ST. LOUIS — I lost my appetite for stadium food when my path to the visitors clubhouse in Houston’s old Astrodome was once blocked by a rat the size of the Astros’ second baseman. Watching cats, employed by the club, prowling the field after the game hunting vermin didn’t make me any hungrier.
I once had a hot dog in Seattle’s Kingdome that had more chemicals than the antacid I had to take the rest of the night.
American baseball stadiums have traditionally been the back gutter of American cuisine. It’s a trough of bad brats, greasy burgers and nacho cheese that would clog the arteries of full-grown cattle.
But as new consumer-friendly stadiums pop up all over the American landscape, stadium menus are getting makeovers, as well. The ballpark frank is making room for Asian stir fry. Nachos are being sold right next to vegetarian quesadillas.
Stadiums are featuring dishes native to their city. Seattle’s Safeco Field now has Ivar’s grilled salmon sandwich, Rubio’s fish tacos are sold at Petco Park in San Diego, and Rick’s cheesesteak sandwiches can be had at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park.
Of course, you can’t go to Miller Park in Milwaukee without getting a brat, and you can smell up your hotel room and alienate friends with one trip to the garlic fries stand in San Francisco’s AT&T Park. Denver’s signature dish at Coors Field is the Rocky Mountain Oyster, an idea disgusting enough without knowing what the cowboys called them on the range in the Old West.
Swingin’ steaks.
Here in St. Louis during the Rockies’ rain-shortened season opener last week I had a veggie burger. Now, trying to sell veggie food in St. Louis seems about as bright as opening a Sizzler in Delhi. But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals actually designated St. Louis’ 2-year-old Busch Stadium as one of the five most vegetarian-friendly facilities in the country.
If you know baseball, you’ll know why. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is a vegetarian and huge PETA supporter. He and his wife, Elaine, founded the Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF — get it?) in 1991 after he rescued a terrified cat that ran onto the field during a Yankees-Athletics game. They’ve been finding homes for abused and abandoned cats and dogs ever since.
As a fellow animal lover, I bonded with La Russa when I covered baseball for five years. But when I approached him before the game he swore he had nothing to do with the PETA-friendly concession food.
“I didn’t sit in on the meetings,” La Russa said. “But I’m supportive of PETA. It’d be pretty embarrassing not to be.”
Turns out, it was the stadium’s food management, none of whom got any executive orders from any vegetarians up top.
“From my point, being vegan-friendly and health conscious go hand in hand,” said Jeramie Mitchell, Busch Stadium’s executive chef. “The majority of people come in for hot dogs, brats, nachos, and we have that, and we have a variety for everybody else. I don’t know if it was consciously planned but that’s where we ended up.”
Mitchell, 38, represents the new wave of stadium cooks. He graduated from Johnson & Wales’ culinary school in Charleston, S.C., cut his teeth at the high-end Bertolini’s in Indianapolis and then became the dining room chef for the four-star Renaissance hotel by the St. Louis airport.
Thirty years ago, stadiums hired whatever short-order cook got fired from Denny’s that week.
“When you were a kid growing up, stadium food just wasn’t that glamorous,” Mitchell said. “It wasn’t that good. It’s people cooking hot dogs early in the morning and putting them in a hot box and selling them that night. They’ve done that for a long time. In the last eight to 10 years it really started to evolve, but the stigma stuck with people.
“A lot of times I’ll walk around the concourse with a chef coat and hat, and people will say, ‘There’s a chef here?’ ”
I had never tried a veggie burger and can’t imagine why anyone would if a real hamburger was available. But if you’re a vegetarian, it isn’t bad. The texture was consistent. The color was brownish, like a burger done medium-well. The flavor? Picture real rare ground round with spices.
I could’ve also had the vegetarian quesadilla or the Asian stir fry, all made fresh while you wait. But during the monsoon rain delay, I tried the toasted cannelloni, a suitable representative of St. Louis’ Italian Hill neighborhood. It was so good, I brought it into the press box where it made a big hit with my fellow scribes.
Dig in to another baseball season, folks.
Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson @denverpost.com.
