Citi Area doesn’t provide home-run-of-the-mill stadium fare.
For the 2025 season, the Mets are dishing up a gourmand grand slam with Kwame Onwuachi’s mouthwatering meat patties, a customizable tomahawk steak at Pat LaFrieda’s Chop Home and extra.
The elevated choices are a part of Citi Area’s mission to replicate New York Metropolis’s numerous delicacies scene, the place Korean fried hen bumps elbows with ballpark franks.
“When you walk around, you can get something from barbecue to Latin to Asian,” Citi Area Senior Government Chef Jason Eksterowicz instructed The Put up. “We have something for everybody.”
Their technique seems to be working — Citi Area simply gained USA At this time’s 10Best Readers’ Alternative Award for Greatest Baseball Stadium Meals for the third consecutive 12 months.
The Put up previewed this season’s Citi Area menu so followers will know what to anticipate on the crew’s first dwelling sport this Friday in opposition to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Pat Lafrieda Tomahawk steak
The belle of the ballpark is the dry-aged tomahawk steak — a brilliant tender, bat-sized bone branded with the Mets brand — at Pat LaFrieda’s Chop Home within the Clover House Plate Membership.
As Mel Landano, restaurant challenge supervisor and Mel’s Butcher Field founder, instructed The Put up: The place else are you able to order “a tomahawk for two, sit down in a restaurant and then go watch a baseball game?”
Tipping the scales at 38 oz., this Flinstones-evoking hunk of meat is round thrice the scale of a standard steakhouse rib eye. It should run as a particular the worth has not been set but.
Followers can get it custom-engraved as nicely.
“You’re here on your anniversary or Valentine’s or a birthday party, whatever, we can have Pat LaFrieda himself rebrand it at the warehouse, and we send it over to the Mets [stadium],” Landano mentioned.
Patty Palace
The rookie of the 12 months award ought to go to Patty Palace by Chef Kwame Onwuachi, whose high-end Caribbean restaurant Tatiana is so well-liked that one diner flew in from Bermuda simply to eat dinner there.
Protecting with the theme of his Manhattan flagship, this fast-casual spot makes a speciality of trendy “remixes” of the normal Caribbean fare, together with the tasty curried hen patty with jerk BBQ, coleslaw and inexperienced sauce, bookended by pillowy coco buns.
Simply don’t add “too much” Habanero dip sauce — as a result of “it’s really hot,” “Top Chef” alum Onwuachi warned The Put up.
Adam Richman’s Burger Corridor of Fame
Yankees star Juan Soto wasn’t the Mets’ solely massive get this 12 months — Adam Richman’s Burger Corridor of Fame has collaborated with LaFrieda to “induct” two new burgers impressed by his travels overseas.
Baseball followers can chew into the Fiesta Burger with Mexican cheese, spicy guacamole, tortilla chips and extra.
There’s additionally the Pub Burger stacked with thick-cut bacon, melted leeks, pork rinds and Welsh rarebit — Wales’ reply to beer cheese — with a pretzel roll pinch-hitting for a sesame bun.
“I live in England for a couple months out of a year, and I learned from this chef in Wales how to make proper Welsh rarebit,” the “Man v. Food” alum instructed The Put up, noting its “velvety consistency.”
Better of all, the patties are medium uncommon within the middle, elevating it above your common ballpark hockey puck.
Korean Fried Hen at Judy Joo’s Seoul Hen
One other dwelling run is Seoul Hen’s well-known fried hen, which is brined for twenty-four hours till lush inside after which double-fried to type a crackling exterior.
There’s additionally a model that’s served atop a mattress of short-grain kimchi-fried rice and veggies.
Pig Seashore BBQ
A changeup from the standard barbecue meats, Pig Seashore BBQ’s Smoked Turkey Sando is served with heat and tangy vinegar slaw and Alabama white sauce atop a Martin’s potato roll.
Eksterowicz described it as a “sleeper” hit, gushing, “People look at it and they’re, like, ‘Smoked turkey — whose idea was that?’ Eat that sandwich and tell me that it’s not good.”
The remainder
And that’s only a pattern of the Mets’ culinary bullpen.
Different heavy hitters embody the Spicy Spring (a sq. slice with Fra Diavolo sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni) at Prince Road Pizza, multi-meat gyros at Naz’s Halal Meals, Chiddy’s Cheesesteaks and jerk turkey meatballs at Fieldtrip by Chef JJ Johnson.
“You look at the city as that kind of melting pot,” Eksterowicz instructed The Put up, including that the aim was to seize that essence in “one building.”
In homage to the colourful dwelling borough, Citi Area will showcase a “Taste of Queens” meals truck that includes a rotating roster of native expertise, beginning with Ozone Park Colombian restaurant eatery Arepalicious — identified for its signature cheese arepa topped with shredded hen, cotija cheese and home sauce — from Friday, April 4, by way of July 6.
For dessert, swap out the Cracker Jacks for vendor Metropolitan Fry Manufacturing facility’s crispy fried Oreos with chocolate sauce.
Simply beware: Your arteries will get clogged quicker than Shea Bridge on sport day.
