Atlanta Will Have To Deal With Olympic-Size Menu
Set the table, Atlanta. The Olympians are coming, and they’re hungry. Picky, too.
They like warm milk. Fish for breakfast. Pasta, tons of it, at every meal. Enough of everything for extra helpings.
“There’s never been a challenge this large,” said Lew Sprague, who is in charge of feeding the 15,000 athletes and coaches from 197 countries who will be staying at the Olympic Village for the 1996 Summer Games.
“We have to look at how to feed all these people and give them things that are accustomed to their diet,” Sprague said. “Now, we don’t have 197 different menus but the menus are so extensive that we’ll be able to fulfill the needs from the different continents around the world.
“There will be days when we may serve more fish for breakfast than we do eggs,” he said.
Sprague, who was senior executive chef at the 1980 Winter Olympics and has since worked many other large events, learned early in his career that culinary miscues, however innocent, can be unpleasant.
“The first time you see an athlete take a glass of milk and spit it out because it’s cold - it’s something that we take for granted, but most of the world doesn’t get milk cold,” Sprague said, recalling a lesson he learned at the ‘80 Games.
“Even within cultures, there are subcultures and different eating habits,” said Sprague, who has shuttled from his home in Cincinnati to serve as food director at the Olympic Village.
For example, when fish is being served, it must be available in cooked, smoked and salted varieties. The bread basket must have 22 different types; for Europeans all must be toasted. A choice of 18 fruits per meal is not unusual.
And feeding Olympic athletes means catering to big appetites. The average athlete, during training and competition, consumes 10,000 calories a day, compared with 2,500 for the average adult male.
“We buy by the ton, not by the pound,” Sprague said.
The most popular item that crosses most cultural and national boundaries is pasta, said Sprague, who will need 60,000 pounds of it during the Games.
Sprague’s domain next summer will be an 80,000-square-foot dining hall to be built on what now is a parking lot at Georgia Tech. It will be open 24 hours a day and staffed by 1,500 people.
A maze of hot-food stations, pasta and salad bars, beverage dispensers and dessert tables will be able to serve up to 1,300 people every 10 minutes during peak hours. McDonald’s, a sponsor of the Atlanta Games, will have a small restaurant in one corner.
Though the presence of McDonald’s amid the gathering of supposedly health-conscious Olympians has drawn snickers from some quarters, Sprague said the fast food colossus has a rightful place.
Athletes, watched closely by their coaches, maintain a disciplined diet as they prepare for competition.
“After the competition, they like to go for the hamburgers and french fries - especially if they don’t have a major competition right afterwards,” Sprague said. “You find that they don’t really replace it for a main meal but more as an evening-type or snack meal.”
xxxx REAL OLYMPIC ATHLETES EAT QUICHE Sample menus for 1996 Olympic athletes:
Breakfast Juices: orange, apple, tomato. Fruits: fresh fruit compote, honeydew melon wedges, peaches, strawberries. Cereals: corn flakes, Rice Krispies, granola, raisin bran, Cream of Wheat. Soup: split pea with ham. Entrees: scrambled eggs, fried eggs, quiche, baked cod with butter and paprika. Meats: pork sausage links, chopped beef steak, ham slices. Potatoes: country-style hash browns. Rice-pasta: rice, pasta shells. Baked goods: cheese danish, sourdough rolls, croissants, doughnuts, biscuits.
Lunch Juices: orange, apple, tomato. Soup: cream of broccoli. Entrees: baked veal chop, cold chicken breast, baked perch with lemon, cheese enchiladas. Potatoes: scalloped. Rice-pasta: rice, rosette parmesan. Vegetables: zucchini parmesan, baby carrots. Salads: California salad bar, cottage cheese, fruit compote, hard cooked egg, pickled herring, seafood salad, sliced tomatoes, garden pasta salad with pesto sauce, pickled beets and onion rings, and carrot, pineapple and raisin salad. Cold meats and pate: sliced turkey breast, liver pate, beef tongue. Desserts: fresh fruit compote, cantaloupe, strawberry powdered tart, raspberry fudge cake, butterscotch pudding, ice cream.
Dinner Juices: orange, apple, tomato. Soup: beef chuck and vegetable, chilled gazpacho. Entrees: grilled T-bone steak, barbecued chicken, baked flounder, grilled liver and onions. Potatoes-rice-pasta: parsley potatoes, mushroom-almond rice, fettucine Alfredo. Vegetables: spicy corn, leaf spinach. Salads: California salad bar, cottage salad bar, fruit compote, hard cooked egg, chicken salad, confetti macaroni, sliced tomato, sauerkraut salad, herring in sour cream. Cold meats and pate: sliced turkey breast, liver pate, beef tongue. Desserts: frozen fruit compote, pecan pie, baklava, watermelon, butter rum cake, ice cream.