- 5 weeks ago
Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Jason Eksterowicz of Citi Field, home of the New York Mets and America's best stadium food. From pastrami nachos, Korean fried chicken, and a Michelin-starred pastry chef, see how an award-winning MLB food operation comes together before first pitch to feed more than 40,000 baseball fans.Major League Baseball footage and trademarks used with permission of Major League Baseball. All rights reserved.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00At Citi Field, home of the New York Mets,
00:02we are four-time champs of best stadium food.
00:07We still do the things that keep the lights on,
00:10the hot dogs, the chicken tenders, the burgers.
00:12Here, you can get cool and unique items,
00:14such as the pastrami nacho or a crazy fun egg roll.
00:19Our pastry chef is Michelin-starred.
00:22We're doing a kimchi Reuben.
00:23We've got Korean fried chicken.
00:25We literally have something for everyone.
00:28We have two sit-down restaurants on property.
00:32We're up to five VIP club areas.
00:34As senior executive chef, I oversee everything.
00:37I happen to believe we have the best program
00:40in all of sports and entertainment.
00:48Good morning. Welcome to Citi Field.
00:50It's 11 a.m. We're just waking up the beast.
00:53We've got a lot to do. Let's come on in.
00:56So here we are in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda in a couple of hours.
01:00This is where about 40,000 fans will pile into the stadium.
01:03As of right now, we've got a little VIP lunch to take care of.
01:08So welcome to the Delta Sky 360 Club.
01:12This is for our premier guests.
01:14So anyone that you would see sitting behind home plate
01:17has access to this club.
01:19So today's lunch is for the Mets front office staff.
01:22They'll reach out to us and then we'll curate different menus
01:25based off of what they want.
01:27Do they want a working lunch?
01:28Do they want something that's maybe handheld?
01:30Are they going to sit down?
01:31It's easier to sit at a high top like this,
01:34but a lot easier to use a fork and knife when you're sitting
01:37at a table and you're relaxing and you're doing that.
01:39So based on the different parts of the ballpark,
01:41and then what we have available is kind of how we'll curate the menu.
01:45Here during a game, we'll have anywhere from 400 to 600 fans in here.
01:51They take part in ballpark station.
01:53Everything you love at a ballpark.
01:55Back here, they're setting out all of the desserts.
01:58Here they can choose their ice cream.
02:00We get these cool branded ice cream.
02:02So can't go wrong here.
02:03They get their little let's go Mets chocolate or vanilla,
02:07and then they can kind of top it with any of the toppings,
02:11M&Ms, Oreos, marshmallows, whipped cream, cherries.
02:15So here is our sushi station.
02:19We have a team of sushi chefs on property.
02:23Every game, they'll be rolling here later on for the fans.
02:27They actually also roll in our concession stands
02:29and they'll also roll in your suite.
02:32This is our ballpark station.
02:33Later on, we'll have popcorn.
02:35We'll have pretzels.
02:36We'll have a chafing dish here for our sliders.
02:39Today for the lunch, we've transitioned into some unique offerings.
02:43Paul, who curated this whole menu,
02:45actually just dropped off our Caprese burger.
02:48It's got a lot of the flavors that you would get in like a meatball.
02:51And then here are our nachos.
02:53So pita chips, pastrami, caramelized onion in there,
02:56caramelized sauerkraut, dill pickles,
02:59a little bit of a Thousand Island drizzle,
03:01and then the Swiss cheese fondue.
03:02And this is a little bit of an insight into what we do,
03:06where we take flavor profiles and then serve them in completely unique and different ways.
03:13All right. So lunch is looking good.
03:15Everything's checked down.
03:16It looks like we're ready to go.
03:17Some of the guests are starting to arrive.
03:18So now we'll go on to our next meeting of the day.
03:22So when we talk about unique and different things,
03:25you know, a lot of people say,
03:26what do you guys do when there's no baseball?
03:28In about three hours,
03:30this place will be buzzing with 40,000 fans.
03:33But for right now, we've got people spraying the seats down,
03:36cleaning the stadium,
03:37and we've got some of the military guys out there enjoying softball and going from there.
