Are Stadiums Next?
The New York Mets’ latest star signing is no outfielder
but rather chef Danny Meyer, who is trying to do for
stadiums what he did for museums with his award-winning The Modern in New York’s Museum of Modern
Art. When the Mets’ new Citi Field opens this season, it
will have offshoots of two of Meyer’s enormously popular New York eateries—Shake Shack, for juicy burgers
and lavish milkshakes, and Blue Smoke, his upscale riff
on Southern barbecue. The Mets also have signed on
for two new Meyer concepts: a still-to-be-named Mexican taqueria and a Belgian frites stand serving gourmet
french fries. In the Sterling Club, the roughly 1,900-seat
VIP section behind home plate, Meyer will operate six
other food service options, from white tablecloth fine
dining to in-seat delivery and a wine bar.
Mets COO Jeff Wilpon promises that Citi Field will be
“the paradigm of dining at any sports or entertainment
venue in the country. Danny is a rock star restaurateur,
and Union Square’s restaurants are uniquely New York
and globally renowned. We now have a culinary all-star
at Citi Field.” It probably did not hurt that Meyer is a
lifelong Mets fan and a season ticket holder.
Shack burgers, Shack
Cago Dogs from Shake
Shack and Memphis
baby back ribs from
Blue Smoke.
won the Best New Restaurant award from
the prestigious James Beard Foundation
when it opened, and it has proved to be
no flash in the pan, continuing to wow
diners in the ensuing four years. The
cuisine is an original blend of contemporary American and Alsatian, under
the direction of executive chef Gabriel
Kreuther, an Alsace native, and a representative signature dish is his tartare of
yellowfin tuna and diver scallops.
Kreuther’s roots are reflected in the
deep list of offerings from his native
region, still a drop in the bucket of the
900-plus-bottle wine list, much of
which is displayed in a dramatic glass
wall sweeping through the space, which
was designed to be of museum quality
and overlooks the 31 sculptures in the
museum’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Sculpture Garden. Just next door is the
more casual Bar Room at The Modern,
which also has won breathtaking reviews,
and which has a more down-to-earth
Alsatian touch, featuring the likes of
modern liverwurst with four pickled
vegetables and beer braised pork cheeks
with sauerkraut.
But despite its success, The Modern
is not the only Danny Meyer restaurant
in he heavily renovated MoMA. Café 2
is an Italian-style rosticerria, basically
an upscale cafeteria, and Terrace 5 is an
open-air café.
“The directors of MoMA were looking
to improve the food,” recalls Swinghamer,
“and it was a visionary viewpoint of wanting food and hospitality to play a greater
role in the museum experience. Danny
and I started off by thinking about it from
personal experience, when one of us
goes to a museum, and that started with
