United flavours of the Games table

The ubiquitous pasta and pulao will sit aside the rarer moussaka (a greek dish of ground meat, eggplants and tomato) and injera (Ethiopia's answer to our good old roti) at the Commonwealth Games table, .

The ubiquitous pasta and pulao will sit aside the rarer moussaka (a greek dish of ground meat, eggplants and tomato) and injera (Ethiopia's answer to our good old roti) at the Commonwealth Games table.

HT Image

The 8,000 athletes who would be staying at the Commonwealth Games Village will have an array of cuisines to choose from during the 12-day-long sporting extravaganza that will kick off in Delhi from October 3 next year.

The catering division of the Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee (OC) is in the midst of finalising the games cuisine.

“The 71 Commonwealth countries have been divided into six zones,” said an official of OC's catering division, who did not want to be quoted as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

“Each zone will have its own distinctive cuisine like European, Caribbean, Asian, South Asian, African and American. Every day during the games breakfast, lunch and dinner would have cuisines from these six zones,” said the official.

Of the 25 caterers that had applied, the OC has short listed four caterers—which include three multinational companies and one Indian. These include two UK based caterers—Delaware and Global Infusion, French caterers Sodexho and India Tourism Development Corporation.

The games village caterer would be responsible for serving 44,000 meals to athletes and officials daily.

“Catering at the village would be our prime focus as the requirement is huge there,” said Lalit Bhanot, secretary general, Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee.

Based on their location and size, the OC has divided the 34 competition and non-competition venues into 11 clusters. Different caterers would be chosen for the 11 clusters.

Special care will be taken to ensure the menu is nutritious as well as tasty.

“The menu items will undergo stringent safety check to ensure that they are hygienic. The caterer would have to submit his or her own safety plan. We will approve it only after we are fully satisfied,” added the official.

Royal ride

The Maharaja is going to be the official carrier for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Air India is being appointed as the official airline s partner for the Games by the Organising Committee. An agreement would be signed between the Committee and Air India on Tuesday.

Dikshit to update PM on Games

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday to give him a status update about Commonwealth-Games-2010-related projects.

The meeting has apparently been convened by the PMO and apart from Dikshit, Union Sports minister M.S. Gill and other central officials associated with preparations are set to appear. According to government sources, a PMO functionary had taken stock of works at all the Games venues last week.

Dikshit chose to describe the meeting with the PM as “routine.”