03:43Let's head up and we'll go to our pre-shift and make sure everything is good for the game.
03:50So on our way to the meeting, we'll check out a couple of the kitchens.
03:53Here we have our visiting team clubhouse.
03:55So right now we have the St. Louis Cardinals in-house.
03:59Not a lot of people realize that here in this stadium,
04:02we also cater to the visiting clubhouse.
04:05And we help out a little bit with the Mets clubhouse as well,
04:08with different stuff that they might want throughout the ballpark.
04:10But we'll continue on down the hall.
04:12You're going to see a lot of pallets lined up for deliveries to go up to the concession stands.
04:16You're going to see, you know, bags of popcorn that we just popped downstairs.
04:20A lot of employees coming in.
04:22On property, we have close to 150 different kitchens.
04:26Some of them are large, some of them are small.
04:28It's all serviced by this one kitchen right behind me.
04:31It's what we call our commissary kitchen.
04:34In here, we have our bakery.
04:36So we have everything set up for today's game.
04:39All here on these speed racks to go upstairs.
04:42Everything that you would see over here on the board is for the homestand.
04:46So all of our different drops, all of our different attendances with all of our different clubs.
04:51These guys supply all of the sweet treats for the entire ballpark out of this set of tables right here.
04:58They're cracking away and no one's running around, which is a good sign.
05:01So it means we're on track and we're doing good.
05:04So this is Julie. She's our executive pastry chef here.
05:07The pastry team consists of 16 people.
05:10But as you can see, everyone has a different project to do.
05:13So we're all working simultaneously starting from 5 a.m. is the earliest crew.
05:18And my latest crew comes in at 2 p.m.
05:20So it's really a full day to make sure it's all done.
05:23So each day there's different desserts in all of the different clubs because we are pastry people and we're creative
05:29and we like to constantly be doing new things.
05:31So unique aspect of this kitchen is we have all of the firepower to do savory.
05:37You know, this is where we're making things in hundred pound batches.
05:40We're bringing things in by the palette here.
05:43They're heating up cheese sauce to make mac and cheese.
05:46Down the line, they're doing a New York staple.
05:49We do ketchup braised onions here.
05:51It's one of those hot dog cart items that you got to have.
05:55We fire all of our pastrami from the ovens down here.
05:58We do all of our smoking in the big smoker back there over in the corner.
06:03Four o'clock, it's nothing but non-stop food moving out of this kitchen and up into the ballpark.
06:14We're here on the fourth floor, our suites level, a left field, third base at the Empire Club.
06:20This is where we keep our ballpark items.
06:22So we'll have hot dogs, we'll have our sauerkraut, our ketchup braised onion, our chicken tenders.
06:27We've got our popcorn machine.
06:29There's Cracker Jacks and peanuts all throughout the club.
06:32Up here is probably what I think is one of the best seats in the house.
06:36These ticket holders get something a little bit different.
06:39We'll hawk a concessions item up here.
06:42Hawking is when we're going to deliver the food right to your seat.
06:45You know, all of those guys, you see peanuts, popcorn, Cracker Jacks, hot dogs screaming in the stadium.
06:50It's something different every game.
06:51The fan doesn't know that it's coming.
06:54Could be anything from Shake Shack to those egg rolls that everyone hears about.
06:58So it's kind of that fun little, you know, pop up, if you will, within the club.
07:03All right, so it looks like some of the chefs are arriving.
07:06I have nine chef de cuisines throughout the building, stationed in different areas.
07:12We're going to go over our plan for the day and the rest of the homestand.
07:15All right, guys, you know the deal.
07:17Julie, what do you got going on?
07:18Tomorrow we have a thousand people in bullpen as well as testing out the cupcakes and cookies for the concert
07:26coming up.
07:27Drew?
07:28We got to get the meats ready tonight for tomorrow morning for the thousand people that Julie was just talking
07:33about.
07:33It's just hot dogs and pretzels.
07:35This way it takes some of the pressure off of us in the morning so we can get the clubs
07:39out.
07:39That's pretty much it.
