Kay Erickson: The Polar Express has arrived, making a stop at the lobby of the Northern Hotel to transport guests to the North Pole.
Stella Fong, Host of YPR’s Flavors Under the Big Sky, talks with Executive Chef Sarah Seltvedt and Front of the House Manager Josh Rockvam about the gingerbread village they have on display at this iconic hotel lobby in downtown Billings.
Stella Fong: Gingerbread reindeers, green royal icing pine trees, chocolate wafered roofs and candy rock walls grace this snowy granite mountain side gingerbread village. The Polar Express chugs through and announces its arrival with a blow of its horn.
Sarah Seltvedt: I’ve been here for three years so this is the third gingerbread house, and this is by far the largest that we have done and definitely the most depth and detailed.
Stella Fong: Some of that depth and detail came from Front of house manager Josh Rockvam.
Josh Rockvam: I have been running restaurants for about 15 years and I have a background in graphic arts and photography so always been in the artistic side things as well.
Stella Fong: Each year a member of the kitchen team comes up with the theme. Pastry Chef Teresa Katz who creates the sweet endings birthed this Christmas village with a train running through. So how did the gingerbread creation come to be?
Josh Rockvam: We did a lot of research, architectural styles decided on the Germanic Medieval buildings. We had to research different building styles for the North Pole and then we went online and found a bunch of different styles of buildings and then copied them into foam and cut them out as we went.
Stella Fong: Planning for this end of year art piece began early on.
Sarah Seltvedt: So, we started our initial planning last January right after we took down our last gingerbread house. We have estimated that there’s about 400-man hours into this and definitely within the last two weeks, we’ve put in well over a hundred hours.
Stella Fong: While this year’s creation is flavored with whimsy, last year’s theme was a bit more quirky.
Sarah Seltvedt: We did the Stanley Hotel which is where everyone knows is where Stephen King based The Shining so we had a little like Jack Nickleson hidden behind one of the snowmen last year, playing fun with it.
Stella Fong: For this display, the village must stay intact for many weeks.
Sarah Selvedt: So, we use a construction style gingerbread dough. It is not the same as cookies otherwise it will just collapse and fall and there is too much moisture in those, so this has very little sugar in it which adds moisture.
Stella Fong: Dough with less sugar may give the structure more strength and integrity but other reinforcements are also necessary.
Sarah Selvedt: We have 2-by-4s inside. We have foam core inside. We have Styrofoam. Actually, its garage door insulation stacked up inside and we’ve coated a lot it in royal icing and the mountain on the outside is actually gum paste. It’s two different colors which has been blended together and rolled through a pasta roller to create this granite mountain look.
Stella Fong: Surrounding the North Pole gingerbread village are smaller houses.
Sarah Selvedt: We give a basic generic gingerbread kit to each of the heads of departments and it’s up to them to get with their teams as a team building activity for them to come up with a design and to create their gingerbread houses. We put them on display surrounding the large one and then the general public can come in and pick a number and vote for their favorite.
Stella Fong: There is a basket at the reception desk where votes are accepted. If you want to catch a ride to the North Pole just head to the Northern Hotel. This is Stella Fong for ypradio news.
