The MLB Stadium Making the Best Food in Sports

[upbeat music]

At Citi Field, home of the New York Mets,

we are four-time champs of best stadium food.

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We still do the things that keep the lights on,

the hot dogs, the chicken tenders, the burgers.

Here you can get cool and unique items

such as the pastrami nacho or a crazy fun egg roll.

Our pastry chef is Michelin-starred.

We're doing a kimchi Reuben.

We've got Korean fried chicken.

We literally have something for everyone.

We have two sit-down restaurants on property.

We're up to five VIP club areas.

As senior executive chef, I oversee everything.

I happen to believe we have the best program

in all of sports and entertainment.

[upbeat music]

[train bell clinking]

Good morning.

Welcome to Citi Field.

It's 11:00 AM.

We're just waking up the beast.

We've got a lot to do.

Let's come on in.

[upbeat music]

So here we are in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda.

In a couple of hours,

this is where about 40,000 fans

will pile into the stadium.

As of right now,

we've got a little VIP lunch to take care of.

[upbeat music]

So welcome to the Delta Sky360 Club.

This is for our premier guests.

So anyone that you would see seating behind home plate

has access to this club.

So today's lunch is for the Mets front office staff.

They'll reach out to us,

and then we'll curate different menus

based off of what they want.

Do they want a working lunch?

Do they want something that's maybe handheld?

Are they going to sit down?

It's easier to sit at a high top like this,

but a lot easier to use a fork and knife

when you're sitting at a table and you're relaxing

and you're doing that.

So based on the different parts of the ballpark,

and then what we have available

is kind of how we'll curate the menu.

Here during a game,

we'll have anywhere from 400 to 600 fans in here.

They take part in ballpark station,

everything you love at a ballpark.

We're back here.

They're setting out all of the desserts.

Here they can choose their ice cream.

We get these cool branded ice cream,

so can't go wrong here.

They get their little Let's Go Mets chocolate or vanilla,

and then they can kind of top it with any of the toppings,

M&Ms, Oreos, marshmallows, whipped cream, cherries.

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So here is our sushi station.

We have a team of sushi chefs on property every game.

They'll be rolling here later on for the fans.

They actually also roll in our concession stands,

and they'll also roll in your suite.

This is our ballpark station.

Later on we'll have popcorn, we'll have pretzels,

we'll have a chafing dish here for our sliders.

Today for the lunch,

we've transitioned into some unique offerings.

Paul, who curated this whole menu,

actually just dropped off our Caprese burger.

It's got a lot of the flavors

that you would get in like a meatball.

And then here are our nachos.

So pita chips, pastrami, a caramelized onion in there,

caramelized sauerkraut, dill pickles,

a little bit of a Thousand Island drizzle,

and then the Swiss cheese fondue.

And this is a little bit of an insight into what we do,

where we take flavor profiles

and then serve them in completely unique and different ways.

Thank you!

All right, so lunch is looking good.

Everything's checked down.

It looks like we're ready to go.

Some of the guests are starting to arrive,

so now we'll go on to our next meeting of the day.

So when we talk about unique and different things,

you know, a lot of people say,

What do you guys do when there's no baseball?

In about three hours,

this place will be buzzing with 40,000 fans.

But for right now,

we've got people spraying the seats down,

cleaning the stadium,

and we've got some of the military guys out there

enjoying softball and going from there.

Let's head up and we'll go to our pre-shift

and make sure everything is good for the game.

[soft beat music]

So on our way to the meeting,

we'll check out a couple of the kitchens.

Here we have our visiting team clubhouse.

So right now we have the St. Louis Cardinals in-house.

Not a lot of people realize that here in this stadium,

we also cater to the visiting clubhouse,

and we help out a little bit

with the Mets Clubhouse as well

with different stuff

that they might want throughout the ballpark.

But we'll continue on down the hall.

You're going to see a lot of pallets lined up for deliveries

to go up to the concession stands.

You're going to see, you know,

bags of popcorn that we just popped downstairs.

A lot of employees coming in.

On property we have close to 150 different kitchens.

Some of them are large, some of them are small.

It's all serviced by this one kitchen right behind me.

It's what we call our commissary kitchen.

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In here, we have our bakery.

So we have everything set up for today's game

all here on these speed racks to go upstairs.

Everything that you would see over here on the board

is for the homestand.

So all of our different drops,

all of our different attendances

with all of our different clubs,

these guys supply all of the sweet treats

for the entire ballpark

out of this set of tables right here.

They're cracking away and no one's running around,

which is a good sign.

So it means we're on track and we're doing good.

So this is Julie.

She's our executive pastry chef here.

Pastry team consists of 16 people,

but as you can see,

everyone has a different project to do.

So we're all working simultaneously

starting from 5:00 AM is the earliest crew,

and my latest crew comes in at 2:00 PM.

