Korean boxed meals for lunch and dinner are a big hit
Customized dishes with ingredients similar to those at home
A variety of holiday dishes ‘anticipated’ for the Lunar New Year break

Figure skating men’s singles ace Cha Jun-Hwan (Seoul City Hall) spoke about his satisfying life in the Athletes Village and specifically mentioned the national team’s lunchboxes. He said, “I am really enjoying the Korean lunchboxes delivered for lunch and dinner.” Short-track star Choi Min-Jeong (Seongnam City Hall), a devotee of Korean food, also recalled the braised short ribs lunchbox, saying, “Before competitions I tend to lose a lot of weight, but eating well helps me maintain my weight, which is good.”

The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee opened, for the first time ever, a Meal Support Center at the 2026 Milan·Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Olympics. It is a special support project with a budget of $1,650,000 (2,200,000,000 KRW). The delegation receives Korean lunchboxes twice a day, at lunch and dinner. They are very popular.

To ensure that no athlete across six sports and 12 disciplines is left out, the Meal Support Center supplies Korean lunchboxes to three clusters: Milan, Cortina d'Ampezzo, and Livigno. In Milan alone, they prepare 45 lunchboxes per meal. In Cortina and Livigno, 25 are sent out each.

By the closing day of the Games, the Meal Support Center will have prepared about 3,500 lunchboxes for the athletes. A total of 35 people are assigned across the three Meal Support Centers, including 21 kitchen staff.

Jo Eun-Young, a nutritionist from the Jincheon Training Center supporting the athletes’ ‘rice power’ in Milan, said, “We want to help them overcome sources of anxiety such as jet lag through food and to cheer them on. We came to root for them with rice,” adding, “As you would expect, the athletes like meat side dishes the most, such as braised short ribs or spicy pork stir-fry.”

To serve top-quality Korean food to the athletes, they had to establish base camps in each area with kitchens optimized for Korean cuisine. They also had to source ingredients as similar as possible to those at home to reproduce Korean flavors. From securing rentals for locations, which can take two to three years, to procuring hard-to-find ingredients and navigating customs, to selecting menus, preparations for the large-scale project took nearly a year.

They even prepared self-heating lunchboxes so athletes could eat warm meals. Jo said, “Because ice and snow sport athletes train outdoors in the cold, we made it possible to reheat even cooled food with heat packs.” Once roughly three hours of cooking is done, the meals are packed into the self-heating containers and delivered to the Athletes Village. Tailored requests are reflected as well, such as the figure skating team asking for smaller portions and the bobsleigh team asking for larger ones. Lunchboxes leave each Meal Support Center at 11:30 a.m., and dinners at 4:30 p.m., and they reach the athletes within 30 minutes.

This Olympic period includes the Lunar New Year holidays. Special menus are also planned for athletes working hard far from home. Jo previewed the New Year’s menu, saying, “Since we will be spending the holiday in Europe, we plan to prepare holiday dishes such as ox bone soup, bulgogi, and various types of jeon including skewered meat.”