Intertain

The Olympics’ food hall caters for nearly 18,000 athletes, coaches and officials with its size being bigger than two football fields.

A team of over 2,500 people are working in the food hall kitchens 24/7, serving up an insane 460,000 pounds of food a day for 60,000 meals daily served up on 4 million biodegradable plates.

The food hall is open 24/7 with breakfast (5-11 am), lunch (11am-5pm), dinner (5-11pm) and overnight (11pm-5am) more commonly occupied during meal hours but is never left empty.

Menus have been developed in consultation with caterers and sports nutritionists with a rotation of menu change every eight days and food pictograms with dietary information available.

Here, we provide some of Olympics’ food hall highlights proving to be the world’s biggest buffet.

Indulging in Host Country’s Home Food

The beautiful part about having a country host is the ability for athletes to indulge and embrace the host country’s best ingredients and produce.

2016 Rio Olympics offer 40 varieties of Brazil's exotic fruits like caju, acai, carambola, caqui, goiaba and maracuja, often squeezed into Brazil's famously delicious juices (sucos in Portuguese). More here.

Intertain Chief Eating Officer (CEO) Josiah Ng, a three-time Olympic Track Cyclist has fond memories of indulging in the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ Peking duck which was a really popular dish.

Australian swimmer Libby Trickett reportedly fueled her 100-meter butterfly gold medal by having it at breakfast, lunch and dinner. "Is Peking duck the superspeed food? It could be," her husband, Luke, told Australia's Daily Telegraph.

Athlete Celebrity-Spotting

All athletes are celebrities in their own right and it is very so humbling to see athletes creating camaraderie amongst each other with photos being taken with each other at the food hall.

You might see them walking past or sitting with their team-mates. They all usually appear to be either quite focused or happy and relaxed after competition.

So, who doesn’t make it to the food hall?

“The USA basketball team usually doesn’t visit the food hall. They always have a crowd around them, which probably makes it inconvenient to get to the food. Also, they stay outside the athletes’ village because they usually require larger beds due to their height,” Josiah replies.

“There’s the normal athletes, then there are the superstar athletes,” he adds.

“I once sat with Novac Djokovic and we had a decent conversation. It was humbling to sit next to an athlete of his calibre. We had previously met on several occasions during the Australian Open Tennis Championships and our lockers were next to each other’s at the Victorian Institute of Sports (Novak trained at the VIS prior to the Australian Open).”

Feeding the Hungry

This is a new challenge, which will revolutionize the way food’s being consumed at the Olympics by fighting food waste.

Italian chef Massimo Bottura and Brazilian chef David Hertz have taken on the challenge of using the surplus food from the village and turning it into about 5,000 meals daily for Rio’s poorest and hungriest citizens.

The goal of the initiative is to feed the hungry in Rio, but also establish a similar setup in all future Olympic host cities. Hertz and Battura also want this to become a movement to fight the food waste as well as provide education and training for aspiring cooks, chefs and other restaurant workers.

The food hall is truly a display of a melting pot of cultures, and sizes of all ethnicities. These athletes come together to achieve greatness in sports for their countries.

This is the best place to hang out at the Olympic Athletes’ Village.

Photo credit: Josiah Ng at the London Olympics 2012