07:40On top of it being the quick turnaround tomorrow, we'll also have a heat wave, right?
07:45So make sure these guys are hydrating early today, right?
07:48Because if they don't, then it's too late.
07:51The humidity is going to be crazy.
07:54That means the bread.
07:55So Lou, make sure your guys are keeping an eye on the bread.
07:58Let's have a good game and it's going to be busy.
08:01So that's all I got.
08:03Let's go next.
08:05We've got a little bit of downtime now and then we'll be back at it for the safety meeting.
08:10Now we're going to check out our Cadillac club.
08:12All right.
08:13So earlier I talked about there being a different vibe in different parts of the club.
08:17This is our Cadillac club.
08:18So it has a little bit of that speakeasy kind of cigar lounge type of feel.
08:24This isn't generally the way to get in, but it's kind of a cool little back scene tour.
08:28Most fans are entering from the outside.
08:31They have direct access through this door to come right in.
08:34So fans will come in.
08:35They'll come through the door.
08:36They'll enjoy a cocktail.
08:37And of course, say the magic words.
08:39Let's go Mets.
08:40We'll hit the button.
08:42The door opens and then we have access into the ball game.
08:46So we'll go up and we'll check out the rest of the club.
08:50Welcome to the Cadillac club.
08:52You're literally right on right field.
08:55So a guest can take their seat here.
08:58The cup holders actually ice over to keep your beverages cold down here.
09:03I can't tell you how many times a baseball has flown in here.
09:06There is a little gap in the top of the ceiling out there.
09:09So as a baseball hits the netting, it kind of rolls down and drops right on your lap.
09:14When it comes to the food, you know, a lot of different handheld foods.
09:18There's always a salad.
09:19We have hot dogs down here.
09:21There's going to be three featured items as well.
09:24Not so much a carving station.
09:26This is almost like that cocktail cool vibe.
09:29All of our clubs are outfitted with induction.
09:33So everything we have here, what we call in the chef world as bottom heat, top heat.
09:37Depending on what food we have is what heat we're going to use.
09:40We want to leave it open to both.
09:42So we've got a little safety meeting that we do about once a month.
09:45We're going to pop up there.
09:46We're going to address the staff.
09:48So let's take a trip upstairs.
09:56All right, so we're on our way to the safety meeting.
09:58But real quick, a cool little spot that no one ever sees about is the bullpen access here at the
10:04stadium.
10:05So here's where our pitchers would warm up and hopefully come in to save the game.
10:10So we're going to head this way to the safety meeting.
10:14I want to thank you guys for coming to this month's safety meeting.
10:18It's going to start to be hot, even hotter.
10:20So I want to make sure that you guys are all staying hydrated.
10:24The humidity over the next couple of days is going to be high.
10:27High humidity means that things that we produce are going to go moldy a lot faster.
10:34So we all know the bread, the fruits, all of that that are out.
10:38So please, let's make sure we're keeping an eye on those.
10:42We're looking at everything we're serving before we open the gates.
10:47All right, so safety meeting's over.
10:49We're going to start checking the ballpark and get the game started.
10:57Right here on the right hand side, you'll see the locker room.
11:01So we're going to go down and we're going to check out the cold push now.
11:03We're going to start pushing out cold food into our different luxury suites
11:07and we'll see where they are with their cold food delivery.
11:10Gates here at the stadium are 540 today.
11:15So 540 is when we start to do hot push in the stadium in order to get everyone their hot
11:21food.
11:22Cold push, we would start an hour before that.
11:25And that's just to get all of the beverages, all of the fridges stocked,
11:29and then all of the cold food into the different areas.
11:33So this is Chris. He's one of our suite runners.
11:35He's going to pick up suite 225 today and we're going to deliver it.
11:39We have up to roughly around 55 luxury suites on the second floor.
11:46So we'll do this for all of our suites.
11:48Not only do we do things like crudités and fruit and the normal things that you would find anywhere,
11:55he just pulled out the lobster rolls.
11:57We're also giving truffle and caviar experiences, champagne.
12:01We'll do almost like your table side guacamole experience in the suite.
