Underground Eats at the San Francisco Giants Ballpark

So earlier this week I talked about eating around AT&T Park, the home of the 2010 World Series Champions Giants. But today I go back into the ballpark to give you guys another look at more eats found in tucked away places.

I’m not talking about secret food menus. That’s not what I mean about underground. I literally mean you find these food on the lower levels of the ballpark.

I start with the Field Clubhouse, which is limited to ticketholders who sit on the field level behind home plate. I kind of hate how certain areas of the ballpark are off limits to everyone, like the Giants are creating its on little caste system. (Another area that’s off limits only to particular ticketholders is the “club level” that’s above “field” but below “view reserve.”)

But one game this summer I ended up spending the bucks to buy a field clubhouse seat because it was the only one available. (Thank you Visa.) So during the fourth inning, I went behind home plate, walking through the same corridors the players go through to get to the locker rooms, and made a left into the Clubhouse.

The Field Clubhouse definitely has a restaurant feel because of its ambient lighting and baseball mural on a giant wall. Looking around, there was the basic ballpark fare like hot dogs and hamburgers, but there were also stations for roast beef sandwiches, one station selling Mexican food, and a few beer stations.

They also have a sweet section selling these cute Giants themed cupcakes.

The Field Clubhouse is also where the Edsel Fong’s Chinese food station can be found. They used to have a stand up on the promenade level but I haven’t seen it there lately. I noticed they had a pad thai dish, so I ordered it. It actually wasn’t that bad, and a lot of noodles for $8.50. It might not have that authentic pad thai flavors, but at least the ingredients seemed fresh.

Another time I went to check out what was a new food stand this season, and it was the BBQ counter under the bleachers. It’s so new they don’t even have the permanent sign up yet. (I guess the former BBQ vendor lost his lease.)

The offerings seemed pretty typical of BBQ items, such as pulled pork sandwiches and tri-tip. But it also had a BBQ turkey sandwich, which I’ve never heard of so I thought I’d try that just because turkey also sounded healthier being a lean meat. I also got a side of potato salad.

The sandwich looked so sad when it arrived. It was basically turkey slices on a roll with BBQ sauce poured on top. And the BBQ sauce wasn’t even any more distinctive than store-bought BBQ sauce. The turkey was what you’d expect from a deli, and the bun wasn’t anything spectacular. I felt kind of cheated. (The potato salad was OK, not a lot of mayonnaise but it had bits of raw red onion, which I’m not a fan of.)

I still have a few more games to go to now that we’re in the second half. (In fact, I’ll be at the Sunday game.) I can’t say I’ve found anything exciting this season at the ballpark in terms of food, so I’ll probably just stick with my Hebrew National dogs.

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Bay Area Baseball Grub

This weekend is inter-league play in baseball, which brings the Bay Bridge series to town with the San Francisco Giants hosting its bay rivals the Oakland A's at AT&T Park. I thought it'll be a good time to post about the new food items I found so far at the two home ballparks.

I start at AT&T Park, home of the 2010 World Series Champions!! One of the new items talked about is this tri-tip sandwich next to the Orlando hut. The sandwiches are freshly carved and served up with the additional sides of sweet potato fries. But because I'm not a big red meat eater, I actually didn't try this.

I found this at the Tres Mexican Kitchen, which sells a Mexican-style bacon wrapped hot dog. (Their hut is on the field level promenade near third base.) This is what's known as the torta ahogada ($8), which is shredded chicken in a bun lathered in sauce. It was served up with chips and a couple of different hot sauces. I placed some slices of jalapeno's on top too, and it was like eating chicken nachos, but more messy.

Over at the Oakland Coliseum, now with the unfortunate name of Overstock.com Coliseum, there weren't that many new items. But one of the stands that sell the straight-forward hot dogs and ballpark fare also had two new sandwiches that looked interesting. The first one is called the Mamacita ($9), and it's shredded pork with jack cheese and pico de gallo, pickled jalapenos, and shredded lettuce in a ciabatta roll. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't a fan of the ciabatta roll; seemed stale. The sandwich is served with potato chips.

