OSEG serves up promising menu but proof will be in artisan pudding
By Joanne Chianello, OTTAWA CITIZEN April 2, 2014
OTTAWA — It did not look like typical stadium fare. Even better, it didn’t taste like it.
A Caesar cocktail bar with dozens of accoutrements, including pink Himalayan rock salt, organic kale vichyssoise, grilled shrimp and fried avocado skewers, lobster mac-and-cheese, succulent slices of rare rib-eye steak. Anyone who remembers dining at Lansdowne Park the last time we had a professional football team won’t recall any snacks even in the same categories as these luxury nibbles.
But the Redblacks owners are doing things differently — or at least promising to. And they’re saying all the right things.
“I think stadium food should be reflective of the local culinary science,” said Andy Lansing, chief executive of Levy Restaurants, which was awarded the food contract for TD Place this week.
Levy Restaurants is hardly a purveyor of neighbourhood eateries. Indeed, the Chicago company is part of the $9-billion Compass Group, just the kind of corporation you’d expect to provide food on a mass scale. Interestingly, though, Levy’s founders started out in the restaurant business, and that’s the quality level it purports to bring to stadiums.
Even better, the company says it wants to feature local ingredients and products at TD Place.
“Anything in any food and beverage category that has local importance is of interest to us,” said Lansing.
And the company — which put on quite the gourmet display at the Museum of Nature on Tuesday evening — tipped its culinary hat to a number of local favourites: Outaouais mushrooms used in the orchiette, St. Albert cheddar in the grilled-cheese fingers for dipping into tomato-basil soup, BeaverBites — Tim Bit-sized pieces of BeaverTail served with vanilla-bean ice cream, and skinny dried-chorizo sausages made in west Quebec for stir sticks for the Caesars.
Ontario wine was poured. As for beer, while Budweiser is the official brew of TD Place, a local craft beer will also be on tap at Lansdowne games and concerts. (No official announcement yet, but all bets are on Beau’s Natural Brewing.)
Of course, the most high-end fare is destined for the private boxes and club seats. But even the concession stands will have more interesting, better quality food than we’ve come to expect at sports stadiums in Ottawa: think pulled-pork sandwiches, the aforementioned grilled cheese, garlic-Parmesan fries, and house-made vegetarian burgers. There will still be the usual stadium staples — local chain Gabriel’s is the official concession pizza — but in addition to the foot-longs, there might also be dogs topped with braised brisket.
All this at a reasonable price!
“There’s an association with price and stadium food — and we don’t want that association,” said Jeff Hunt, one of the partners in the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, which owns the CFL franchise. “I want the price to be a story as well as the food, but a good story. I want people to think that it was family affordable.”
This all sounds encouraging.
The only problem is that there are almost no details available yet for us to judge as to whether the food reflects the local culinary cuisine, or whether the prices are truly reasonable (even keeping in mind that a “reasonable” amount to charge for a beer at a stadium will likely bear little resemblance to what beer costs at a regular pub). The wines, the food, even the customized Caesar bar — so far these are all just concepts, ideas of what might be available at Lansdowne come opening day.
“This is all a work in progress,” said Hunt, pointing out that this week’s event was to highlight Levy’s winning the TD Place contract. “If we waited until every detail was in place, we would probably be making the Levy announcement two weeks before the opening.”
Fair enough.
But we can be forgiven if our applause is muted at the moment. Many of us were pretty excited about the promise of a “unique urban village” at Lansdowne Park, and that didn’t turn out so well. It’s a once-burned, twice-shy kind of thing. This time around, we’ll wait for the proof in the (local artisan) pudding come July 18 before tying on the feed bag and pulling out our wallets.
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