2014 Winter Olympic Theme Meal

You’re invited to the event of the season—a Winter Olympic Theme Meal featuring foods from different countries that are participating in the 2014 Sochi Winter Games! For the past five weeks, my internship partner and I have been working on creating, promoting, planning, prepping and cooking our 2014 Winter Olympic Theme meal that was celebrated today. Taking place in the Wye Oak Pub at Riderwood in Silver Spring, MD, we prepared and cooked over 10 different international menu items for the residents. A few of our menu items featured today included: Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Norwegian Coleslaw, Russian Borscht Soup, German Potato Salad and Swiss Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake. We decorated our venue with various countries flags, the signature Olympic rings, torches, balloons and of course gold medals. For our two and a half hour event, over 120 residents enjoyed our buffet and we received plenty of positive feedback about the tastiness of the meal, the diversity offered on our menu, the lovely décor, and friendly service.  

Our six week food service rotation at Riderwood allowed us to experience firsthand all the hard work, patience and organization it takes while working in a kitchen and planning an event. Since day one, my partner and I have worked with the kitchen staff and have been able to participate in chef meetings, food preparation, dish washing, expediting, forecasting recipes and promoting our event. We even had to opportunity to work with the campus’s TV Crew to make a commercial (Winter Olympic Theme Meal Commercial) advertising our theme meal to the residents. The weeks leading up to event we created and designed eye-catching and informative posters, flyers, tables tents to spread the word as well as visiting the different restaurants on the Riderwood campus at meal times to talk with the residents about our event.

Prior to this internship rotation, I had very little food service experience and after these past five weeks, I have a new found respect and appreciation for the kitchen staff and food service employees.  Our event today was a big success and it was very rewarding to see how much the residents enjoyed our meal; all of our hard work and planning paid off in a delicious and fulfilling way and I am so excited I had the opportunity to contribute.

Thank you Wye Oak Pub kitchen staff for all your help in making our event a success and to Riderwood residents for allowing us to host our event at your venue!