Olympics Catering A Huge Task

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 3

Olympics Catering A Huge Task

( N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—CopyriQht)

MEXICO CITY;

More than 1200 cooks from most parts of the world will cater for the varied appetites of athletes competing in the Olympic Games in Mexico City in October.

They will prepare 30,000 meals daily in six different restaurants. Dishes vary from American hamburgers to Swedish smorgasbord, Italian pasta, Russian herring, and Chinese noodles.

The mammoth culinary operation will start on September 12 when the athletes will begin to arrive for training. For the next 50 days, the cooks will offer 90 different dishes at each meal. One hundred women dieticians and 14 chemists have been hired to make sure the food will contain the right amount of nourishment. To ensure there are no flies on the food, one health inspector in each of the six dining rooms will keep a wary eye on food counters. As part of the health pre-

cautions, all cooks, waiters and helpers have been ordered to shave off moustaches, trim their hair and cut their fingernails. Ceasar Balsa, owner of a local hotel chain, who is in charge of the gastronomical welfare of Olympic athletes, said each of the six dining rooms, containing 729 tables, 3600 chairs, would be allotted to one of the world’s epicurean regions. There will be a Latin din-ing-room including Italians, Spanish and Portuguese, a Saxon dining-room for the English-speaking world and a west European dining room for athletes from France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

- The East-European diningroom will serve athletes from East Germany, Russia, Poland, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Fine Arts.—Sales over the first week-end at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts 1968 exhibition in Wellington were worth $2855. Though most of the money came from the sale of paintings, pottery was also a good seller.—(P.A.)