The other sandwich (also $9) was the Grand Slam, and that's a bacon and jalapeno meatloaf sandwich with cheddar cheese, fried onions, and sweet and sour sauce on a brioche bun. Now, on paper it sounded really gourmet, but what was served up looked really sad. The meatloaf itself just had bits of bacon and jalapeno but was on the cold side and the meat tasted of a really poor quality. The sauce wasn't that exciting and the brioche bun was weird. The only interesting thing on the sandwich was the thinly fried onion bits that added a nice crunch to what otherwise a poorly named sandwich because this was no grand slam, not even a home run.

Still, I realize ballparks aren't necessarily the place to find gourmet food, especially healthy gourmet food. It doesn't seem like there's a lot new at both ballparks (although I heard there's a new BBQ stand under the bleachers at the Giants' ballpark, so I have to hunt that down) so really it's just enjoying the scene and the players. As I'm writing this post, the Giants are about to sweep the A's in the Bay Bridge series, so I have to give the edge to the Giants as the most enjoyable ballpark experience in the Bay.

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Eat it Texas! Giants are World Series Champions!

You'll have to excuse me for this one, non-food post. But I can't help myself. WOO-HOO!! The San Francisco Giants have won the World Series for the first time since moving from New York. That's right. THE. VERY. FIRST. WORLD. SERIES. For San Francisco!

The torture is over.

While the Giants were taking care of business in Arlington, Texas, I joined thousands of fans at San Francisco Civic Center to watch the game. Mingling with total strangers all united around one team of unrecognizable, non-stars (well, except Tim "The Freak" Lincecum), you could tell everyone knew tonight would be the night.

When the game remained scoreless through six innings, people weren't panicked. They knew. It was going to happen.

Then in the 7th inning when World Series veteran Edgar Renteria hit a three-fun home run, the deal was sealed. All it took was Brian "Fear the Beard" Wilson to close it out in the 9th and destiny was met.


OK, so there were some food news. During those early innings, I got some food at several food trucks parked at the Civic Center to feed the crowds. Sure, you can get hot dogs and pretzels, but it's San Francisco so we had to have things like Chairman Bao's delectable pork belly buns along with Sam's Chowder, the Senor Sisig, and Twirl and Dip natural ice cream.





Tonight was a wild celebration to a season that never seemed like it could ever end this way. This year's San Francisco Giants are made up of several now well-publicized misfits and rejects whom other teams passed over or placed on waivers. San Francisco gave them a home, just like the city has always done. When others give up on you, it's not the end of the road. You can still be a champion. World champions.

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Heating Up the Giants with Cheesesteaks

In baseball, a team can go hot and cold during the long season. It’s really this sport that weeds out the “fair-weather fans.”

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve been checking out a lot of baseball games this season, and right now no team is hotter than the San Francisco Giants. Finally!

A lot of it is credited to some exciting rookies like new catcher Buster Posey and starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner.

As for the food at the Giants’ home, AT&T Park, I feel like there hasn’t been many rookies to help raise the excitement level. There really isn’t much new to write about.

Which brings me to Outta Here!! Cheesesteaks, a food cart in the back of the bleachers section. I don’t know if this is new — or just new to me — because I rarely venture behind the bleachers section. But on a nice day when I wanted to get out of the direct sun at my seat, I discovered this food cart and decided to try something different than my typical pepperoni pizza, clam chowder, hot dog or Cha Cha bowl.

Outta Here! (I finally got the name’s reference to a homerun because it’d typically be hit out of the park behind the bleachers section) serves a somewhat classic cheesesteak made with angus beef for $9. But I don’t eat a lot of red meat, so instead tried the San Francisco Cheesesteak ($9.50), which is made with grilled ground chicken, mushrooms and onions all held together with melted cheddar cheese. There’s also a veggie cheesesteak called the “NorCal” that’s made with shredded zucchini.

For my San Francisco Cheesesteak, I added some sweet peppers. Overall, this was a gooey mess to eat, with the juices of the chicken and melted cheese just getting everywhere. But I have to say, it was pretty good. Something about the melted cheese and the savory chicken pieces just seemed to work really well. Yeah, it was pretty messy to eat, but I had a whole nine innings to lick my fingers.

More ballpark favs:
Public House
Tres Agave

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Extra Innings at the Oakland Coliseum

Baseball is in full swing, and I’ve been lucky to have gone to some great games with pitch-perfect spring weather. As you know, I get to watch two baseball teams in the Bay Area — the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. Both teams are holding their own, although I do root for the Giants more.

But today I’m giving an update look at the Coliseum, home to the Oakland A’s.

