He Comes With
By inviting our little one with us into the experiential deep end, we have cultivated an attitude in him unphased by the hustle and bustle of a busy service, and a curiosity for what it yields. We’ve ...
Sports Food Is Its Own Unique Cuisine
For the Love of the Game
For the spectator, the food associated with watching sports is so much more than sustenance.
If the question were to be asked: “What is the opposite of an athlete?” I feel like “food writer” might be a fair response. The former’s professional obligation is to reach peak physical condition, so they can perform superhuman feats in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans. My own professional obligation is to remain inert for long periods of time so I can detail the activities that make me a fatter person.
In fact, as I write this I can envision a freshly 21-year-old Juan Soto waking up in a hotel room in Houston, quite possibly enjoying his first legal hangover after helping the Washington Nationals win game seven of the World Series. Now at the age of 34, I have zero World Series rings and it’s probably time I admit to myself that my window to enter the realm of professional sports is closing quickly. So what do Soto and I have in common, other than a hangover? A trenchant love of baseball.
At the tender age of ten I participated in little league in Glendale, Wisconsin and put on an absolute clinic of how not to play sports. My inability to participate notwithstanding, I still found myself drawn mysteriously and inextricably to the game. I couldn’t play to save my life and as great as Cal Eldred was (15.8 career WAR for the heads out there) he couldn’t have possibly been the sole spark that ignited my love of baseball’s slow burn. When I consider what it could have been, the memories flood back.
One of my earliest memories involves a young me, decked out head-to-toe in neon Ocean Pacific everything, emerging from my grandfather’s van into County Stadium’s parking lot. It was an onslaught for my budding senses. The sweltering sun, the transistor radios blaring Bob Uecker’s immortal voice, the inebriated cursing and of course… the salacious sizzle of sausages on the grill.
For the spectator, the food associated with watching sports is so much more than sustenance. It’s meat off the bone in ways both figurative and literal. It’s a visceral conduit to something primal and instinctive. It’s the competitive essence attached to the creation and consumption of hot wings. It’s the smoky seraphims that waft up from the sizzling meats, spilling their rendered fatty juices onto the smoldering coals below. It’s the community that gathers around that grill to inhale those unforgettable vapors in.
If you examine it at its most simple, “sports food” may sound silly, but the entity of such food weaves itself into sports culture perfectly enough so that it becomes its own cuisine. Intense enough to stoke the febrile tizzy that one wants to be ensconced in when taking in a big game, but fun enough that it doesn’t lose the spirit of play.
Related Stories & Recipes