This chef uses leftover Olympic food to feed homeless

Rio de Janeiro - The restaurant is feeding the homeless from food deemed inadequate for athletes.

An Italian chef is taking the vast amount of food not used at the Olympics Village and putting it to good use.
Distinguised Italian chef Massimo Bottura is running Refettorio Gastromotiva, a restaurant in downtown Rio de Janeiro, where for the past two weeks, Olympic ingredients have been served to those who are in the most desperate need of it, with 70 at each sitting.
The restaurant is feeding the homeless from food deemed inadequate for athletes. From Mexican chicken to plum sorbet, they're offering three-course meals for free. The task of delivering the three daily servings will continue until the Olympic Games are over.
Distinguised Italian chef Massimo Bottura is behind the initiative. He is hoping the restaurant will continue to run on donations after the Games are over.
"We receive a lot of meat, potatoes, tomotoes, beans, pasta. All this would have been thrown away just because they are slightly overripe. Brown bananas.but for us these are just perfect to make a sorbetto or an ice cream of banana with lime as we would not have to add sugar, so its very natural flavour and fruit," explains Bottura.
"This is a very cultural project and we want to make a statement about the games' sustainability by taking on one symbol of Olympic waste: the more than 230 tonnes of food supplied daily to prepare 60,000 meals for athletes, coach and staff.
The project has become so popular that everyday there is a long queue outside the restaurant.
"It is such a good feeling to see people leave happy and satisfied. There are so many people who are homeless and sleep on the streets and have become a regular customers here. What made my day was a statement from one such man, who while leaving the restaurant said to me: "Tonight you made me feel like a millionaire."
And do you know why? "We serve a four-course meal on beautifully done up dining room, nice and neat tables and chairs. Explaining that the ambience makes a great difference, Bottura said the interiors were done by architects who specially came from Sao Polo and did it all for free!
Every night a new menu is whipped up by a guest chef with the help of students enrolled in a vocational training programme. Together they're cooking 5,000 hearty meals per day.
After the Olympics leave town, the plan is for the Refettorio to become a normal restaurant at lunch and a soup kitchen in the evenings. The price of one lunch will cover the cost of a dinner for Rio's less fortunate, reports the website SunnySkyz.