April 09--Wherever your baseball allegiances lie, take heart: There's never been an argument that a char-grilled hot dog and a cold one couldn't solve. Unless, that is, the argument is about which Chicago ballpark serves superior food ...
U.S. Cellular Field
The home of the White Sox has enjoyed a reputation of offering eclectic and better-than-decent ballpark food, which in years past has included Juicy Lucy burgers, steamed Chinese baos and Cuban sandwiches. This year's new food offerings, thematically, can be loosely grouped as comfort food. There's now pork carnitas and beef barbacoa tacos, fried pickle chips, garlic waffle fries, and an improvement to last year's popular bacon-on-a-stick: it's now glazed with maple syrup. Dessert fans might want to check out Section 105, where a stand called Comiskey's Confections sells upscale options such as salted caramel cream puffs, creme brulee cheesecakes and brown butter-sea salt marshmallow squares.
Of the new menu items, the best thing I tried was the avocado-bacon grilled cheese sandwich. It succeeds on the basis that it's a grilled cheese sandwich, and good luck screwing up a grilled cheese sandwich. Follow standard protocol -- butter the bread, insert cheese, toast on flat top -- and you're guaranteed a sandwich no worse than a B+. There's no great innovation to this sandwich, not that it needs any tweaking. Here, the avocado spread plus melted yellow and white American cheese provides creaminess against the crisp grilled sourdough bread. The bacon brings the requisite saltiness. Solid, tasty, satisfying. You'll find this sandwich at sections 110 and 544.
Wrigley Field
Ridiculing Wrigley Field's lack of modern amenities is sport among the baseball cognoscenti, but ongoing construction around the stadium shows tangible progress. Signs of improvement even seeped through to its food offerings, which historically, have placed a distant second behind U.S. Cellular Field.
Of the food stands inside Wrigley that go beyond peanuts and Cracker Jacks is Decade Diner, located by the right field foul pole. In its second season, Decade Diner serves up sandwiches beyond the typical pre-grilled burger found everywhere else. This year, new items include a pork patty burger with bacon, ham, dijonnaise and pickles, attempting to replicate the Cuban sandwich. Crinkled cut fries with garlic aioli, parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning are a tasty offering, a dish where the chief complaint will likely be "Gosh I wish there was more garlic aioli."
The one sandwich likely to garner the most attention, at least for sentimental reasons, is the Joe Maddon Italian Hoagie. The endorsement by the Cubs manager goes beyond surface level. Maddon's family runs a diner in Pennsylvania called Third Base Luncheonette, where they serves up a hoagie (that's a sub sandwich, non-East Coasters) with Genoa salami, ham and white American cheese. The sandwich was brought over to Wrigley Field this year, a recipe Maddon himself consulted to get right.
"We did some taste testings. We adjusted it a bit," Maddon said. "I think this is really, really good. I think the fans will dig them."
The rolls from Gonnella Baking Co. are a tad soft for my liking, but I do enjoy the spicy cherry pepper relish smeared on the bread. It adds a tart, fruity touch to the savory cold cuts.
kpang@tribpub.com
Twitter @pang
