More than 200 chefs are tasked with preparing 13 million meals for athletes at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Inevitably, the Olympic Village will become home to the largest restaurant in the world.
Feeding 15,000 international athletes from 208 countries and nations is a huge task, with 200 chefs on hand to prepare more than 40,000 meals a day, both at the Olympic Village restaurant and at 14 other locations across the city.
Over the course of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, more than 13 million meals will be prepared and served: this volume is equivalent to the amount of food provided in a total of 10 football World Cups.
The focus of this culinary feat will be the Cité du Cinéma film studio complex in Saint-Denis, just outside Paris.
Europe, Asia, Caribbean
There, athletes will have access to six main areas dedicated to French, Asian, Afro-Caribbean and global cuisine, with 500 different recipes that cover the most varied tastes.
The menus were created in collaboration with French former Olympic sailing bronze medallist Hélène Defrance, who now works as a nutritionist. As she herself says, she focused her expertise on offering “a comprehensive, enjoyable and nutritious proposal that would satisfy any type of meal”.
He paid close attention to the quality of the ingredients, but also to the flavors and aesthetic appeal of the recipes.
250 km radius
The food offered at the Olympics is also governed by a strict quality map.
It has been developed over four years of work with the aim of halving the carbon footprint of meals produced, compared to London in 2012. As a result, a quarter of all ingredients will come from within a 250km radius of Paris, and 20% will be certified organic.
Meat, milk and eggs It will all be French and a third of the food will be of plant origin.
Two hundred water, juice and soft drink taps were installed in the Olympic Village, with only reusable cups and crockery being offered.
Among the 200 chefs are three stars (Chaignot, Mazzia and Benallal), each of whom has developed a signature dish that combines the best of French tradition made with local ingredients and all focused with attention to the nutritional needs of the world’s top athletes and of course, their sports.
“A judoka “A person weighing more than 100kg does not eat the same as an athlete weighing 45kg”, says chef Charles Guilloy, adding that he and his team also took into account many other factors, such as the cultural norms of different countries, when creating the recipes.
Lots of imaginative dishes and ingredients:
From green lentils grown outside Paris to skyr, the Icelandic “yogurt.”
The basic recipe is perhaps summarized by one of the chefs:
“Warmth, happiness and (cooking) with butter”!