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

Food Stations - Pasta

For all those foodies out there, I thought I'd better start writing a few blogs on our food stations that we provide almost 10,000 meals a day at. The first one is the pasta station. Carbs are important expecially to athletes so you may notice in the photo I posted on the site is a pasta station complete with pasta cooked in the back and placed on the steam line where we have at least 4 different pasta sauces per meal, plus an assortment of pastas that change daily as well as 2 pasta casseroles. Think of our volumes, when we make Marinara sauce, it takes 12 cases of the 6 x 2.84 lt cans of diced tomatoes and were making a fresh batch every other day.

Olympic Bill

My Turn

Well, after 21, 12 hour days straight it's my turn for a little R&R. Going to take in the euphoria of Whistler & Olympic spirit. Going to watch the 2 man Bobsleigh qualifying runs also. Go Canada!

Wish we could be sharing it together Babe....

Cheers, Olympic Mike

Our Workforce menu

Not only the athlete's eat well, but our workforce are pleasantly surprised at some of our choices as well. Check out the menu tonight for our workforce of 800 + diners with sesame crusted Ahi tuna cooked to order.

Olympic Bill