So it's really a full day to make sure it's all done.

So each day there's different desserts

in all of the different clubs

because we are pastry people and we're creative,

and we like to constantly be doing new things.

So unique aspect of this kitchen

is we have all of the firepower to do savory.

You know, this is where we're making things

in hundred-pound batches.

We're bringing things in by the pallet.

Here they're heating up cheese sauce

to make mac and cheese.

But down the line they're doing a New York staple.

We do ketchup-braised onions here.

It's one of those hot dog cart items

that you got to have.

We fire all of our pastrami from the ovens down here.

We do all of our smoking in the big smoker back there

over in the corner.

Four o'clock, it's nothing but nonstop food

moving out of this kitchen and up into the ballpark.

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We're here on the fourth floor.

Our suites level, a left field,

third base at the Empire Club.

This is where we keep our ballpark items.

So we'll have hot dogs, we'll have our sauerkraut,

our ketchup-braised onion, our chicken tenders,

got our popcorn machine.

There's Cracker Jacks and peanuts

all throughout the club.

Up here is probably what I think

is one of the best seats in the house.

These ticket holders get something a little bit different.

We'll hawk a concessions item up here.

Hawking is when we're going to deliver the food

right to your seat.

You know all of those guys you see peanuts, popcorn,

Cracker Jacks, hot dogs screaming in the stadium.

It's something different every game.

The fan doesn't know that it's coming.

Could be anything from Shake Shack

to those egg rolls that everyone hears about.

So it's kind of that fun little, you know, pop-up,

if you will, within the club.

All right, so it looks like some of the chefs are arriving.

[soft instrumental music]

I have nine chefs de cuisine throughout the building

stationed in different areas.

We're going to go over our plan for the day

and the rest of the homestand.

All right guys, you know the deal.

Julie, what do you got going on?

Tomorrow we have a thousand people in bullpen,

as well as testing out the cupcakes and cookies

for the concert coming up.

Drew?

We got to get the meats ready tonight

for tomorrow morning for the thousand people

that Julie was just talking about.

It's just hot dogs and pretzels.

So this way

it takes some of the pressure off of us in the morning...

Yeah.

[Drew] So we could get the clubs out.

That's pretty much it.

On top of it being the quick turnaround tomorrow,

we'll also have a heat wave, right?

So make sure these guys are hydrating early today, right?

Because if they don't, then it's too late.

The humidity is going to be crazy.

That means the bread.

So Lou,

make sure your guys are keeping an eye on the bread.

Let's have a good game and it's going to be busy.

So that's all I got.

[Speaker] Let's go next.

[Jason chuckles]

We've got a little bit of downtime now,

and then we'll be back at it for the safety meeting.

Now we're going to check out our Cadillac Club.

All right, so earlier I talked about

there being a different vibe

in different parts of the club.

This is our Cadillac Club.

So it has a little bit of that speakeasy,

kind of cigar lounge type of feel.

This isn't generally the way to get in,

but it's kind of a cool little back-scene tour.

Most fans are entering from the outside.

They have direct access through this door

to come right in.

So fans will come in, they'll come through the door,

they'll enjoy a cocktail.

And of course, say the magic words: Let's go Mets.

We'll hit the button, the door opens,

and then we have access into the ballgame.

So we'll go up

and we'll check out the rest of the club.

[soft instrumental music]

Welcome to the Cadillac Club.

You're literally right on right field.

So a guest can take their seat here.

The cupholders actually ice over

to keep your beverages cold down here.

I can't tell you

how many times a baseball has flown in here.

There is a little gap

in the top of the ceiling out there.

So as a baseball hits the netting,

it kind of rolls down and drops right on your lap.

When it comes to the food,

you know, a lot of different handheld foods,

there's always a salad.

We have hot dogs down here.

There's going to be three featured items as well,

not so much a carving station.

This is almost like that cocktail cool vibe.

All of our clubs are outfitted with induction.

So everything we have here,

what we call in the chef world as bottom heat.

Top heat, depending on what food we have,

is what heat we're going to use.

We want to leave it open to both.

So we've got a little safety meeting

that we do about once a month.

We're gonna pop up there.

We're gonna address the staff.

So let's take a trip upstairs.

[upbeat music]

All right, so we're on our way to the safety meeting,

but real quick,

a cool little spot that no one ever sees about

is the bullpen access here at the stadium.

So here's where our pitchers would warm up

and hopefully come in to save the game.

So we're going to head this way to the safety meeting.

[soft beat music]

I want to thank you guys for coming

to this month's safety meeting.

It's going to start to be hot, even hotter.

So I want to make sure

that you guys are all staying hydrated.

The humidity over the next couple days

is going to be high.

High humidity means that things that we produce

are going to go moldy a lot faster.

So we all know the bread, the fruits,

all of that that are out,

please let's make sure we're keeping an eye on those.

