Editor's Note: Matchdays are full of energy, drama, movement and feats of athletic achievements. All eyes are on the field, watching the ball and the players as the clock ticks forward through 90 minutes.
But the pitch is not the only place where there is activity. There's pregame pageantry and anthems, referees getting set, photographers snapping pictures and more. In the last of this special "Sideline View" series, we learn more about what happens behind-the-scenes on the preparation of food in helping make a soccer game at Providence Park become the memorable experience that it is.
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PORTLAND, Ore. – Imagine having to figure out a way to feed over 21,000 people every week. There's a catch, though. Not only must the food you serve be varied and delicious, but you only have three days and a dozen cooks to help you pull off the feat.
Think you could do it?
Nearly every week throughout the duration of the Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns FC seasons, this is Justin Lee's challenge. Lee, Executive Chef for Centerplate, the catering company that services Providence Park, can only laugh when he thinks about the scale of the entire gameday operation.
“It's insane,” he says with a shake of his head.
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- Sideline View: The art of game photography
Set up in the stadium’s main commissary underneath the western stands are a collection of burners, ovens, walk-in refrigerators, and an army of “hot boxes” (industrial-sized food warmers that stand about as tall as an average person). Lee uses all of them to feed fans, press, staff, and players for every Timbers and Thorns home game.
Lee's job begins on the Monday before a weekend match. That's when he begins creating the menus and listing out all of the products and ingredients he needs to secure from his vendors in the small window of time before prep and cooking begin later in the week. Making this even more challenging for himself, Lee tries not to repeat menu items.
“It's really just like getting creative and giving the fans something that they've never had before, giving the press something they've never had before,” Lee explains. “I want them to experience something new. I want them to say, 'That food at Providence Park is on point.'”
By Friday, Lee and his kitchen staff have already spent a day preparing much of the food that they will serve at a typical match on a Sunday. To prove this point, Lee opens the door to the commissary's walk-in refrigerator. Inside sits tray after tray of food, each already prepared and cooked and ready to be heated up and served on game day.
At the same time, on the other side of Providence Park, Club Chef Mike Martinez and his crew buzz around a different kitchen as they prepare the food that will serve the KeyBank Club and food carts. You can read the intensity in the room on the focused expressions of the cooks; they know that gameday is fast approaching.
On Sunday morning – Lee and the rest of the kitchen staff arrive at the stadium by 7 a.m. (even earlier if the match kicks in the early afternoon) – the whole operation runs like clockwork.
In the commissary, Sous-chef Brian King holds court, bustling around his prep area making sure that his cooks are properly assembling the albacore tuna sliders meant for the press box. When those have all been placed on trays and wrapped in plastic wrap, King makes sure that the item is crossed off the two-and-a-half page menu of items.
Upstairs on the second floor, in a small kitchen that serves the Sunset Porsche Audi Suites, veteran cook Mike Ellis and an assistant stay buzzing as they prepare all the food served in the suites.
At the food carts above the KeyBank Club, six of Lee's cooks begin preparing their work spaces before gates open at noon. Cooks Elliott and Gabe, who are working at the Bob's BBQ cart, feed wood into the smoker they'll use to make brisket tacos and prepare for the massive numbers of fans they expect to feed ahead of kickoff.
Downstairs in the KeyBank Club, Martinez monitors the activity in the brunch buffet and marvels at just how smoothly everything has gone so far.
“Usually [there are] a couple speed bumps to overcome,” Martinez says only minutes before kickoff. “When it's this smooth, I try to find something irregular.”
Though the match finishes as the clock ticks to 90 minutes, that’s the moment the kitchen crew kicks into their own extra time. They still face a mountain of dishes that must all be washed in the commissary, a mountain that continues to grow as dishes from the suites begin arriving in waves.
“We're the first people here and usually the last people to leave,” says Lee.
Even after the kitchen staff has taken turns whittling down that mountain to something more manageable, the prospect of starting the process all over again the next day remains fixed in the back of their minds.
“It's challenging to say the least,” he says. There's a pause. “But it's fun.”
