A rant: Why is Yankee Stadium ballpark food so bad, and Citi Field ballpark food so good?

We are now in Year 7 of new ballparks for the Yankees and Mets. The food at Citi Field, which was impressive to begin with -- Shake Shake, Blue Smoke, Catch of the Day, Box Frites, and El Verano Taqueria -- has gotten even better over the years, with new offerings each season. You can eat like a king at Citi Field, even if you are sitting in the cheap seats. 

Meanwhile, at Yankee Stadium, they might as well serve soylent green, giving how awful the food choices are. Lobel's, which with its steak sandwich used to have one of the few edible choices in the ballpark, has really gone downhill. I got food poisoning from the sushi stand a few years back, so that's out. Parm is good, but they are hard to find if you don't know where they are. Brother Jimmy's is no Blue Smoke, and Johnny Rockets is no Shake Shack, and both places are known more for their restaurants' atmosphere than their food, anyway. I am not six years old, so the nacho helmet and unlimited popcorn bucket hold no appeal for me.

Fried macaroni and cheese on a burger? Disgusting.

Of course, if you are in the Yankees' Legends seats, you can eat like a king there, with the unlimited crab legs, shrimp, prime rib, and celebrity chefs. (A telling anecdote: the one time Squawker Jon and I got to sit in the Legends seats, we met guest chef Frank Pellegrino of Rao's and got to eat his great food. Yet Mets fans can now get to eat Rao's food without having to have the fanciest seats in the ballpark -- most seats are eligible to get into the Caesars Club where the stand is.)

New York City is the food capital of the world. Squawker Jon and I have been to many great eateries in the city over the years. I recently even got to meet Red Rooster chef Marcus Samuelsson at the opening of his new rotisserie chicken place, Streetbird. So how is that the Mets can get so many big names in the food world -- Danny Meyer, Drew Nieporent, Josh Capon, Pat LaFreida, Dave Pasternack -- while the Yankees serve up swill like this horrible-looking "Bases Loaded Burger"? This abomination has fried macaroni and cheese on it. How thoroughly disgusting. Not to mention that the sandwich would be too unwieldy and messy to eat, unless they start handing out bibs like they do at lobster joints.

To add insult to injury, in New York City, a place famous for great pizza, the Mets have Two Boots pizza -- a fun choice -- while Yankees have Papa John's stands. Really? In a city with Lombardi's, Roberta's, Denino's, and a gazillion other pizza choices, they get Papa John's? What, Domino's wasn't available?

Meanwhile, Mets fans get delicious-looking items like these Rao's lemon chicken wings. The Mets folks do a great job at continually improving their food and drink choices (you can even get a Patron margarita at Citi Field!), while the Yankees seem content to serve up overpriced garbage and a lame beer selection.

Rao's lemon chicken wings look much more tasty. 

Aside from all the great restauranteurs in New York, there are so many food stand folks making interesting food these days. From Smorgasburg to Eataly to Hudson Eats to Le District to Berg'n to Madison Square Eats to all of the food trucks around, you can eat terrific food choices in the city made at food stands. You really would have to try to deliberately find bad food outlets to come up with the swill at Yankee Stadium.

Every time I write on this subject, people tell me I should bring in my own food to Yankee games. But why should I have to? Why can't the powers that be at Yankee Stadium get some decent food stands so that the masses, and not just the rich people, can have the choices that Mets fans do? 

A recent development sums up the contempt that Randy Levine et al have for us typical Yankee fans. There is now an app for your phone at Yankee Stadium, where you can order food to be delivered to your seat, a feature the Legends seats have had for years. But the app reportedly doesn't deliver food to the 400 level seats (the upper deck "cheap seats.") Figures.  

Subway Series:Zack and Shack

The Mets swept the Yankees in the Bronx and have now beaten the Bombers six straight. Squawker Lisa is so discombobulated she ended up with tickets to see Joe Torre's number get retired. But it's never a completely sunny day with the Mets. Zack Wheeler couldn't get out of the fifth inning with an 11-4 lead. And there are reports of food poisoning at one of the best things about Citi Field - Shake Shack.

