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Swimmer Michael Phelps was reportedly consuming 10,000 calories a day in the run-up to his winning eight gold medals in Beijing last week.

A fair number of those calories probably came from the kitchen of Greensboro chef Matt Brown.

The 38-year-old Brown is one of about 230 Aramark food service managers who are working with 6,700 Chinese culinary students to feed the nearly 30,000 athletes and staff at the Olympic Games.

"We're fueling these athletes, and everything they're doing we're having a part in," he said in a telephone interview from Beijing last week. "That's something we're very proud of. The Olympics are going on and I'm one of the guys making it happen."

Brown, who typically serves as food service director for United Health Group's dining facilities for Aramark, has been in China since the beginning of July and will stay on until the end of September to work the upcoming Paralympic Games and to help disassemble the facilities afterwards. A native of western Pennsylvania, he came to Greensboro 18 years ago to work at UNCG's Dining Services. He and his wife Pam have two daughters.

The Olympic Village, where Brown works, serves as temporary quarters for the 204 national delegations taking part in the games as well as a haven from the fans and media - though Brown said even Olympians are in awe of the big stars among them, such as the NBA players on the Dream Team. For the most part, he said, the athletes are a friendly bunch.

"There was one American runner, Erin Donohue , who went to (UNC) Chapel Hill, and right before the opening ceremony myself and an Irish chef I was working with saw her in her USA outfit," he said. "So I yelled, 'Team USA, how are you doing?' And we kind of struck up a conversation. She was very down to Earth, very cordial."

Beijing is Brown's second Olympics. In 2004,

Aramark's corporate office sent out a memo to all its management teams seeking people to work at the games in Athens.

"It was a three-month commitment, and I thought it sounded pretty interesting," he said. "So I went through the interview process and was recommended by a couple of my superiors. And to be one of just a couple of hundred selected, I felt very fortunate. I feel very humbled."

Two other Triad residents are also working at the dining hall this Olympiad - Thomas Gray, food service director at Elon University, and Marcia Drake, food production manager at Alamance Regional Medical Center.

Aramark has provided food service at 14 Olympics, starting with Mexico City in 1968. According to a press release from the company, the Beijing operation represents their biggest effort.

The Olympic Village Dining Hall, which is open around the clock, is the size of three football fields and seats 6,000 at a time.

More than 130 tons of meat will be served during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, along with 232 tons of potatoes, 800,000 eggs, 1 million apples and 134,000 pounds of rice (about 20 million half-cup portions when cooked). Stations are set up to prepare halal dishes for Muslims and kosher foods for Jews.

Chefs work from a menu of more than 800 recipes that include traditional Asian cuisine, Mediterranean and pulled-pork barbecue. The menu is also heavy on carbs, and Aramark will go though about 38,000 pounds of pasta (dry weight) and 190,000 loaves of bread to energize the athletes.

One of Brown's main tasks has been to train the Chinese students how to cook Western-style foods.

"That's been one of the most fun parts for me, sharing with them all these different influences, whether they be Italian or Mexican or Cajun or Creole," he said. "It's a monumental task, but it's a rewarding one. And I don't care how good of a chef you are, you don't know everything. You can always learn from somebody. So it's kind of a nice recharge tool for us to learn from each other."

Brown said Chinese cooking in Beijing is far different from what Americans are used to seeing on the buffet tables in a typical stateside Chinese restaurant.

"It's not as sweet, not as many fried dishes, and you don't see a lot of those thick, syrupy sauces," he said. "On the whole, it's spicier. They use a lot of very fresh products.

"They have jasmine rice, which is kind of a fruity smelling rice. There are a lot of dishes with mushrooms, a lot of bamboo products. Lotus root is also a popular item. It looks almost like a sweet potato, but with a hollow, almost spongy center. It's a unique, turnip-like vegetable."

And though the dining hall doesn't serve too many foods of the type Andrew Zimmern (host of the Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods") might indulge in, the street markets have been eye openers, Brown said.

"They have some pretty bizarre things, like sea horses, grasshoppers, starfish, scorpions," he said.

"The scorpions aren't too bad. They marinate them in a Szechuan bean paste. They're kind of nutty."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com