Eric Pateman, president of Edible British Columbia, continues his Beijing journal tonight. All of his entries are archived in a special “Olympic Diaries” category, accessible in chronological order by clicking the headings under each entry title.
Once again, enjoy!
It is all hands on deck to prep for the thousands of people we will be feeding over the next couple of days including a reception for the parents of all the Canadian athletes just before the ceremonies, and we have a reception for the Premier the following day, not to mention events for Adidas and a host of other Olympic sponsors.
With a kitchen full of experienced Culinary Capers chefs, supplemented with top students and an instructor from Vancouver Community College, a few local chefs and support staff who Culinary Capers picked up here in Beijing, not to mention me (who is a touch green after being out of high volume kitchens for more than 8 years now), the prep work is quickly being ticked off what seems like a never ending list.
Executive Chefs Jonathon Chovancek and Peter Bert have been working on about 4 hours sleep a night now for a week and the excitement of cooking at the Olympics is keeping them going strong. The rest of the team is working as a cohesive unit and the students are very quickly picking up the tasks that they are being assigned. Jonathon and Peter are very proud of the teams of students that have come over from VCC (this is the second batch, with the first ones having arrived in May) and I have to say, I am also suitably impressed with how dedicated many of the students are.
I can’t wait to touch base with the other Canadian chefs who are in town to find out how they are coping with the local suppliers, the challenge of transportation (more than 62,000 cabs and it still took me 45 minutes to flag one down the other day), the heat, limited cooking facilities and more.
The next few days will prove to be interesting, but this is what it is all about! In baseball terms, this is “the show’, and now is the time to shine and based on everything I have seen thus far, Canada is going to be incredibly well represented and I am very proud to be part of the Culinary Capers team and to wear a maple leaf on my chefs jacket! The next post will likely be a couple of days as I won’t have time to write until then, when I report in on how things went.
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