The Mets' mantra has been, just wait until all the great young pitchers are up. Never mind that Matt Harvey is recovering from a serious arm injury, and even if most Tommy John patients recover successfully, they often don't fully regain their form right away. In eight starts this season, Wheeler now has a 4.53 ERA, 1.60 WHIP and 24 walks in 41 innings. While I'm looking forward to seeing Rafael Montero tonight and Noah Syndegaard next month, there are of course no guarantees with young pitching.

As for Shake Shack, I find it hard to believe that there could be an outbreak of food poisoning at such a popular place and that there would not be many more reports of people getting sick to their stomach. (Unless lots of people are getting sick to their stomach and assumed it's from watching the Mets.) Maybe if it were two people from the same team who may have shared an order, but not a Met (Lucas Duda) and Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg.

And now the Mets say that Duda got sick at another Shack Shake location outside Citi Field, which makes the whole story even more outlandish. Two different baseball people at two different Shake Shacks? Something about this story is not adding up for me.

Two of the main areas where the Mets are clearly superior to the Yankees are young pitching prospects and stadium food.  So I hope Montero does well tonight and thousands of fans continue to enjoy their Shackburgers. And that the Mets become the first team to beat Masahiro Tanaka.
    

Citi Field is great - especially the food

My last game at Shea Stadium was September 22. I had to work late that night and did not get to the ballpark until the fourth inning, when the Mets were beating the Cubs, 2-1. But by the time I got to my seats in the upper deck, the Mets were losing, 6-2, with the help of an unlikely grand slam by Jason Marquis.

My first game at Citi Field was today. Squawker Lisa and I arrived just before the game started and decided to check out the new food options first. By the time we got to our seats, the Mets were losing, 6-0, with the help of an unlikely grand slam by Jed Lowrie.

But it was so great to be at Citi Field that I am going to think positively about the Mets' woes. Today, we saw Bad Ollie - next time out, let's hope we get good Ollie. (Though after his problems with getting in game shape during spring training, it's hard to blame people for booing him even in an exhibition game.)

And I'm going to do my best to think positively about Gary Sheffield.

If Sheffield is truly willing to come off the bench as he claims, maybe, just maybe, it is worth it to see if he has anything left in his bat. Maybe he can become the new super pinch-hitter - the next Rusty Staub.

And putting Sheffield on the roster should at least force the Mets to release Marlon Anderson.

And if Sheffield messes up team chemistry, there was a year in which the Mets benched an aging, unproductive outfielder in the middle of the season. The player, George Foster, didn't like it, so the Mets released him in August of that year. August 1986.

But enough about the clouds on the horizon. What about Citi Field? And what about the food?

Thanks, Metsgrrl, for the tip to avoid the Rotunda entrance and enter through one of the other gates, where the lines were drastically shorter. And we were able to admire the Jackie Robinson rotunda later, when it was much less crowded.

One of the things I always liked about Shea was how you would walk along the cramped, crowded concourse, find the entryway to your section, walk through it, and suddenly the big green field would be spread out in front of you.

At Citi Field, I will never have that sensation again. But the new setup is so much better. Now the magic comes when you enter the concourse itself, which is completely open to the field. And the concourses are much wider, though so many people were wandering around that they were still pretty crowded. But this might well be due to the fact that people were exploring the new park and not watching an exhibition game, much less one that was over in the first inning.

I've been to several of the new parks, and I liked them all. I like the the retro design and the food. My favorites, PNC in Pittsburgh and AT&T in San Francisco, have something Citi Field lacks - a connection to something appealing outside the ballpark. But it is not Citi Field's fault that there is no McCovey Cove or Roberto Clemente bridge just beyond the fences.

While walking around Citi Field, we did spot some of the auto repair shops of Willets Point, and it was interesting to see more of a connection to the outside city than was evident at Shea. But you are not going to go to Citi Field to see the auto repair shops.