12:05We'll pull up with a cannoli cart where we'll fill cannolis with all different flavorings and garnishes all within the
12:12suite.
12:13We'll pop into commissary just to ask like all good, everything good.
12:18If you remember earlier, we were kind of full of speed racks and everything.
12:22Now the speed racks have started to empty out.
12:25But right now you hear a lot more of the hustle bustle.
12:27This kitchen is a lot busier than what we saw.
12:31We're starting to produce all of our small cookies for walk-off cafe for our warm cookie buckets.
12:37It looks like they're cutting strawberries at the end of the table for our chocolate covered strawberries located up on
12:44the fifth floor in the candy shop.
12:46Once we get this far into production, this is a good roadmap.
12:49It's going to let us know where we're going, but the ship is already moving.
12:53So a lot of it is, okay, how are we not going to fall behind for tomorrow?
12:57How are we going to keep up, keep going and get stuff prepped out for the next day?
13:01These guys have a pretty good 81 game plan where they've got the entire season laid out.
13:07A lot of our clubs go off of a 21 to 28 game rotation.
13:11So a club members only going to see the same menu three, maybe four times in the seasons.
13:18It's kind of a machine and it just keeps going.
13:21We just got to make sure we keep feeding the machine.
13:24We're going to head up to the restaurant and make sure everything up there is going good.
13:28This is the steakhouse here at the stadium.
13:31So it's our fine dining steakhouse.
13:33Third base is probably located right through the wall over there.
13:36This is Shannon.
13:37Every day we kind of go over reservations, different VIPs, stuff like that.
13:43We got 43 reservations tonight.
13:45One large party coming in right at game time.
13:47And then a couple special birthday dinners.
13:50Awesome.
13:51Should be a pretty chill night here at the chop house.
13:53An area that not many people know about.
13:55If you come back here, we'll play the Cardinals tonight.
13:58You can actually see the Cardinals down here right now taking batting practice within their locker room.
14:05So kind of a very cool, unique way to take in the ballpark experience.
14:09Fine dining steakhouse overseeing the guys downstairs.
14:12They obviously can see us up here.
14:14It's why they're all looking at us.
14:16Kind of cool when you start walking past the TVs.
14:18Now you can see the fans start to line up.
14:20You can start to judge how busy we're going to be.
14:23How hard gates are going to be.
14:25On this side of this club, we'd like to keep it a little bit more concessions based.
14:29Although it does look like just another concession stand.
14:32This is actually all of our premium areas within the entire ballpark located in one spot.
14:37So that those guests can get up here, get some air conditioning, maybe get a really nice dessert.
14:42Get something really nice that could be located out in center field and get back to their seat in a
14:47relatively quick amount of time.
14:50They're starting to put food up now.
14:52We have our chopped cheese here.
14:55We also have our pastrami sandwich.
14:58We have the fried pickles.
14:59We have the shaved pork sandwich.
15:01We have the La Frida steak sandwich.
15:04All of these different offerings all located at one area.
15:07When generally one stand would just offer one of these.
15:11So here we kind of roll it all up into one.
15:13We'll come around here.
15:15We'll pop over and we'll check out the desserts.
15:17Can't go wrong with our Mets themed stuff.
15:19So Mets cupcakes, rainbow cookies, a huge thing in New York.
15:23We make our own marshmallows.
15:25So chocolate covered marshmallows, jumbo cannolis, Oreo dip cheesecake, carrot cake, our Mr. Met whoopie pie, more Mets donuts.
15:34Everyone knows we hit a home run.
15:37The apple comes up in center field.
15:39It's kind of that cool, iconic thing.
15:41We took the apple or the idea of the apple and then melded it with a candy apple.
15:46And now we have the home run candy apple.
15:49Definitely something unique, something iconic to the ballpark.
15:52All right. So we've checked out the clover level.
15:54Looks like everything's here.
15:55Gates have started to open.
15:57Fans are starting to arrive.
15:58We've been all over the stadium.
15:59I'm going to head back in.
16:01It was great spending the day with you.
16:02You guys have a great day.
16:03Let's go Mets.
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