We love sports, we love food.
During Walter Bond’s senior year of college, he was nearly ready to give up on his dream of playing in the National Basketball Association.
The 6-foot-5 University of Minnesota shooting guard certainly made for an unlikely NBA prospect. He had spent three seasons trying to get off the bench, only to have his senior year cut short by injuries.
His father encouraged him to set his sights on the NBA anyway.
It’s not easy setting up a high-end restaurant, knowing it will serve massive crowds the moment it opens its doors.
At the U.S. Open Food Tasting Preview, on Aug. 23, celebrity chefs Masaharu Morimoto, David Burke and Tony Manuano showed off the food they created for the world’s highest-attended annual sporting event, but said they would have little time to catch matches or hobnob with tennis stars.
The lovely Valentina D’Amore has a preview of all the good eats coming to Citi Field this season. Check it out!
Video shot by Briana Heard.
Most golfers don’t get to golf as much as they would like, and neither does Mario Batali. With 16 restaurants and a weekday cooking show (The Chew, airing on ABC Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. ET), the chef is lucky to work in a round of golf every couple weeks or so. “I used to play maybe three or four times a year, but now it’s maybe twenty or thirty times a year. [My schedule is] tighter than I’d like it, but you can always squeeze in a little time for golf, especially if you go really early in the morning,” he told SportsAndFood.com. He finds golf provides him with a chance to be outside in a wide open space, quite a ways away from the nearest group of people. If that doesn’t sound like something terribly exciting, you have probably never worked in the restaurant business, a field where people will volunteer to take out the garbage just for 90 seconds of fresh air and peace.
PHILADELPHIA — Certain days of a year conjure up different types of myth, rituals and routine. Some more elaborate or bizarre than others, why some are more socially accepted than others is up for debate. On Christmas a fat man in a suit slides down your chimney and delivers gifts under a live tree you sat on your own living room floor. During the holiday of Easter, a life-size bunny allegedly delivers candy in a basket to your children … so why shouldn’t once a year, on the Friday before the Super Bowl, the City of Brotherly Love gathers all its denizens of the area together to celebrate the passing of yet another year without a Super Bowl by organizing a wing-eating contest.
I think my greatest achievement attending Texans training camp earlier this year was getting to meet offensive tackle Duane Brown. I had followed him for some time on Twitter mostly because of our common ties to my home state of Virginia.
Brown, originally from Richmond, played football at Virginia Tech. Sharing that hometown feeling and pride, we instantly bonded over Twitter and he’s granted me a few interviews throughout the course of this groundbreaking season as the team heads to the playoffs — a first for the Texans franchise and him personally.
Sixteen seasons. 243 consecutive games. 1,105 tackles, 39.5 sacks, 18 forced fumbles and 18 interceptions. Two Pro Bowls. Four Super Bowls. Controversy at nearly every turn. Bill Romanowski was one of the most polarizing athletes in sports during his career, but one thing that’s beyond dispute: he was a beast on the playing field.
In his post-football career, Romanowski has remained in sports by starting his own nutrition and supplement company, Nutrition53:
DETROIT — Joe Nader wants the city of Detroit to be showcased both on the gridiron and on the grill at Ford Field this NFL season. Nader is the executive chef of Levy Restaurants at Ford Field and strives to stay true to his mantra of having fun with food.
“We’ve kind of been beaten up over the years and we all want to support the city,“ Nader said of both the team and stadium’s local fare.
J.R. Giddens is a good friend of SportsandFood.com. The former Kansas Jayhawk and New Mexico Lobo is unabashed about his love of food (as you can tell from his Twitter picture feed) and was one of our first followers on Twitter.
In fact, the 6-5 shooting guard made some headlines when his tweeting caused a rift between him and his team in Poland. So we asked Giddens about that episode (he got released from the team last December), what he’s up to now and where the well-traveled pro thinks the best food is.
It’s a good time to be R.J. Umberger right now. The Blue Jackets forward is entering his seventh season in the NHL and is coming off a 57-point season, a career high.
Oh, and he just signed a 5-year, $23 million contract extension.
SportsandFood.com caught up with the Blue Jackets’ alternate captain and asked him about the first meal he had after becoming a very rich man, his typical game-day routine and more.
GREEN BAY, Wisc. — The Green Bay Packers have more than 80,000 names on their waiting list for season tickets. If ever there was a football team that could get away with concession stands that sold nothing but cold hot dogs and instant coffee made from hot tap water, it would be the Pack. What are you going to do, threaten to cancel your season tickets unless they upgrade the food?
The Packers do care intensely about the fan experience at Lambeau, however. It’s a point of civic pride for the NFL’s only publicly-owned team. The people of Green Bay pride themselves not only on the Packers but on the overall quality of life in Titletown — and they have good reason to be proud.
PHILADELPHIA — Aramark Food Services and the staff at Lincoln Financial Field unveiled their new menu for the 2011-12 NFL season on Wednesday. The menu, which will be revealed to fans during the Philadelphia Eagles home opener this Sunday, includes a variety of meats, poultry seafood, and other gourmet delights.
Aramark, Lincoln Financial Field’s exclusive food and beverage partner, has been hard at work putting together what they believe to be the finishing touches on a truly outstanding selection for fans to enjoy.
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