So in terms of the look of the ballpark, I would have to place PNC and AT&T first. But Citi Field trumps them in every other way. It's got the Mets inside and New York City outside. And it's got food that finally lives up to the high standards of good New York restaurants.

Bringing in Danny Meyer is like signing a superstar free agent at the top of his field - a Carlos Beltran or a Francisco Rodriguez. Not only is Meyer responsible for some of New York's best restaurants like Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe, but he also created Shake Shack, which pretty much already serves gourmet ballpark food. So what better place to transport to a real ballpark?

While Citi Field also has high-end dining options, they definitely came up with great choices for the average fan. I haven't been to the new Yankee Stadium, but the non-high end options seem to run along the lines of the Hard Rock Cafe and Johnny Rockets, institutions known for their attitude which don't generate the kind of buzz they once did. Kind of like signing Gary Sheffield.

Lisa and I are already big fans of Shake Shack, so that was the first place we went. Alas, the lines were already really long. So Lisa got on line for Blue Smoke, while I headed for El Verano Tacqueria. All of these places, along with Box Frites, are near each other in the Taste of the City section behind center field, and all come from Meyer. Blue Smoke and Shake Shack are offshoots of existing restaurants, while the other two are new concepts. Floyd Cardoz, executive chef of Meyer's Indian fusion restaurant Tabla, came up with the tacos for El Verano Tacqueria.

The best thing we had was the ribs from Blue Smoke. You get four great-tasting meaty ribs for $10. We shared the ribs, as well as a pulled pork sandwich that I liked more than Lisa did. We also had Blue Smoke's own beer, which was really good, especially with the ribs and pork.

At El Verano Tacqueria, we shared one order of carnitas tacos and one order of the chili marinated skirt steak tacos. I preferred the carnitas, while Lisa liked the skirt steak more, but both were great. The carnitas were very spicy, so if you don't like spicy food, bear that in mind. We did not try the third type of taco, chicken mole pipian.

At this point, we had probably eaten enough for the day, but it was still early in the game and there was more food to try. So we eventually made our way to Box Frites, which offered fresh-cut Belgian fries with dipping sauces. At $7.50 for a large box of fries, they seemed a little pricey compared to the ribs and pulled pork. The tacos, $7.25 for two and $9.75 for three, might seem pricey to some, but you expect to pay that much for a ballpark meal that at Shea was a lot less satisfying than this one.

But fries for $7.50? All I can say is, that if you are willing to spend that much, than go for it. The fries not only tasted great, but looked so tempting as I was walking away with them that a passerby pretended to take one. Neither Lisa nor I were crazy about the bacon dipping sauce (and we love our bacon!) but there are several other options and these fries tasted great with ketchup and barbecue sauce anyway.

Part of the reason we had such a great experience with the food at Citi Field was that our seats were fairly close to Taste of the City. We sat in section 132 in the field level, in fair territory down the left field line. I generally prefer sitting higher up in the infield than lower down in the outfield, but these seats were pretty good for outfield seats.

Being near Taste of the City, however, meant that we could sit down and enjoy our food while it was still fresh. It particularly made a difference with the fries, which were not quite as good once we sat down.

So if your seats are not near the outfield, you may want to consider eating your food in that area if possible. They do have some small tables around which people can stand around and eat. But that might not be feasible during peak times.

It's hard to gauge what a peak time is once the real games start and the novelty wears off. On April 24, I have tickets to a game and these tickets are in the upper level behind third base. If we go to Taste of the City, wait on the lines, by the time we get back we could miss a couple of innings.

There is a big TV screen in the area, but I could not see it on the taco line, only hear it. And the people on the Shake Shack line and the Blue Smoke line had their backs to it.

So you might want to get this food before the game starts or toward the end. We went back to Shake Shack in the eighth inning and there was almost no line. We made room for a Shackburger and vanilla shake. Lisa and I have now been to all three Shake Shacks and continue to be big fans.

We did not end up going to Catch of the Day, but I suspect a lobster roll or po boy will be high on the list for my next game.

