Best Food for Olympic Guests at Top Hotel

The Chinese name of the Grand Hotel Beijing on Dong Chang’an Jie (East Chang’an Avenue) is Guibinglou, which means a “building for distinguished guests.”

In August 2008, the hotel will become home to VIPs from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the hotel has made food variety and safety its top priority in its planning for the Games.

The hotel is creating an innovative bilingual menu on which the ingredients, nutritional values and calorie contents of 30-40 dishes will be listed.

The hotel’s chief chef Zhang Jing’an said, “Olympic guests come from various countries of the world and have different taste and customs. Some guests are very cautious about their daily calorie intake. So we’ve been doing research on how to prepare dishes in a healthier, more scientific and reasonable way.”  

The hotel provides a wide spectrum of menu options, as is illustrated in three of its best-known restaurants:

The Rong Yuan Restaurant on the second floor specializes in traditional imperial Sichuan cuisine.

The Ming Yuan Restaurant on the third floor serves Cantonese dishes, including seafood.

The Old Pekin Restaurant on the fourth floor has two sections, one offering western dishes and the other classical Chinese dishes, including the hotel's famous Yu Fu Royal Cuisine.

Chef Zhang, 41, who has been working at the hotel since 1985, is most accomplished in Yu Fu Royal Cuisine, especially the hotel’s specialty, “Big Tan.” His latest creation is the “Fuwa Side Dish,” which he spent more than a year designing. Fuwa, the name of the five Beijing Olympic mascots, is made of eggs, red and green peppers, carrots, cucumbers and eggplants.

“I had this idea shortly after Fuwa was created last year,” Zhang said. This side dish is not to be eaten: it is for our guests’ visual enjoyment while our chefs are preparing their orders. Lately, I've been considering how to combine it with the menu we’re preparing for the Olympic guests.”

The Fuwa dish, though made of simple materials, requires complex cooking techniques, for which Zhang Jing’an says he owes his master Tian Runfu, head chef of the hotel. “I was fortunate enough to work during the 1990 Beijing Asian Games under my master’s guidance when I first came to the hotel.”

Out of concern for food safety, in June 2007 the hotel met HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) standards, an international food safety management system certification. In doing so, it became one of the three hotels in China to meet this certification. HACCP is a systematic preventive approach to food safety, which identifies potential food safety hazards, so that key actions, known as Critical Control Points (CCPs) can be relied upon to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized. The system is used at all stages of food production and preparation.

The hotel hopes that by introducing the HACCP programme into its daily operations, its service will be better than ever, but, to qualify the hotel’s kitchen staff had to make professional and even psychological changes in the ways they work.

Zhang and his colleagues now record every detail about hundreds of Chinese ingredients, dishes and cooking methods, including their shelf lives, cooking times and the temperatures used.

Xia Minhui, the hotel’s food and beverage director, said, “In traditional Chinese cooking, chefs don’t follow very strict rules but depend more on their experience and feelings, so it is quite hard to control the overall quality of Chinese food.”

But Zhang said he and his staff are taking many approaches to the upcoming Olympics, not just improving their cooking techniques.

Since 2005, the hotel has engaged its employees in English-language training. Zhang was among the first to achieve an English certification issued by the Beijing Tourism Administration, and he is quite confident and proud of his English skills and writes most of his menus in Chinese and English.

He said, “Since the introduction of the HACCP system, every kitchen at our hotel has at least two big notebooks in which their daily operations are recorded.” A quality control lab in the basement of the hotel tests food and dishware samples every day, while lab officials randomly drop by to check what is going on at the restaurants and kitchens.

Quality Assurance Office Manager Li Baoguo, said, “We do at least 80 tests every week to ensure our food materials are safe and our tableware is clean.”

According to Eve Zhang, the hotel collects food samples from every banquet of more than 50 people, and keeps the samples for 48 hours in a specific refrigerator, in case guests have any doubts or complaints about food safety.

“We’re more than confident that every guest can enjoy safe and clean food in our hotel,” said Zhang.

Safe Food Guaranteed at Games

Beijing Olympics organizers have unveiled meticulous plans to assure athletes of healthy food and sound air quality during the Games on August 6, 2007.

Wang Wei, an executive vice-president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), told the media: “Our country and the Beijing Municipal Government are taking the food safety issue very seriously, especially for the Olympics.”

Food to be delivered to athletes will be closely monitored throughout the process of production, processing and transport. State-of-the-art technologies such as a global positioning satellite system will be used to help track food during the production and distribution process, according BOCOG guidelines.

Other measures include:

•      Staying vigilant and informed about food safety;

•      Improving market entry inspections for food suppliers;

•      Strengthening food safety monitoring systems;

•      Introducing a tracking system on all food entering the Olympic Village.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has announced similar measures to ensure that food products for the Games will be safe to consume.

Experts estimate that more than 75,000 litres of milk, 330 tons of fruit and vegetables, 82 tons of seafood, 750 litres of ketchup, 131 tons of meat, 21 tons of cheese and 3 million bottles of beverages will be used by athletes, coaches, officials and journalists during the Beijing Olympics.

To ensure that all these consumables are served “safely,” Beijing has set up an experts’ panel on food security for the 2008 Olympics, which includes seven Chinese and eight foreign experts.

The panel has been mulling criteria and testing and monitoring systems for food security for the Olympics. The panel has also drawn up a draft list of 30 performance-enhancing drugs to be closely monitored as well as their allowable volumes in Olympics food.

 

Bei is Getting Ready for the Paralympic Games

BOCOG covers Paralympians’ travel expenses

For the first time in Paralympics history, a Games organizing committee will bear all international travel expenses of the Paralympic athletes and team officials, said Tang Xiaoquan, executive vice-president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, organizer of the 13th Paralympic Games.

Tang, who also serves as president of the Executive Board of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, said BOCOG will also provide free food, accommodations and registrations for the athletes and officials during the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, just like other Olympians.

The 13th Paralympic Games will take place in Beijing from September 6-17, 2008. An estimated 4,000 athletes from more than 150 countries and regions, along with 2,500 coaches, trainers and technical officials, will take part.

More barrier-free facilities in Beijing

Beijing will put more barrier-free buses into service and replace all subway cars running on its two downtown routes with new ones in an effort to improve public transportation facilities for next year’s Beijing Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The Beijing Subway, operator of the city’s 200-km urban rail network, plans to put 120 new subway cars on Line 1 before June 2008; this is the east-west trunk route that passes through northern Tian’anmen Square in Central Beijing. An additional 144 new subway cars will be used on Line 2, the Loop Line circling Central Beijing.

The new subway train sets, 114 metres long and 2.8 metres wide, can accommodate a maximum of 1,820 people; they will have LED screens to display weather information and the results of the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic events.

The new subway cars are air-conditioned and will have better ventilation systems than available now. Each car has four wheelchair lifts and wheelchair-designated spaces.

Beijing will put an additional 2,500 barrier-free buses into service by the end of 2007. “By then, Beijing will have nearly 4,000 barrier-free buses, about a quarter of its bus fleet,” said Feng Xingfu, vice-managing director of the Beijing Buses Group.

Barrier-free improvements are also being made at 112 Olympics-contracted hotels and at Olympics-designated hospitals. At least 75 percent of the three-star and above Olympic-contracted hotels will improve their barrier-free facilities by the end of 2007. Most of the hospitals and scenic spots will also get barrier-free improvements.