Toronto stadium dishes up an assist

BMO Field kitchen being used to provide meals for city’s most vulnerable

Having already turned Scotiabank Arena into a giant kitchen, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is adding BMO Field to the cooking mix.

With the help of sponsor BMO, the lakefront stadium is being repurposed to add more kitchen muscle to help produce meals for Toronto’s front-line health workers and the city’s most vulnerable during the pandemic.

Adding BMO Field’s primary kitchen is expected to increase the number of daily meals to up to 13,000 from the initial goal of 10,000. The program total to date should hit the 100,000meal milestone this week. MLSE president and CEO Michael Friisdahl has seen firsthand how the meals have been received by workers at local hospitals.

“It’s just an outpouring of gratitude from the people that we should be really thanking, from the bottom of our hearts, for what they do each and every day on the front lines,” said Friisdahl.

BMO Field, home to Toronto FC and the Argonauts, has a large production kitchen adjacent to the BMO Club under the east stand.

“It’s very spacious, which allows us to work with our social distancing rules in mind,” said MLSE culinary director Chris Zielinski. “And then having the (BMO) Club right next door with the tables that are the right height for building meals just made it a perfect location.”

The program is also taking advantage of the nine kitchens at Scotiabank Arena.

Zielinski has some 25 chefs at work along with 75 support staff, assembling the meals at the two venues.

While the venues provide the space to assemble meals, Zielinski says the actual cooking process remains challenging. The chefs can’t work in their normal close quarters and mass production requires special cooking tools.

“Our regular format, we would use lots of small pots and pans. Those are no good to us right now because we’re not doing anything of that size. Large ovens, large tilting skillets, all sorts of big pots, all that stuff is getting use to the max,” Zielinski said. Other companies have stepped up to help, with the likes of Higgins Event Rentals providing more ovens.

In the first two weeks of operation, the meal program has used almost 25,000 pounds of chicken, 15,000 pounds of potatoes, 10,000 pounds of mixed vegetables and 8,000 pounds of pasta.

Second Harvest and local suppliers and sponsors are supplying fresh ingredients daily. The chefs then turn those supplies, along with other food purchased or donated, into readyto-heat single-serving meals.