UVA Chef Travels to China for Olympic Games

Tag: china cupboard

From Charlottesville to Beijing--that's how far one man recently traveled to fulfill his Olympic dream. But Steve Biery isn't an athlete--he's a University of Virginia chef. And he was recently selected to travel abroad to help prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner for the international media.

"For me, it just seemed like it would be the experience of a lifetime to go to another country and work and then actually try to learn the culture and learn some new dishes over there," he said.

Biery is one of 7,000 Aramark employees who has been chosen to work in Beijing. His round-the-clock mission is to help dish out around 3.5 million meals in around two months time.

"I'm hoping that I can pick up that one little technique, that one little secret spice, that one little something that's not in the cookbook here," he said.

And that's not all he hopes to learn. After working with dozens of Chinese chefs in various media tents for 60 days, he says he'd like to bring back something special for his coworkers in Virgnia.

"Hopefully a little kitchen language--that way when I come back here to UVA I can tell my guys here something in Chinese to do something, just kind of out of fun."

Biery says despite having a jam-packed work schedule, he expects to have a little fun off the clock. The executive chef at UVA's Observatory Hill Dining Hall says he might pass on watching an Olympic event to visit a certain historic landmark.

"As it is right now, I think the Great Wall is winning out. To do something over there, to look at their history, their culture.".

And that sounds like a golden opportunity too good to pass up.