By Zhang Yan (張妍)
Lifestyle, page 53
Issue No. 559, Mar 5, 2012
Translated by Laura Lin
Original article: [Chinese]

If you're ever invited to eat at the canteen of Google's Beijing office, don't turn down the offer.

By now, the American search giant's cafeteria has achieved a fame to match the firm itself. In keeping with the corporate "Innovate or Die" motto, Google's chefs come up with new ideas every day.

At 11:30 each morning, as the sun streams in through the bay window of Google's canteen, an aroma begins to fill the room. It's time for those hoodie-and-jeans sporting IT workers to march in with identity cards hanging round their necks – ready for a good meal. They are calm and in a good mood: they know what awaits them. Those of us who don't get to enjoy this every day can't but help feel a little envious.

You are wrong if you think these workers are taking a break -- they have simply embarked upon a fresh project. Their first mission is to choose between Chinese or Western food. Then comes the multi-choice exam of selecting what you'd like from the buffet, the salad bar or perhaps ordering something to be cooked.

Among the dozen Chinese dishes on offer, we have braised duck wings, fried kidneys with squid, lamb chops and Mandarin fish - all steaming hot and ready to go. If that doesn't get your digestive juices flowing, consider what is available from the West: slow-stewed shoulder of beef with mango salsa, grape-braised clams and homemade pizza.

After you've managed to choose a main course, six highly original desserts are lying in wait. Everything is free and you can eat as much as you want. At this point, if you work somewhere else, try not to think about your own office cafeteria.

Xue Rongsheng (薛榮升), Google China's head chef, with nearly 20 years of experience in five-star hotels, told the EO that the chefs use the world's best equipment in the kitchen.

When the canteen was opened in 2007, in all of Beijing you could only find two of the ovens that they use. In addition, he is told not to worry about the purchasing budget for his ingredients.

The only mission for Xue and his assistants is: "to submerge ourselves in the ocean of cuisine." They are a team of two-dozen people. There are more than 500 in-house diners daily, but they provide enough quantity for up to 800, because the staff loves bringing in their friends and family for the occasional meal - and they often pick up take-away when they plan to work late into the night.

Innovation

So how passionate are Google's chefs about their work? One answer is that between 2007 and 2010, the team created more than 3,000 different kinds of dessert. As for the main courses, they gave up counting. One can't help thinking that there are some people who would pay to work at Google.

Once a week, there's a Research-and-Development menu. Every chef has to come up with a new invention on this day. After trying it out, some of the new dishes are offered in the following week's menu. Google's workers know that they will see at least one or two new dishes each day. Workers say they don't expect any repetition on the menu for at least 20 days, but Xue raised his eyebrows.

"It's more than that," he boasts. "Sometimes you have to wait three to five months before you see the same dish again. We exhaust all our energy in researching new dishes."

Xue uses a weekly videoconference to report on his work to Google's US headquarters, as well as the firm's Asia-Pacific chief executive officers.

Every day the secretary to the team of chefs uploads the menu in advance on "Foodback," an internal company website that lets staff members at Google log on to Google+ social network to comment on each dish.

"Traditional style restaurants are slow in responding to clients' reactions to their food, unless the diners demonstrate a strong demand," Xue said. But as an Internet giant, Google relies on technology to respond to the needs of diners in a timely manner.

And more than that, "We use our imagination to develop the Google staff palate," he explains. "For instance, we have Western and Chinese bakers working together to invent new desserts, combining Beijing's traditional bean cake with tiramisu filling, or our snail roll using millet flour pancakes from Shandong, and our steamed Cantonese pork roll matched with Japanese tempura. They are all very popular with the workers."

So with all this top-end (gratis) gastronomy, are Google's staff stuffing themselves too much?

Not necessarily. The menus are carefully designed to meet the requirements of a balanced diet. Most cooking methods involve stewing and boiling, with much less frying than one might find in other Beijing restaurants.

There's a chart called "The pyramid of health" stuck at the most obvious place in the canteen. It's a diagram, developed by Google and Harvard University, where foods are divided into three color-coded groups: Green means "Eat as much as you fancy," yellow means "in moderation," and red means "just occasionally."

There are only two universal rules for Google's canteens throughout the world. One is no MSG. The other is to limit the use of oil.

"The amount of oil used in a normal restaurant would be enough for us to fry 30 dishes," Xue says.

"Besides, we encourage the staff to eat whole rice. We let the rice soak 24 hours first. The amino acid content is thus multiplied, guaranteeing both the taste and the healthiness."

One of the characteristics of an engineer is their attachment to using data to analyze an issue. Even such a concern as the proper amount of salt added to a dish can be collected through Internet feedback.

"Don't ever imagine that engineers are somehow a shy bunch," says Xue. "Their willingness to express what they want would surprise you."

News in English via World Crunch (link)