Pupusa hot dogs are among items set to debut at Minute Maid Park
When you walk into Minute Maid Park this Astros season, you’ll have plenty of options for standard ballpark fare. If a stadium hot dog or nachos aren’t going to do the trick though, Aramark is trying to make sure you’re covered with twists on some old favorites.
How about a pupusa hot dog? Or maybe some funnel cake fries? If you’re an Alex Bregman fan, there are savory items all over the stadium covered in Breggy Bomb seasoning and sauces.
Ever since the Astros got the final out in the 2022 World Series, Scott Strickland, Aramark’s executive chef at Minute Maid, has been brainstorming with his team to come up with creative additions to the park’s menu.
“Coming up with something new every year is the hardest part,” said Strickland, who is going into his sixth season at the ballpark. “I try to keep up with social media food trends to see what’s going on out there. I ask my kids and their friends, ‘Hey, what would you like to see?’ Literally, everything’s been done in food, so it’s all about your spin on it and what you can throw onto it and how you can get your personality into it.”
That means instead of a traditional hot dog — although there are plenty of those available — you can have a pupusa dog instead, which is a Slovacek sausage wrapped in a fluffy pupusa, which is a type of flatbread made famous in Central America. That mashup of a ballpark favorite will be available on the lower level on the first base side at Elote, which also will have Texas beef tostadas and empanadas as well as actual cobs of elote,
“We have delicious pupusas, and you can buy a traditional sausage wrap at places, so why can’t we put those two ideas together? It’s delicious,” Strickland said. “Then, you have elote, and we just think being able to walk around with a whole corn of cob is going to be cool.”
Aramarkis adding a few new concepts to the ballpark, bringing in an Italian spot and a Cajun location to the upper level. The Italian stand features a variety of sandwiches, including meatball, Italian sausage and chicken parmesan.
The Cajun stand focuses on po boys with shrimp or catfish, both flavored with Bregman’s Breggy Bomb seasoning, which also will be used on the barbecue in the stadium.
“We’re focusing a lot on the upper level because we have a great fan base up there and we need to give them some great food,” Strickland said. “And, we really needed the Cajun/Creole option. We’re closer to the Louisiana border than we are the Mexico border, right? We have all this Tex-Mex stuff, so why not bring a little cajun/creole to the mix?”
Don’t forget about dessert. Aramark is putting out a twist on the traditional ballpark pretzel by coating it in cinnamon sugar instead of salt. There also will be funnel cake fries.
“Everyone loves the salted pretzel, so we added the cinnamon sugar pretzel that you can eat afterwards,” Strickland said. “The funnel cake fries are more eater friendly. You can share them with your friends instead of having a big funnel cake and making a mess all over yourself.”
If you want to have a lot less fun, there also will be fruit carts throughout the stadium.