硅谷員工餐廳中的珍饈美味

硅谷員工餐廳中的珍饈美味

為員工提供免費(fèi)而優(yōu)質(zhì)的一日三餐在硅谷公司中已經(jīng)成了司空見慣的事。在眾多科技公司之間，一場沒有硝煙的暗戰(zhàn)已經(jīng)打響。究竟誰才是員工餐廳界的美食之王？

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

sprout使發(fā)芽，長芽[spra?t]

risotto意大利燴飯 [r?'s??to?]

credo 信條['kri?d??]

garnish裝飾，裝飾品['ɡɑ?rn??]

scallop扇貝殼，扇形飾邊['skæl?p]

plaudits鼓掌，喝彩['pl??d?ts]

epicente震中，中心['ep?sent?(r)]

omelette煎蛋['?ml?]

How Silicon Valley brought haute cuisine to the office canteen（692 words）

By Leslie Hook

Standing in front of a cabinet at Dropbox, chef Brian Mattingly eyes the pork jowl inside. “We cure our own meats,” he explains. His kitchen also smokes its own salmon, makes its own ice-cream, bakes its own bread — and grows its own sunflower sprouts in a micro-grower. I sample one and it is crisp and delightful.

The lunch rush is approaching at the San Francisco-based software company, and Mattingly starts to sample the meals that will be served that day to more than 1,000 diners. “We have an ever-changing menu,” he explains, with a farro and bacon risotto in hand. “We never repeat a dish.”

With this ambitious credo, Mattingly has created a canteen known as one of the best in the tech world. Although he works in an office cafeteria, there is no ladling out of food on a tray here. Instead, each dish is fully plated and perfectly arranged. A cut of salmon is perched on a tower of panzanella salad with a watermelon garnish. On a sashimi plate, a head of shrimp arches over scallop and albacore tuna, decorated with red ginger and a bed of greens.

This elaborate cuisine is part of a secret rivalry among Silicon Valley tech companies — the fight for who has the tastiest meals. Dropbox has the best food at the moment, according to an informal survey of my tech friends, who say they invite themselves for lunch at its canteen whenever possible. The company's daily tea service and its coffee (roasted in-house, with a special blend named after Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston) have also received plaudits.

It's hard to pinpoint when exactly Silicon Valley became the epicentre for free gourmet food in the office, but most agree it began at Google. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hired their first full-time chef when the start-up still had fewer than 100 employees, partly because the sleepy town of Mountain View has limited food options.

Google has subsequently set the standard for free food in the tech world, where the battle to attract engineering talent has led to a sort of arms race for office perks — and three free meals a day is considered normal. As each kitchen tries to outdo the other, some have even taken to brewing their own beer (as is the case with Zynga, the games company). At Airbnb, the accommodation company, a typical breakfast includes fresh smoothies, omelettes and, on Mondays, chia seed pudding.

The ability to attract top culinary talent is a key reason tech canteens have become so delicious. Traditionally, there has been a stigma attached to working with cafeteria food, but this has changed (Silicon Valley-sized pay cheques have helped). Chef Nate Keller, who was an executive chef at Google for three years, admits that at first he turned up his nose at the company. “I was convinced I was going to be in a restaurant, and live that life of artistry and hard work,” he says. He credits his mother with changing his mind, and he took the job of Google sous-chef in 2003.

For chefs and kitchen staff, a huge benefit is the civilised working hours. While most restaurant workers have anti-social hours, canteen workers get evenings and weekends off.

At Dropbox, which has 38 chefs, more than one has worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant in the past. Mattingly cut his teeth at London's Le Gavroche in the 1980s, before becoming a culinary teacher in San Francisco, and then leading the food programmes at Google, then Apple. “You have to experience the restaurant life to appreciate this life,” he says. “You can't do it the other way around.”

However, for the restaurateurs of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, the emergence of the gourmet office cafeteria is less welcome. Not only do office canteens dramatically reduce the market for selling food to tech workers, they also make it difficult to retain staff. Restaurants struggle to compete with the pay and the hours offered by tech companies, whether for top chefs or dishwashers.

Silicon Valley may have reinvented the office canteen but, outside the tech company campuses, that development has come at a price.