Take a look inside the Paris Olympics dining hall, featuring a massive salad bar and TikTok-famous chocolate muffins
Talia Lakritz
- The Olympic Village's dining hall is set to serve over 1 million meals during the Games.
- Athletes have been filming TikToks about the food, and reviews have been mixed.
In the 2024 Olympic Village, dining-hall cooks race to keep up with athletes' appetites.
Sodexo Live, the official catering company of the Paris Olympics, is set to serve over 1 million meals to athletes from 208 countries and territories over the course of the Olympic Games.
Take a look inside the dining hall where Olympians fuel up for their competitions.
The dining hall in the Olympic Village serves up to 40,000 meals a day, according to the Olympics' official website.
The 46,000-square-foot building in Saint-Denis was once an electrical power plant, The New York Times reported.
Bottles of hand sanitizer are stationed at the entrance of the dining hall.
The dining hall is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Charles Guilloy, the executive chef of the Olympic Village, oversees a team of 200 cooks.
Guilloy is the executive chef of Sodexo Live.
He told the BBC that chefs in the Olympic Village were "going to be a bit like athletes," racing to prepare food for 15,000 Olympians.
Four categories of food are served in the Olympic Village: French, Asian, Afro-Caribbean, and "world cuisine."
Foods that comply with religious dietary practices, such as kosher and halal, are also available to athletes.
A salad bar features over 30 options, but no avocados.
Guilloy considered the sustainability of different foods while designing the menu, telling The New York Times that avocados weren't offered because they're "imported from a great distance and consume a lot of water."
Crates of grab-and-go fruit are also available to Olympians.
About 30% of the food served in the Olympic Village dining hall is organic, according to Olympics.com.
After the Games began, organizers brought in more eggs and meat because of athletes' high demand for protein.
As part of the event's sustainability efforts, 40% of the Olympic Village offerings are vegetarian or plant-based, according to Olympics.com.
Athletes, however, wanted more meat.
Étienne Thobois, the CEO of the Paris Games' organizing committee, said that the dining hall added over 700 kilograms, or about 1,543 pounds, of eggs and 1 ton of meat to meet the athletes' needs, Reuters reported.
"Certain products, such as eggs and grilled meats, are particularly popular among athletes, so their quantities were increased, in agreement with Paris 2024," a representative for Sodexo Live previously told Business Insider. "Since then, the quantities offered for these products were adapted accordingly and have been sufficient to meet all needs."
In an effort to minimize waste, the soda and juice fountains stock only reusable cups.
The dining hall contains 200 drink dispensers, with water, soda, and orange juice on tap.
Smaller dining rooms are decorated with plants and artfully mismatched chairs.
The complex contains a total of 3,500 seats.
Some athletes have been posting reviews of the food on TikTok.
Aleah Finnegan, a gymnast from the Philippines, said in a TikTok video that the food was "good" but "not really seasoned."
Others can't get enough. Henrik Christiansen, a swimmer on Norway's Olympic team, posted a series of TikTok videos proclaiming his love for the dining hall's chocolate muffins. He jokingly declared himself "the Olympic muffin man" and called the baked goods "the single greatest thing about the Olympic Village so far."
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