SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
If you’re planning a party this summer or fall, or if you just want an evening off from cooking, you might want to keep Northern Chicks Catering in mind.

Linda Fry and Tammy Barnes sell sweet sugary goodness through Northern Chicks Catering in Yellowknife last weekend at 270 Utsingi Drive. - Walter Strong/NNSL photo

Linda Fry and Tammy Barnes operate the new business out of the Ventures West Transport yard and facility in Yellowknife’s Kam Lake industrial park.

They are familiar with the location, where they prepare three meals a day plus box lunches for as many as 180 hungry ice-road truckers during the winter months.

“When winter comes, we feed the boys,” said Fry. “We can go through a 100 pounds of meat per meal.”

They’ve been running the Kam Lake trucker “camp” for four seasons. This year, they arranged to run their catering business out of the kitchen facilities that would otherwise remain shutdown for the summer.

This new venture is not a departure from the norm for Fry and Barnes.

Barnes is a professional chef with 30 years experience, including a 16 year stint as an executive chef at Quebec’s Les Rochers Bleus Sutton golf and auberge.

Fry first came to Yellowknife in 1978, she said, “for three weeks, but I stayed for 12 years.”

In that time, she was involved with a number of restaurants, including the former Office Lounge (now Fuego’s), the Float Base (now Harley’s) and her own business, A Catered Affair.

She left Yellowknife for a time and ran a 40-seat cafe out of her home in Quebec.

Since returning to Yellowknife in 2009, Fry and Barnes also ran the Yellowknife golf course kitchen for three seasons and set up the Elk Club kitchen, all while running the camp kitchen in the winter.

This year, instead of looking for summer work, Barnes and Fry decided to create their own and set up Northern Chicks Catering.

They won’t be open year round - they’ll be back to running the winter camp kitchen again this winter - and they won’t be holding regular scheduled hours, but they are available for custom orders and event catering.

Among the many home-prepared offerings available during last weekend’s sweet sale in Kam Lake, were cookies, cinnamon buns, lemon pies, chicken pies and beef stroganoff pie.

But don’t look for a menu online or anywhere else.

“There’s no set menu for the catering,” said Fry. “We do it customer by customer.”

You can be sure you won’t be able to take Northern Chicks by surprise, whatever your catering request might be.

Fry and Barnes once prepared a seven-course meal for a wedding reception at the Elks Club, where they were asked at the last minute to prepare five very large fresh salmon.

There wasn’t oven space in the kitchen to accommodate the request, but Barnes and Fry had a solution.

“We wrapped them in foil and cooked them in the (industrial) dishwasher,” Fry said.

“We poached them.”

Their new facilities can handle just about any sized-appetite, even if it’s 200 strong, but every meal is cooked with one thought in mind.

“We prepare food that leaves you feeling like you’ve had a hug from mom,” said Fry.