By Anna Rushton
Throughout the competitions at the 2026 winter Olympic games in Milano Cortina, something viewers at home didn’t see was the meals that got these athletes ready to compete. An Olympic village food service provides a massive, diverse and allegedly high quality menu to thousands of the attendees. Their main focus is to ensure that the food includes cultural cuisines, nutritional value, and increased local sourcing.
This year’s Olympics took place in Italy, specifically Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. Naturally, the food served throughout the games was delicious Italian cuisine such as pizza, lasagne, and pasta with unique shapes like the Olympic ring, which I think is a very clever detail.
According to NBC Olympics, over 4,500 meals were prepared for Olympians at the Milan village, and nearly 4,000 at the Cortina Village.
The kitchens in the Milan Olympic village alone served over 3,000 eggs and approximately 990 pounds of pasta, showing the extreme importance of having energy for them to perform well in the games.
The actual menu itself for the athletes consisted of 500 recipes that rotated 24 hours a day. The chefs were determined to provide nutritionally balanced meals whenever the athletes needed them. However, it’s important to note that there were specific times for three main meals.
In addition to the pizza and pasta they served, local cold cuts, fruits, cheeses and desserts were appreciated as well. Pushing past the “OG” food, there were products and dishes like bresaola and canederli that provided an authentic and delicious insight to Italian cuisine.
Bresaola is typically tender, dark red cured beef that is aged for around 2-3 months, having a sweet and savory blend of flavors. It’s often served as an accompaniment to an antipasto with olive oil and parmesan cheese.
Canederli are traditional northern Italian bread dumplings that are surprisingly made from stale white bread, milk, eggs, ham, cheese, and parsley, creating a hearty and comforting dish.
In order to really know if the Olympic village food this year was good, reviews from athletes who actually had the food is essential. One of the reviewers of the food was Ben Richardson, an American Olympian who participated in curling. Richardson blew up on social media for his very honest review videos on the food at Olympic village. According to Eating Well, he has a lot to say. By tasting a bunch of different foods in the village, he has come to the consensus that there were some hits and some misses explaining that the “cappucino was really smooth and the waffles sounded like a rock when tapped against a plate.”
After doing some further research on TikTok, I found that Richardson has a viral video with over 304k likes of him reviewing the ravioli with tomato sauce and pesto. In the video he explains that the dish itself is fine but he would’ve preferred more cheese. With that, he gave the dish a whopping 6.7/10. I was shocked to find that it did not receive a higher score, but the food had a chance to redeem itself after Richardson tried the potato gnocchi the following day. He thought it was really good, giving it a 8.9/10.
Overall, the Olympic Village food this year definitely had some mixed emotions in regards to the flavor of the food. However, it’s important to appreciate the hard work from the cooks and companies who provided the food that fueled these super-athletes.
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