Beetroot and beefless bourguignon as Paris Olympics embraces vegetarian cuisine
It will boast the world’s biggest salad bar, offer fans vegetarian hotdogs and bring in up to half a million bananas by boat to meet athletes’ insatiable demand for the fruit while avoiding the carbon footprint of air travel.
As part of its efforts to cut carbon emissions, the Paris Olympics will make history by offering more vegetarian cuisine than in any Games.
France, the nation of steak tartare and creamy blanquette de veau, is the European country with the highest beef and veal consumption per inhabitant, but chefs say the Olympic Games will rebrand French gastronomy as a showcase for plant-based food.
The restaurant in the athletes’ Olympic Village, serving 40,000 meals a day and open 24 hours, will become the biggest restaurant on Earth. Onethird of its 500 recipes will be vegetarian, including locally grown lentils and quinoa.
For the first time, a plant-based meat substitute firm, Garden Gourmet, a subsidiary of Nestlé, is an Olympic sponsor, providing plant-based burgers and chickpea and beetroot falafels in an attempt to make France more “flexitarian”.
“We’re in France, so food is important,” said Georgina Grenon, environmental excellence director for Paris 2024. “But it is about presenting another way to eat deliciously, even in a fastpaced way, like vegetarian hamburgers and hotdogs at a stadium.”
With 13m meals served during the Games – including for fans, staff, volunteers and athletes – the focus is on locally grown vegetables. The 15,000 athletes, who eat according to strict training rules, will have access to locally sourced meat and fish. But the number of vegetarian dishes on offer to them will be much higher than before.
Meanwhile, of the estimated 5m meals and snacks sold to fans at stadiums and venues, 60% of those in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France area will be vegetarian. This will include a signature vegetarian hotdog tested last year at mountain biking trials, where it vastly outsold the meat option.
There will also be a special egg muffin for athletics fans at the Stade de France, where races are often held in the morning, and venues will also offer organic vegetarian crepes and a vegan escalope sandwich. The urban park at Place de la Concorde, which will host skateboarding, breakdancing and BMX, will be meat-free. Officials said this would appeal to the “younger, very international crowd”.
The strict carbon footprint restrictions ensure no food for the Paris Olympics will come by plane. This means bananas will be shipped by boat from the French Caribbean and passion fruit, which needs to fly, is banned.
“Of course great gastronomy can be vegetarian,” said the Michelin-starred French chef Akrame Benallal, who was asked to create a handful of signature dishes for athletes. These include a reworked version of his famous savoury quinoa muesli, made with quinoa grown south of Paris, a touch of mascarpone and parmesan and crunchy fried grains on top. He has also created mushroom croquettes with black cardamon.
“It was about trying to create a cuisine that would make sense to everybody, and which everyone could enjoy, whether athletes eat kosher, halal, vegetarian, it was about everyone taking pleasure in it,” Benallal said. “They have to put down their spoon and say, ‘Wow, that’s very, very good.’”
One of Benallal’s restaurants, Shirvan in Paris, inspired by the silk route, already serves 60% vegetarian dishes. “French cuisine for me is one of the most varied, mixed, diverse in the world, because there is a lot of influence from many, many countries and its riches lie in the cooking techniques,” he said.
Charles Guilloy, executive chef for the firm Sodexo Live!, will run the restaurant at the Olympic Village, where, at 3,500 seated places, athletes will for the first time eat off washable plates, instead of disposable ones. His signature dishes include a dal made with locally grown French green lentils, topped with skyr, coriander and a slither of corn bread.
“The false stereotype remains that French gastronomy is meat, meat, and only meat,” Guilloy said. “In fact, traditions are built around excellent, local, seasonal vegetables. Beef bourguignon is a very French recipe but I’ve reworked it for Olympic athletes as a vegetarian bourguignon with seasonal vegetables, potatoes, carrots, peas, young leeks and shallots. I like to eat a vegetarian dish with a knife and fork and for it to be just as pleasurable as animal products. The area around Paris produces great vegetables, all types of cabbage to cress and lentils. I’ve created a lentil dal with local green lentils and locally grown coriander because lentils have been a staple through the ages.”
Guilloy’s other dishes include a tarte tatin of tomatoes and onions.
Meanwhile, canteens for Olympic staff and volunteers will serve 50% vegetarian meals. On some days, only vegetarian dishes will be on offer.
Philipp Würz, in charge of catering on the Paris 2024 organising committee, said that for fans “we wanted to reverse the tendency to offer vegetarian options as an afterthought. Here, vegetarian is the majority, meat options are there but fewer in number.”
Athletes will be able to eat according to their culture and dietary needs, from locally produced Koreanstyle kimchi to Chinese-style rice.
But he said teams had also requested good quality pizza and pasta. “We’re not just feeding sports people before their events – when their competition is over, they may want to relax and tuck in. At that point, a good pizza is surprisingly in demand.”
Olympic food in numbers
13m meals served to athletes, staff, volunteers, journalists and fans
40,000 meals a day served in the Olympic Village athletes’ restaurant, with 500 approved recipes for the 15,000 athletes
Up to half a million bananas arriving by boat for athletes
600,000 cereal bars ordered for athletes in the Olympic Village, rising to an estimated total of about 1m, including competition sites
he coached.
Slot, a perfectionist and control freak, has built an impressive football media library of documentation and images of “interesting things”. He constantly tries to widen his horizons, even by watching games at a local basketball club.
Everybody with an interest in football who visits Slot can’t wait for the coach to open his laptop to “just briefly” show a new discovery. At which point he can easily go on for an hour or so about the places Manchester City send in the most crosses, the way teams coached by Jorge Sampaoli put pressure on their opponents or Napoli’s buildup play.
AZ gave Slot his first chance as a head coach, in 2019, and after impressive attacking wins at Feyenoord (3-0), PSV (4-0) and Ajax (2-0) comparisons were drawn to Louis van Gaal. AZ finished joint top with Ajax under Slot in the season cut short by Covid.
He has said of his philosophy: “I want as many good football players as possible in the team and I want to make them work as hard as possible. I believe that when we work to perfect our habits every day, we have more chance to cut out luck.”
That his teams are almost always a joy to watch is important to Slot. During press conferences he sometimes asks whether someone has watched Manchester City or Liverpool the day before. “There are two people who have really enriched football in recent decades, who have never disappointed me,” he said two years ago. “Those are Lionel Messi and Pep Guardiola.
“Messi has everything. Guardiola’s teams always play good, dominant, well-thought-out football. Then of course you have Jürgen Klopp. Manchester City-Liverpool for me is the ultimate game.”
His idolisation of the way Guardiola lets his teams play provoked José Mourinho to such an extent that he snapped at Slot last April after Roma had beaten Feyenoord in the Europa League: “You should watch Roma instead of City or Napoli.”
Mourinho later said Slot was “a great coach” and Marco van Basten, the Dutch legend and former Netherlands and Ajax coach agrees. “I’ve spoken to him a few times and what he does and how he sees the game is very impressive,” he said on the Dutch football talkshow Rondo.
“He gets along very well with the group of players, has excellent tactical skills, can explain things well and is calm and intelligent. I think he can go to any club, even the very difficult clubs, because he is so intelligent.”
Van Basten sees no reason for Slot to fear failure. “If you get AZ and Feyenoord to play [good] football, you will also get the big clubs to play [good] football. I think it would only become easier for him because you have better players who understand what you want sooner. They are often also more stubborn players, but I think Slot is smart enough to manage that.”