Calgary's Rouge Restaurant

Check out this photo, Paul who is our Cold Kitchen Chef has just been named restaurant of the year for Calgary 2010. I didn't know I was working with such a famous chef on our team otherwise I would have employed him in the hot kitchen with me. Thanks for all the good times Paul, Cheers

Olympic Bill

Olympic Taco's 2010

Although we're here for the athlete's, what people may not realize is that we also prepare great food for all the volunteers and security forces here in the village as well. Everyday we're trying to make a theme item that will excite and entice the palette of our workforce even if it is simple comfort food. Yesterdays menu was soft and crunchy taco's that blew everyone away and they are still talking about it today. At home these may seem simple for a family of four, but our family of 900 would seem like a challenge to the average house wife. For us it just means a bit more logistics (and a lot more work). It's the little things that effect morale and believe it or not FOOD IS MORALE, and it's quickly becoming our new work slogan.

Today I'd also like to welcome Chief Petty Officer Leroy Pyke who's joined our culinary team for 10 days to experience the Olympics (can you believe he took holidays to work 12 hours a day with us?). Leroy manages Juno tower in CFB Halifax and is holding the Taco on the right side of the table in the photo below.

Olympic Bill

2010 Athlete's Village Olympic Chef's

I was finally able to get most of our Chef Managers together for our Olympic photo. The only Chef missing is our night Chef Will who was sleeping during the day so we'll have to try again after the Olympics.

Olympic Bill

The Home Stretch

Here we are, pretty well at the half way mark with only 5 days of the Olympic games remaining, and an 11 day period before the Paralympics on 12 Mar which run until 21 Mar. Although our number of athletes decreases, our workforce numbers increase when we/they move from the cruise ship on 4 Mar into the Athletes village where we will receive all our meals. I'm actually going to miss the ship. I got into a pretty comfortable routine this past month. However, a 5 minute stroll to work is going to make up the 3 hours of bussing everyday.

We've now served up nearly 130,000 meals, and received 355 skids/pallets of food, weighing it at approx 700,000 lbs. We might just hit that 1 million pounds by the time it's all said & done.

Cheers, Olympic Mike

Halal Station and International Foodstuffs

Tonight I want to talk about 2 of our food stations, the first is our Halal station where we prepare both our regular dishes and our Halal dishes. The sauce may be the same however,we are very cognizant of our   clients and use Halal meats and fish so we create and segregate our foodstuffs for our clients. I can tell you we have very happy customers because we have the Halal station.

The second station is our continental station where we offer dishes from around the world along with a multitude of potatoes and  vegetable choices. The great thing is that we have included Canadian products using  Bison or venison, wild rice or bannock at each meal/

Olympic Bill                

 

Gold Medal Plates

During the Olympics we have 3 guest Chef’s that will visit us and prepare a dish for 500 each night to serve the Athletes over a 2 day period. This week we had Hayato Okiamitsu the Executive Chef from “Catch” restaurant in Calgary. Considered one of the Premier restaurants in Canada with the founding Chef Michael Noble who opened it around 2002 (another Canadian Iron Chef competitor).  Hayato had a bit of a challenge trying to Sear his tuna for 500 people so I asked him to try the Accutemp griddle. It heats high enough to sear the tuna with enough room to spare for another 500 portions. Hayato was so amazed at the griddle he agreed to a photo for my blog, Check out the photo with the tuna on the grill.

Olympic Bill

Asian Stations

Tonight’s Blog is on our 2 Asian Stations. At the first station the athletes can select a variety of proteins and vegetables then it's passed to the chef to cook in front of them. They can choose from a variety of Asian pastas and sauces to complete it or go with one of the 4 rice’s.

At the second station this is a grab and go buffet with a selection of 4 Asian casseroles that change on a daily basis along with steamed dumplings and soups.

Olympic Bill

Pizza station

Tonight I added 2 photo's of the pizza station, if you look behind the pizza counter you'll see a double cooker so fresh pizzas can be made and cooked in front of our diners. We have 4 types of pizzas that change on a daily basis and every day we have a gluten free pizza. How can you beat pizza made and baked in front of you, yummmm.

Olympic Bill

Roots

I know we've hyped a lot about the fact that both Bill & I served in the Canadian Forces (CF) as cooks, and worked together at CFB Edmonton in the early 90's.

I promise this will be the last lengthy or detailed post about it. The intent of our blog was to simply keep our family & friends informed of what we were up to, basically to save the time of having to send mass, impersonal emails to them all, and hope no one got missed.

Quite obviously this has grown much larger than either of us imagined or anticipated. Along with the fact Chef Michael Smith has been giving us a plug on his Twitter page, let's just say there's a formable following.

Back to my initial point. With such a large audience it provides us with a positive opportunity, 2 fold. Firstly, it demonstrates to cooks currently serving in the CF a prime example of what is possibly achievable, and could be a great form of motivation or incentive. Secondly, it provides a rare insight to those not serving. Our military might be small, but it is regarded as one of the best in the world, and it holds true for our cooks as well. When serving overseas with military units from other countries their troops were quite frankly blown away by our standard of Food Services & superlative quality of food. Not entirely unique to our way of training, but there are not many other country's military cooks that are crossed trained quite like ours. All our cooks serve in all of our elements, Army, Navy & Air Force, and are trained in all areas of the kitchen, from washing pots to baking, preparing meals for fine dining or on service flights, to ordering rations, to managing various types of kitchens such as for in flight meals, field kitchens, which include mobile & static in temperatures from -40c to +40c, to Galleys on HMC Ships & Submarines. Not to mention, catered, buffets, steamline/cafeteria & table service style meals also. In short, we're versatile to say the least.

Although everyone here has a necessary role & their experience is an invaluable asset, Bill has been kicking some serious ass to help make it the success it is. There are some exceptionally talented chefs on board, but few have the back ground in not only large quantity cooking, but also orchestrating & managing a large contingent of chefs & cooks to make it all a huge success. It's not just about being able to cook. He's the Operations Chef, second only to Lead Chef Michael Smith. And even though my role here is not as pivotal or glamorous as Bill's, it is one that I'm fully tailored to, drawing on my experience of large quantity ordering, receiving & storing from my days serving with both the Army (2VP) & Navy (HMCS Ottawa), and also with the Air Force supporting larger functions such as the Edmonton International Air show.

This training, experience & background knowledge has afforded us the unimaginable opportunity, to not only just be a part of the biggest event in the world, but to actually help in making a notable highly successful difference.

For those serving, here's the proof that the possibilities are endless. It's up to you to seize the opportunity.

If anyone is interested in serving your country as a cook, the training is not only second to none, nothing else remotely compares. And, it's a damn great job.

Olympic FSM Mike