I titled this post “Extra innings” because when visiting the Coliseum, I feel like the A’s are on borrowed time. Some of you know that for years the team has talked about moving (the last word was to San Jose, before then Fremont) and the Coliseum sometimes looks like a ghost town with the shuttered vendor spaces, especially on the plaza level that feeds the nose-bleed seats.

Most of the food can be found on the lower level. Early in the season, I sort of scout out what might be new at the stadium. That’s when I discovered the chicken burrito bowl ($7).

I don’t know if this is new, but I’d never seen it before. I know I ordered burritos before at the Coliseum, but now they offer it in this handy bowl. I actually prefer eating burritos in a bowl than in a wrap (I know, then it’s not called a burrito … calm down people!) because it’s less messy and you get all the good stuff of the burrito.

The burrito bowl was actually quite big, filled with lots of shredded chicken meat, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, beans, rice, cheese, guacamole and a squirt of sour cream. This really can tie you over several innings.


I also noticed a healthy alternative, which was Melissa’s fresh fruit stand. I thought it was a great idea to have these fresh fruits, but I call foul on the pricing: $5.50 for a tiny container of cut fruit. Ouch! You could pay just $1 to get a whole fruit (like an apple or banana), but if I did that I could just bring them from home.

Something that I think is new is the Monster Chicken Nachos ($8). This actually scared me, so I haven’t tried it yet. But this is my Everest, and sometime before the season ends I’m going to try this.

There were also the typical hot dogs, Round Table pizza, expensive ribs plates, Philly cheese steak, and tons of deep-fried things. But really I still gravitate to the pulled pork sandwich ($8.75) from Kinder’s BBQ. Even though these sammies are pre-made and comes out of a hot steam bath to keep them warm, all you do is squirt some Kinder BBQ sauce on top and you forget that Eric Chavez had been missing in action the last two seasons.

Out of curiosity, I also tried the veggie dog, which actually is a great deal at $4.50. When I got mine, it looked like any other hot dog, and after I lathered on the relish and ketchup, it tasted like any other hot dog. The only odd thing was that I felt it tasted saltier than a regular dog, almost like the maker wanted it to taste like a hot dog so they added extra salt. Weird, so now I feel like it’s not so healthy any more.

So that’s my eating adventures so far at the Coliseum. Yeah, slim pickin’s I feel. I have a few more A’s games this season, so if you have any suggestions on what I should get (just no fried foods), please help a fan out!

Previous seasons:
Last Days of Summer: Be Kinder
Batter Up: Tres Agave at AT&T Park
The Baseball Buffet

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Baseball + Hot Dog = Independence

Spent my Fourth of July at a Giants baseball game, and boy are they on a roll! Today's game featured ACE and Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum, who's turning out to be as big as a draw for the Giants since the Bond years. Since it was the 4th, I had to get myself a hot dog. And this time I got one of those Hebrew National's hot dogs. This is the "San Francisco" hot dog ($6.75) that's topped with onions, saukerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing and served with a pickle. It was my first time having a Hebrew National. I know, I must have just passed by the counter on the promenade level on the way to my seat. It's also my first time eating saukerkraut and I like it. With perfect weather and a Giants win against the Houston Astros, it was a classic Fourth of July. Hope you're enjoying your holiday!

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Batter Up: Tres Agave at AT&T Park

This month was the beginning of baseball season, and yesterday was the perfect day for my first San Francisco Giants game since the weather was the type that one had to be outside. (But not necessarily four hours in direct sunlight.)

There’s not much new when it comes to food at AT&T Park, where the Giants play. Stands still flowing with garlic fries. People still chow down on corn dogs. I’m still avoiding the Crazy Crabs. But there was one addition, and that’s the restaurant Tres Agave, which has taken over the Mexican food carts that used to be run by Compadres.

Tres Agave is a pretty popular Mexican restaurant just a couple of blocks from the stadium in SOMA. So I was interested to see what kind of game fare they were offering.

The Tres Agave cart can be found on both the promenade and view levels (and possibly the Club level, but I couldn’t get in to check myself) and sells things like street tacos and humongous nachos topped with carnitas.

But I got the chicken tamales (they also have vegetarian) because I love tamales. For $6.50, you get a tray of two tamales and a whole lot of chips. The thing about the tamales is they’re tiny like baby tamales. I think they were maybe 6 inches. Can you even see them in the tray that was overflowing with chips?

