‘Not-dogs’ and beefless bourguignon on the menu for athletes in Paris Olympic Village
As host of this year’s summer Olympic Games, Paris is going gung-ho vego and putting sustainability on the global stage.
French gastronomy is shedding its meaty mantle and butter-rich traditions to embrace a lighter, plant-based style of dining, with a carbon imprint as green as the locally grown Bordeaux asparagus at the Olympic Village.
Directives from the International Olympic Committee stipulate all food at Paris’ Olympic and Paralympic Village Restaurant must be local, mostly plant-based, and with a focus on maximal food usage and minimal waste.
Is it a tough ask for the world’s biggest and most multicultural restaurant, dishing up 13 million meals in its 15-day lifespan? Or is it long overdue and the responsibility of all major event organisers living on an ever-warming planet?
Nearly two-thirds of the Village Restaurant’s 500 dishes will be vegetarian, including beefless bourguignon – mon Dieu! – and reinvented stadium classics such as the humble hot dog, a meat-free “not-dog” with onions and pickled cabbage, slathered in honey-mustard sauce.
All meat, eggs, dairy and seafood will be farmed or fished no further than 250 kilometres from Paris and produced on organic farms, or those in the process of converting to organics.
Exceptions are coffee and chocolate (both Fairtrade), and nearly half a million bananas shipped from the French Caribbean to reduce carbon emissions from flying.
Wastage will be collected by food rescue organisations and distributed to those in need, and an estimated 40 tonnes of used coffee grinds will be used to fertilise French soil or to grow mushrooms.
Gastrodiplomacy is a major factor in creating a menu to suit the cultural, religious and nutritional needs of 15,000 athletes competing in 32 different sports. It’s where the host nation can shine, promoting its food and culture on the world stage.
An international kimchi craze swept the globe after the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, where Korea’s national dish of kimchi (a salty, fermented side of chilli-spiked cabbage that is excellent for gut health) was reported with as much fervour as sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner’s gold medal.
Food attachments can be emotional and complex, and embracing a new cuisine doesn’t always come easily or suit every athlete’s system. Jamaican sprinter and gold medallist Usain Bolt famously fuelled up on 100 McDonald’s chicken nuggets a day at the 2008 Beijing Olympics after a Chinese dish upset his digestion.
In Paris, Aussie athletes have stocked their section of the Olympic Village with 50 kilograms of Vegemite, a sizeable stash of Four’N Twenty pies, and more than 1200 kilograms of breakfast cereal, including Weet-Bix. Three baristas have been flown in from Sydney, Melbourne and Perth with enough beans in their arsenal to brew up some 20,000 coffees. May the flat white be with you.