Zhang Yan If there's a chance to sneak into Google's (Weibo) canteen for a meal, those in the know would express their excitement by rubbing their hands together.
The fame of Google's cafeteria is no less than that of this internet company itself. Regardless of whether the rumors about eating abalone, lobster, and Peking duck are true or not, Google China's canteen absolutely continues the "death without innovation" engineering culture. Even the head chefs are half "geeks" - with plenty of selling points.
Every day at 11:30 AM, the sunlight perfectly hits the large glass windows of the first-floor restaurant. The chefs place the dishes on the kitchen racks one by one, prepare the plates, bowls, and chopsticks, uncover the cling film, and the aroma wafts out with the steam. IT experts wearing hoodies, jeans, or checkered shirts with cardigans, with ID badges around their necks, calmly enter with their hands in their pockets.
Every day's menu is posted at the entrance of the canteen, which is divided into Chinese cuisine, Western cuisine, salad, and made-to-order sections. For example, one day's Chinese cold dishes include braised duck wings and sour-spicy bracken vermicelli, while the hot dishes have garlic chives stir-fried with enoki mushrooms, warm double flowers, salted water mandarin fish, flavored lamb chops, and more than ten other varieties. The Western cuisine features "12-hour roasted beef shoulder peak with mango salsasauce" and white grape juice stewed clams, accompanied by signature pizzas and six Western-style desserts. The format is buffet-style, no card swiping or payment required, eat as much as you like.
The corporate culture of this company dictates its all-out commitment to employee dining. Chef supervisor Rongsheng Xue said that their equipment is the best in the world. In 2007, when the Google canteen first opened, the oven they used was one of only two in all of Beijing. Moreover, the annual catering budget given by the company basically does not impose cost pressures on the chef team.
This environment allows the chefs to "completely immerse themselves in the ocean of skills." Currently, Google has a team of over 20 employees serving more than 500 employees in the company, providing food for seven or eight hundred people daily because employees often bring family and friends to dine, and occasionally pack meals for those working late at night. Chef supervisor Rongsheng Xue has nearly twenty years of experience in five-star hotels and became the head chef of the Google canteen after multiple rounds of competition five years ago.
Creativity
How high is the innovative enthusiasm of Google chefs? According to incomplete statistics, from 2007 to 2010, they developed over 3,000 types of desserts, and the number of dishes is too numerous to count.
There is a fixed day each week designated as "Dish Development Day." The chefs work hard during their shifts and still need to do homework after work. On development day, several chefs gather together, each making a new dish. Everyone tastes and comments, selecting the good ones to be placed on the next week's menu. Thus, the employees' tables always have at least one or two new dishes every day. There are rumors outside that Google's menu doesn't repeat for twenty days, but Chef Supervisor Rongsheng Xue says "far from it," sometimes "the same dish will reappear after three or five months." "We almost put all our energy into dish development," Chef Xue added.
Rongsheng Xue communicates weekly via video conference with the headquarters in the U.S. and regional managers in the Asia-Pacific area about the canteen's recent situation. The secretary of the chef team uploads the menu in advance to the internal employee website Foodback (diet feedback) every day, sharing it with global Google chefs. They even use Google's social networking site Google+ to set up groups and discuss menu planning, development, and innovation online. Of course, any Google employee can post evaluations and feelings about each dish on the platform. Moreover, every year, Rongsheng Xue flies to Google's North American headquarters to attend the annual gathering of Google chefs.
This electronic communication assisted by the Internet fully demonstrates the unique personality of Google as an internet enterprise. "Traditional restaurants react slowly to customers' responses, often only when customers have strong demands, will feedback reach the kitchen," Chef Xue said. However, Google chefs prefer to decide employees' taste buds with imagination. "Chinese pastry chefs and Western pastry chefs work together, inventing tiramisu roll, overturning the traditional hard red bean filling of Chinese rolls. Our snail rolls use millet pancakes from Linyi, Shandong, and Guangdong's肠粉 paired with Japanese tempura, these dishes have been well-received by employees."
Science
Actually, if we say that Google engineers eat lavish meals every day, it's not entirely objective. Because their recipes undergo strict nutritional pairing, mainly using stewing and boiling, rarely frying or deep-frying. "Lobster and bird's nest, we don't eat often," Xue Rongsheng said. "Considering the safety of ingredients and balanced nutrition, the canteen has focused on developing home-style dishes in recent years."
Google collaboratively developed a dietary structure "Health Pyramid" with Harvard University, an exclusive nutritional secret recipe, with explanatory diagrams posted in the most visible location in the canteen. The pyramid is divided from top to bottom into red, yellow, and green levels. Green represents "can eat freely," yellow means "don't eat too much," and red tells employees that these foods "can occasionally be tried."
The global standard for Google kitchens is no monosodium glutamate and strict control over oil usage for cooking. "The amount of oil used to fry a dish outside is what Google uses to fry 30 dishes," Chef Xue said. "We advocate employees eating brown rice, soaking it in water for 20 hours beforehand, waiting until it physically reacts by sprouting before steaming it. This increases amino acid content geometrically while ensuring both texture and health."
In addition, every dish has its own label. "A star indicates cooking temperature below 48 degrees Celsius, two stars indicate above this temperature; for dishes with pork, we draw a little pig to alert Muslim employees; if alcohol is added, we add a 'wine glass' symbol; if milk is added, there's a 'bottle' sign; if oyster sauce or clams, shrimp are added, we draw a small crab so employees allergic to shellfish will be informed." Chef Xue explained.
The engineer culture is to explain problems with numbers. Google scientifically collects everyone's feedback, even whether a dish is salty or bland, analyzed through employee network voting ratios. "Don't assume engineers are shy; their desire to express will surprise you," Xue Rongsheng said. Share to: > Related reports: Google's company canteen provides small plates to help employees lose weight; former head chef of Google canteen's "secrets" revealed. Weibo recommendation | Sina Technology official Weibo account >> More