We're looking at everything we're serving

before we open the gates.

All right, so safety meeting's over.

We're going to start checking the ballpark

and get the game started.

[bright music]

Right here on the right-hand side,

you'll see the locker room.

So we're going to go down

and we're going to check out the cold push now.

We're going to start pushing out cold food

into our different luxury suites,

and we'll see where they are

with their cold food delivery.

Gates here at the stadium are 5:40 today.

So 5:40 is when we start to do hot push in the stadium

in order to get everyone their hot food.

[food sizzling]

Cold push, we would start an hour before that,

and that's just to get all of the beverages,

all of the fridges stocked,

and then all of the cold food

into the different areas.

[cream squeaking]

So this is Chris.

He's one of our suite runners.

He's going to pick up Suite 225 today,

and we're going to deliver it.

We have up to roughly around 55 luxury suites

on the second floor.

So we'll do this for all of our suites.

Not only do we do things like crudité and fruit

and the normal things that you would find anywhere,

he just pulled out the lobster rolls.

We're also giving truffle and caviar experiences,

champagne.

We'll do almost like your tableside guacamole experience

in the suite.

We'll pull up with a cannoli cart

where we'll fill cannolis with all different flavorings

and garnishes all within the suite.

[soft beat music]

We'll pop into commissary just to ask,

like, all good, everything good.

If you remember earlier,

we were kind of full of speed racks and everything.

Now the speed racks have started to empty out.

But right now you hear a lot more of the hustle-bustle.

This kitchen is a lot busier than what we saw.

We're starting to produce all of our small cookies

for Walk Off Cafe for our warm cookie buckets.

It looks like they're cutting strawberries

at the end of the table

for our chocolate-covered strawberries

located up on the fifth floor in the candy shop.

Once we get this far into production,

this is a good roadmap.

It's going to let us know where we're going,

but the ship is already moving.

So a lot of it is, okay,

how are we not going to fall behind for tomorrow?

How are we going to keep up, keep going,

and get stuff prepped out for the next day?

These guys have a pretty good 81-game plan

where they've got the entire season laid out.

A lot of our clubs go off of a 21- to 28-game rotation.

So a club member's only going to see the same menu

three, maybe four times in the season.

It's kind of a machine, and it just keeps going.

We just got to make sure we keep feeding the machine.

[upbeat music]

We're going to head up to the restaurant

and make sure everything up there is going good.

This is the steakhouse here at the stadium.

So it's our fine-dining steakhouse.

Third base is probably located

right through the wall over there.

This is Shannon.

Every day we kind of go over reservations,

different VIPs, stuff like that.

We got 43 reservations tonight,

one large party coming in right at game time,

and then a couple special birthday dinners.

Awesome.

Should be a pretty chill night here at the Chop House,

an area that not many people know about.

If you come back here, we'll play the Cardinals tonight.

You can actually see the Cardinals down here right now

taking batting practice within their locker room.

So kind of a very cool, unique way

to take in the ballpark experience.

Fine-dining steakhouse overseeing the guys downstairs.

They obviously can see us up here.

It's why they're all looking at us.

Kind of cool when you start walking past the TVs now,

you can see the fans start to line up.

You can start to judge how busy we're going to be,

how hard gates are going to be.

On this side of this club,

we'd like to keep it a little bit more concession-based,

although it does look like just another concession stand.

This is actually all of our premium areas

within the entire ballpark located in one spot

so that those guests can get up here,

get some air conditioning, maybe get a really nice dessert,

get something really nice

that could be located out in center field,

and get back to their seat

in a relatively quick amount of time.

[cookware clatters]

They're starting to put food up now.

We have our chopped cheese here.

We also have our pastrami sandwich.

We have the fried pickles.

We have the shaved pork sandwich.

We have the LaFrieda steak sandwich.

All of these different offerings all located at one area

when generally one stand would just offer one of these.

So here we kind of roll it all up into one.

We'll come around here.

We'll pop over and we'll check out the desserts.

Can't go wrong with our Mets-themed stuff.

So Mets cupcakes, rainbow cookies,

a huge thing in New York.

We make our own marshmallows.

So chocolate-covered marshmallows, jumbo cannolis,

Oreo dip cheesecake, carrot cake,

our Mr. Met whoopie pie, more Mets donuts.

Everyone knows we hit a home run.

The apple comes up in center field.

It's kind of that cool iconic thing.

We took the apple or the idea of the apple

and then melded it with a candy apple,

and now we have the home run candy apple.

Definitely something unique,

something iconic to the ballpark.

All right, so we've checked out the clover level.

Looks like everything's here.

Gates are starting to open, fans are starting to arrive.

We've been all over the stadium.

I'm going to head back in.

It was great spending the day with you.

You guys have a great day.

Let's go Mets.

[upbeat music]