A recent newspaper report on the efforts of several local restaurants to brand themselves along sports lines has left me wondering if their food is also special.
Here are some of their offerings:
One restaurant has an Olympic countdown board at the entrance and a ping-pong table for diners to burn calories before or after their meal. The manager of the restaurant, which is co-owned by a famous foreign table tennis player, said that it was opened in 2004.
One roasted duck restaurant is calling itself an Olympic restaurant because each of its 18 VIP rooms is named after the host cities of the Games. In the Athens Room, which is decorated with photos of the Greek capital, a large pair of tennis rackets hangs above the dinner table. Bon appetit.
One restaurant with a large collection of soccer memorabilia has a small penalty area where customers can practice their shooting skills. Its waiters are dressed like Premier League stars.
But playful decorations and ambience aside, do these restaurants offer something akin to a sports diet, or an Olympic menu that promotes healthy and safe eating? The newspaper story neglected to say, presumably because the reporter failed to find anything worth printing.
I am curious about what food local restaurants are serving because I have learned to care about what I eat, especially after a recent weekend trip to the produce department at a grocery store in my neighborhood.
There nicely packaged organic cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables are two to five times more expensive than the conventional ones that I have been eating. The reason for the price difference is that organic growers do not use chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The matter is so serious that customers are encouraged to check on the organic food they are buying by tracing each vegetable to its producer by using the telephone, Internet, short message service and other ways of communication that are listed on the packaging label.
Although switching to vegetables or fruits grown with animal manure does not necessarily appeal to me, I think I have no other choice but to oblige for my own health and safety.
This experience has also helped me better appreciate the food safety monitoring system that Beijing has introduced for the Games. It will help track food from growers and butchers all the way to the table at Olympic restaurants.
Should a "food safety incident" occur, it would take food inspectors only 10 minutes to identify the cause and remove the offending food from the table.
Beijing is expected to feed more than 7 million spectators and hundreds of thousands of athletes and officials during the Summer and Paralympic Games next year.
As such, can all the restaurants in Beijing, not just those that are specially appointed and monitored, try to adopt at least some Olympic food measures when cashing in on the Games' business opportunities?
For example, a sports restaurant could guarantee that only inspected and qualified vegetables and meats can enter their kitchens, to ensure safety for athletes and other clients.
Restaurateurs with a passion for both sport and food may also learn from the canteen at the national training center, where 86 of China's 112 Olympic gold medalists graduated. Although the food allowance is 60 yuan ($8) a day for each athlete, chefs there will only buy meat, vegetables, seafood and fruits with "green" tags. They will also carry out on-site inspections before signing contracts with their meat suppliers.
The very least that a sports restaurant can do is to ban smoking on its premises.
Folks, be creative.
