeds performers at the arena.

Vaughn needs to be nimble with the cuisine he prepares, catering to the strict diets of performers and the big appetites of the road crew.

“The healthiest performers want salad,” he said. “Not the crew, they’re not interested in salads at all. It’s quite offensive to them.”

They’d prefer a double helping of fries instead, the chef said.

The food isn’t free, but the circus subsidizes the cost. Hoang’s favorite dish, the cheeseburger, costs $2.50.

That’s a bargain for a three-quarter pound Angus beef burger served on a fresh Kaiser roll, Vaughn said.

The meal we were served — three courses including a calamari, shrimp and scallop appetizer; gumbo with crab, chicken and sausage; and veal chops with pomme frites — would run about $5.50. The same meal could easily add up to well over $60 in a restaurant.

Vaughn’s cooking stands up to some of the best meals served in fancy, white-linen establishments.

“We watch some of these shows on TV — ‘Dinner impossible’ — well, we do that everyday. It’s not just for a show, we do it everyday,” he said.

“This dining car is very small, but it is a humongous treat.”

Eat like a circus clown

Chef Michael Vaughn feeds more than 400 people who work for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &Bailey traveling circus. He shared one of his favorite recipes with The Herald.

Jambalaya

4tablespoons cayenne pepper

1tablespoon white pepper

Salt to taste

2teaspoons thyme

2tablespoons rubbed sage

2tablespoons basil

1tablespoon ground bay leaves

¼pound(1 cube) butter

¼cup pure extra virgin olive oil

2cups spicy diced sausage

2cups diced onion

2cups diced green bell pepper

2cups diced celery

2cups diced fresh tomatoes

2cups tomato sauce

3cups rice

4½cups chicken stock

2tablespoons lobster or shrimp base

2cups diced cooked chicken breast

3tablespoons parsley

1cup sliced green onions

¼cup Worcestershire sauce

¼cup fresh minced garlic

5cups large peeled and deveined shrimp

Melt the butter over medium heat, add the sausage and cook until lightly browned.

Add the olive oil then stir in the Holy Trinity (onion, green pepper and celery) and cook until the vegetables are translucent.

Add the diced tomatoes and tomato sauce and cook for a bit.

Add the rice and cook for about 3 minutes give or take, stirring continuously.

Add the stock, all other spices, Worcestershire and garlic.

Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3447; jholtz@heraldnet.com.

Add the chicken, cook and stir for a minute and place in oven on 350 degrees for about 30 to 45 minutes. If using shrimp, cook for another 15 to 20 minutes.

Remove and serve.

Makes a lot.

Slideshow: Ringling Bros. and Barnum &Bailey’s pie car

Click the image below to view.