The Rules
... were simple: Nexedi was to supply crépes with every
team having to add their respective national flavors. To prevent preparation
we announced the competition on Friday morning and asked every nation that
fielded a team to scour the supermarket for exotic
ingredients during lunch. After work we'd switch from chromebook to electric crêpes machine and
would make enough crêpes so everyone who dared could try all variations.
The winner would then be announced by democratic decision.
Les Bleus
Excusing themselves as not being eligible as host nation (and unofficially afraid
of what we'd make of a French tradition), our local colleagues quickly
took over the crêpes machine to allow all teams to concentrate on their contributions.
Just what was needed to get the competition going.
Team China
Our Chinese team came back with a glass containing what looked like chocolate powder.
Little did we knew, it was actually
Rousong or "meat-wool", which - combined with the obligatory mix
of spicy sauces - would make for quite a tasty start.
Team Germany
Trying to also cater to our vegetarian colleagues Team Germany
went out of its traditional way of wrapping crêpes around sausages instead opting
for a more improv Sauerkraut & Sweet Mustard pâté and optional "Weißbier" on the side.
Needless to say that only after trying the result themselves the other teams gave
the German entry a taste.
Team India
Team India didn't disappoint either and came back with steaks from the supermarket -
soj steaks - as expected from a vegetarian team. Adding indian
spices and some mayonnaise for good measure made a long way to
turning this into a burger competition - and our French colleagues raising the
first eyebrows.
Team Canada
Considering the amount of things Team Canada brought back from the supermarket
we surely were in for a treat of the nutritious kind. Using the sparse equipment
of our office kitchen corner to its limits, the Canadiens somehow managed to cook up two
competition entries - "Crêpes French Fries, Cheddar Cheese & Gravy"
going along with "Crêpes Maccaroni-Hot Dog" - no syrup needed.
Team Japan
Finally Team Japan single-handedly took care of dessert submitting two more entries
into our competition. Both "Crêpes Adzuki" and "
Crêpes
Kinako" where hard to come by as they both happened to be quite tasteful and a worthy finish to our competition.
The Awards
After a fun-filled two hours deciding on a winner proved to be difficult. For us
it was nice to see that our Nexedians from all over the world could
"cook up" quite innovative and diverse solutions on demand
- just like when developing. Still a winner had to be decided on and going by the
number of categories won, Team Canada was eventually crowned the overall winner
taking home the awards for "Most Calories in a Crêpes", "Made the Microwave Dance"
and "Most Improvised Cooking Display". Chapeau!