02/18/2002
SALT LAKE CITY – Siegfried Meyer knows bratwurst. He just didn't expect to
have to know this much.
"I'm going through 1,000 pounds of bratwurst a day," said Meyer, who
runs Siegfried's Delicatessen in downtown Salt Lake City. "The Germans
want to eat German food."
Siegfried's, which normally makes 70 varieties of sausage and has
brought in more for the Games, is one of the many local eateries that
have been tapped to serve the Olympics' international crowd.
Together, they're proof that no matter how deeply Olympic sponsor
McDonald's penetrates foreign cultures, there's always a taste for home
cooking.
"There are plenty of people looking for something other than
hamburgers," Meyer said.
Absolute, the city's only Scandinavian restaurant, rented itself out to
the Austrian Olympic committee for the Games. With the high
concentration of Swedes, Norwegians and Finns in the Winter Olympics,
Absolute probably stood to make quite a profit if it simply stayed open
for regular business.
"But it's a guarantee if we rent it out," said Kimi Eklund, the
restaurant's owner. "And it's a way to be a part of the Olympics,
instead of just doing the same things we do every day. Instead, we get
to meet the medalists, meet royalty, meet the prime minister. We're a
part of it."
And since the Austrians have been faring well on the medal stand – with
13 medals won as of Sunday – the atmosphere has been celebratory, she
said, which makes the schnitzel, goulash and strudel go down well.
The city's top-rated French restaurant, Au Bon Appetit, has been taken
over by the Swiss Olympic committee. But unlike Absolute and other
Olympic-affiliated restaurants, Au Bon Appetit, renamed the House of
Switzerland, has remained open to the public along.
"The fondue is as good as in Switzerland," said Swiss alpine skier
Oliver Koch.
Owner Christian Peyrin echoed a complaint of many downtown business
people: while the influx of Olympians has helped their bottom lines,
their regular customers have been scared away.
"The people here are not used to traffic," he said. "It's been very,
very smooth. But in Salt Lake, whenever they see three cars, they call
it a traffic jam."
Still, business has been strong. A normal Friday or Saturday might bring
200 customers to Au Bon Appetit, Peyrin said. During the Games, an
average day might bring 450 or 500.
"We are super-swamped," he said. "I've worked in cities like New York,
Paris, Chicago, and this week, Salt Lake feels like a city for the first
time."
To help run the show, Swiss officials brought in 22 volunteers from the
mother country, including three chefs. That's necessary when feeding a
Swiss clientele, since Switzerland has no fewer than four official
languages.
Meyer's deli is supplying all the food for the Thueringen House, which
is watching after Germany's Olympians from Thueringen state, once the
breadbasket of the East German athletics program.
"I've had just about every German newspaper, TV station and magazine in
here," said Meyer, who's run the deli for 32 years.
The Germans have surprised Meyer with the amount of food and drink
("They're big on beer") they've consumed. What he expected would be
enough bratwurst for two days barely survived one, which is why he was
at the deli Sunday, normally his day off, making sausage.
"I get Germans and Austrians and Scandinavians and everybody in here,"
he said. "They come and go all day long. Two people leave, and two more
people come in. We've been packed over capacity."