The tamales were decent. It was basically cornmeal and chicken. The sauce that came with it improved the taste, but I saved much of it for the chips because I don’t like eating chips without salsa.

After a few innings in the heat, I had to get up and walk around and feel the breeze of the bay. So I ran into another Tres Agave cart and this time I tried their bacon-wrapped hot dog ($6.75). I know, you’d think by the sound of this that this item would be the most popular thing at the stadium.

The hot dog came with grilled peppers and onions and then drizzled with some kind of sauce, kind of like chipotle. Again, the tray was overflowing with chips.

This wasn’t a foot-long dog. It was like a minor league dog, just as small as the tamales. It was nice and salty, but I have to say I could barely enjoy the bacon because I tasted more of the hot dog than the bacon, and the sauce covered everything up. I enjoyed it but I didn’t feel satisfied. (And I tossed out the tray of chips because they didn’t serve it with any salsa.)

Tres Agave might be selling fancy Mexican food, but I’m really disappointed at the portion size. It’s almost like those catered parties and these were the perfect portions for finger food.

After the tamales and hot dog, I had to get a frozen lemonade just to survive the rest of the game in the heat. Luckily, it was a game worth watching since the Giants beat the Diamondbacks, 2-0, behind pitcher Randy Johnson (who used to play for the Diamondbacks). Just 146 more games to go!

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Woo-Hoo, Giants Win!

I haven't been cooking lately because I've been lazy after coming back from vacation, and because, well, it's baseball season so all I do is sit around watching games on TV. Or when I'm lucky, I get to see it live like I did on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

I was at AT&T Park for a San Francisco Giants game, the last of a three-game series with the San Diego Padres. Everyone was confident going into the game because pitching was young ace Tim Lincecum, who is leading the team with the most wins by a pitcher so far this season.

The game was moving at a brisk pace with both pitchers doing well to keep the innings short. So that gave me time to check out the food. I tried to look for anything new but there didn't seem to be that many new things.

The only thing that did seem new is this big chocolate-colored box of a stand by Ghiradelli, which sells a lot of ice cream things. I'm sure this is going to be really popular when it gets hot. Despite the sun, it was still a bit chilly today.

I had to figure out where to get some lunch so I decided to check out these stands behind the scoreboard where they sell the Crazy Crab sandwiches. I wasn't going to get a crab sandwich, which is crazy expensive, but I checked out the Anchor Grill because I was craving some meat after watching my family eat meat all the time when I was in Hawaii.

So I ended up getting a cheeseburger for $7.50 at the Anchor Grill. They sell regular cheeseburgers at other stands for only $6.50, but supposedly this is fresh off the grill. They cook it all well so there's no pink inside. It was OK but there was a lot of juice and I wasn't sure if that came from the meat or the grease. Notice something missing from the burger? Yeah, it's a cheeseburger but you don't see the cheese. Anyway, it's underneath the burger. There's just this thin layer of melted cheese. I had to take the lady's word that it was there.

Around the 7th inning when the Giants led 1 to 0, I went hunting for a snack. I wanted to try something different that you normally wouldn't get at a ballpark, and so I got some tiramisu from the North Beach Grill over by the first base side on the promenade level. It cost $6 and it's from Victoria Bakery.

Here's the layers of the rum-soaked cake. The cake was pretty good, but the cream was a bit stiff and it had a slight sour taste that I didn't like. I don't think this is worth $6.

At an earlier game, I had a ticket for the field level and that gives you access to some food stands on the ground level behind home base. I don't really like how the Giants restrict the food area depending on your ticket, because there's a lot of interesting food things on the club house level that I rarely get to try because I don't really like to sit on the club level. So anyway, the food stands behind home base included this Joe Garcia stand selling Mexican food.

Here are Joe Barcia's offerings, your typical burritos, street tacos, etc. I didn't try any of them.

The alcohol stands behind home base is also extra fancy, like this wine bar.

Back to today's game, the Giants lost its lead in the 7th when reliever Tyler Walker came into the game. He is not my favorite player, just for this reason that he always gives up the lead, which he did today. But in the end, we went into extra innings and the Padres took the lead at the top of the 10th but the Giants were able to rally in the bottom of the 10th to win the game. (And against all-time saves leader, closer Trevor Hoffman.) So it turned out to be a good game after all.

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