Based on what I ate today, at my next game I would probably get an order of ribs to start and later on an order of tacos - the group of three so I could try the chicken mole.

But if you've never had Shake Shack, make sure you get something from there. I actually prefer the regular burger to the Shack burger, but they don't have that at the ballpark. Shake Shack also offers a couple of different kinds of hot dogs. One of them is $5. We saw people waiting on long lines for Nathan's hot dogs, which were also $5. If you're willing to wait on a long line for a hot dog, check out Shake Shack!

I'm glad to be sitting higher up for the next game, since I never got off of the field level at this one. I look forward to exploring more of Citi Field. As for the food, it's already in midseason form.

Citi Field: Great food, lousy Sheff?

Squawker Lisa and I are going to Citi Field on Saturday for the second exhibition game with the Red Sox. I can't wait to see Oliver Perez pitch a couple of innings in his last tuneup before the regular season starts. Oh, who are we kidding - what I can't wait for is Shake Shack, pulled pork, lobster rolls, steak tacos and all the great food options at the new ballpark. Metstradamus suggests that Ollie might be subject to the same temptations!

It will be great to see the Mets take the field at the start of a season in which they are a popular choice to make the playoffs, and deservedly so. (Yes, Uncle Mike, I know the same was true the last two years.) Considering what could have happened this spring, things have gone very well so far. Johan Santana is healthy. Jose Reyes is still batting leadoff. Luis Castillo will usually bat eighth. At least one of the retreads for the last rotation spot is still standing. And, at least at the start of the season, Nick Evans is on the team as a righty bat off the bench

Once it is time for Livan Hernandez to make his first spot, the Mets will need a roster spot, and the person who needs to be cut is Marlon Anderson, who has not been hitting and is a lefty. Sending down Evans because Anderson has a guaranteed contract makes no sense. The money spent on Anderson is gone. At about $1M, it is not even that much anyway. Look at the Tigers - they ate $14M of salary by releasing Gary Sheffield.

But speaking of Sheffield, Metsblog reports that Joel Sherman in the Post warns that the Mets are talking about trying to sign the cranky, washed-up slugger. Sherman's item is dated April 3, so it is unfortunately no April Fool's gag.

Why would the Mets be willing to get rid of Anderson for Sheffield and not Evans? They are better off with Evans in every possible way. Except for one - and I really hope this has nothing to do with their reasoning. At 499 homers, Sheffield could sell some tickets as he goes for 500.

But even that makes no sense. Sheffield is tainted by Balco and the Mitchell report, so his pursuit of 500 is less compelling, even if Met fans had any reason to care about him.

And with allegations swirling around Mike Piazza, the last thing the Mets need is for the organization to embrace someone like Sheffield and have him sitting on the bench when Piazza is on the field helping to open the new ballpark.

The Phillies are said to have interest in Sheffield. Let them have him. What better way to show that the magical run of the Phillies is coming to an end.

Update: Metsblog reports that Jon Heyman of SI says that the Mets are showing "real interest" in Sheffield.

This is infuriating on so many levels. Not least of which is that if the Mets were not happy with their outfield, they had ample opportunity to address that fact in the offseason.

The last time Minaya signed an aging former All-Star outfielder, it was Moises Alou. But at least Alou had something left when he actually got onto the field. Compared to Alou, does Omar think Sheffield is a youth movement?

Most teams are turning away from much older players because, in the age of at least some form of PED testing and the ban on greenies, they recognize that turning 40 for a ballplayer is more like what it used to be than what it appeared to be in recent years.

Sheffield has been primarily a DH the last two years. Last year, he batted .225. The Tigers, a team that made the World Series a lot more recently than the Mets have, wanted to get rid of him so badly that they were willing to eat $14M worth of salary. Shouldn't that tell the Mets something?

It would be so typical of the Mets if they were unable to start a new season in a new ballpark without putting a cloud over it. Just say no to Sheffield.

Do you think the Mets should sign Gary Sheffield?