MICE SUPPLEMENT: How to Feed 32,000 Hungry Fans

By Misty Sloane

Every October, the Shanghai Rolex Masters tournament comes to Shanghai, bringing with it the biggest names in men’s tennis. Thousands of fans descend on the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena to cheer on their favourites. It’s Chef Emmanuel Soliere’s job to make sure that no one leaves hungry.

Chef Emmanuel Soliere was not yet at the Hilton Shanghai when the tennis tournament first arrived. In 2003, the outside catering operation was run by his predecessor who outsourced the job, basically serving airplane food at the Heineken Open, as the tournament was originally known. But the next year when Soliere accepted the position of executive chef at the hotel, he knew he could handle the job. Now, seven years later, Hilton Shanghai is still the caterer of choice for the tournament.

It’s no easy task, feeding 32,000 people over the course of a week. Add to that the pressure of cooking for professional athletes, event sponsors and VIPs, but Soliere has the situation under control.
“I have an excel sheet with everything I need on it – transportation, cutlery, food, staff, even the flowers. But now it’s almost like a copy paste job from last year,” he says. “When we first started, they gave me a blank piece of paper and said ‘Chef, we need 1,000 people to eat here. We’ll build everything for you, just tell me what you need.’”

Back then he catered the event out of a small tent on-site. The tent grew, then became an indoor space until this year when he’ll finally have an on-site kitchen. Still most of the prep work happens at the hotel before the food is transported over to the stadium and divvied up by section, from the carb-heavy menu in the players’ lounge to the sophisticated buffets in the sponsors’ rooms to the hot dogs and noodles for the spectators.

Surprisingly, he considers the players’ menus to be the easiest of the lot. Since the athletes are on the road so much, he strives to provide them with a taste of home, but stays flexible to best suit their needs. This year, he found a supplier for gluten-free bread and pasta, an essential part of the menu with Novak Djokovic back at the tournament. The Serbian tennis player attributes the hot streak that has landed him at the top of the rankings this year to his new gluten-free diet.

“I tell my staff, ‘Give them whatever they ask for – whether they’re ranked number one or number 100,” he says.

The planning for such an elaborate event begins as soon as the curtain drops. Last year, the chef locked himself in his office for two weeks after the tournament, trying to recall who liked what and what worked well, emerging with new menus in hand for the next year’s event. “That’s when my white hair starts springing up!” the chef laughs.

Once the menu is set, then it’s time to find chefs – the number of kitchen employees doubles for the week of the tournament every year from 150 to 300 heads – and wait staff. Suppliers line up at the door, eager to get a slice of the action.

Finding skilled workers is an essential part of the choreography of the event that has been compared to a small-scale military operation, so Soliere looks within the brand, sending a call out to Hilton hotels around China asking for cooks and waiters. The work is 24-7 for a week, with some locally-based chefs coming in after their regular shifts at their day job to prep for the next day’s meals during the night shift. The hardest part, Soliere jokes, is finding some time to sleep.

He touches wood when noting there have been no major disasters. “Safety is one of my biggest priorities. The government has two guys at the hotel and four guys at the stadium checking everything we’re serving,” he says. “Before I was serving sushi in the players’ lounge, but the organiser asked us to stop. It was very popular, but the organisers were scared someone would get sick, which is unfortunate, but that’s just the perception people have of sushi.”

With the support of his executive sous chef and banquet chef, Soliere has enough free time to play the front of the house, mingling with sponsors and getting feedback from the diners themselves. Every year, the event hosts a guest chef to help out. This year Chef Kim Canteenwalla from Las Vegas will be on hand to help present the Healthy Options Menu. The chef behind the acclaimed Society Café at Encore, the new Wynn resort in Sin City, Canteenwalla has big Michelin-starred shoes to fill.

Among the players, the reputation for food at the Shanghai Masters is formidable. Last year, the tournament won the ‘2009 ATP Masters 1000 Tournament of the Year’ award and was voted by the players as ‘Best of the Best’ out of the nine tournaments in the ATP series. While many factors went into the awarding of the title, the players noted that the food was one of their favourite parts – a sweet reward to Soliere’s year of hard work. Well, that and a closet with six chef's jackets signed by the best tennis players in the world.