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Football fare goes fancy
The food on offer at football stadiums has gone upmarket, says Jasper Gerard.
By Jasper Gerard
Published: 12:00PM BST 15 Oct 2009
Game on: hamburgers rather than oysters may be the staple for most football fans, but not for moguls and models such as Lakshmi Mittal and Naomi Campbell, or Marco Pierre White, who has opened a restaurant at Chelsea
Football was still mired in an era of pies and potbellies when Roy Keane, then captain of Manchester United, made his famously chippy denunciation of Old Trafford's corporate box holders and their supposedly fancy eating habits. Nowadays if you are served a mere prawn sandwich before a game you might well send it back and demand oysters.
In the past decade, the experience of watching football has been transformed. Today it's all celebrity chefs and cashmere blankets, at least in the smarter seats. No wonder many spectators now look more Boden than bovver boy.
Before watching my team, QPR, last season, I tried its restaurant, W12, and was astounded. It was run by Cipriani, the flashy Mayfair restaurant owned by the championship club's controversial chairman, Flavio Briatore. W12 still caters for high rollers, but has just been taken over by the equally smart Azure, which does society weddings. Here you might run into Briatore's fellow directors Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, or fans of more recent vintage such as Naomi Campbell and Tamara Beckwith. You could be forgiven for wondering if you are at a football match or at Briatore's opulent club in Sardinia. Aromatic girls float past proffering wine while white-suited waiters serve delicious pasta, rounded off with fabulous chocolate torte.
Contrary to the grumbles of some club supporters, W12 also contains its share of long-standing fans who have simply made a few quid. Everything about the evening is superior to the first match I saw at Loftus Road in the Seventies, when a fan was ''glassed'' before my seven-year-old eyes. Even a couple of years ago my W12 experience would have been unimaginable. Then, I had been invited to sit on the club's executive board and suggested that if the club wanted to increase revenue it could try serving edible food. I was greeted with blank looks.
Belatedly the food has also improved for ordinary fans. Now I can choose between five different red wines with my half-time panini and although the stewards still render the trolley dollies on easyJet almost charming, catering staff actually make me feel like a customer rather than a hooligan.
And standards are slowly improving right across the board. In what pass for the cheap seats today many fans can now enjoy paella or crêpes before cheering on their team. Whisper it, but you might even find a discreet salad or quiche. If Jamie Oliver can teach fans of Rotherham United how to make Parmesan chicken breasts wrapped in prosciutto with asparagus, then football has come a long way since the manager of Leeds told fans if they wanted entertainment, they could visit a circus.
At the newly built and very smart Emirates Stadium, Arsenal has the modish Fans' Restaurant. A three-course lunch (£39.95) includes paysanne vegetables – what would Keane make of that?
But such progress is beer and pork scratchings compared with Chelsea, where Marco Pierre White runs Marco for Roman Abramovich (even though the chef supports Arsenal). Foie gras comes with toasted brioche, naturally, and the menu also offers oysters, crab and salmon. If S****horpe draws Chelsea in the Cup, its fans might recognise black pudding, but not, perhaps, with a "panache of sea scallops".
It's all about appealing to both sexes. "We offer steak and fish and chips for the blokes, but we also have lots of girl stuff," says Marco Pierre White. He sees the opening of Marco as part of a wider trend. "It's incredible how it's changed,'' he says. ''Chelsea has Marco, Arsenal has Raymond [Blanc], Norwich has Delia and Rangers has Gordon."
Actually, that is his little joke, Rangers is about the one place the empire-building Gordon Ramsay has yet to open, though his old club does boast a restaurant with "award-winning chefs". This, by the way, offers haggis, though Glaswegians brought up on Mars Bars in batter might blanch at duck salad, oriental stir-fry and blackened Cajun salmon.
Food, like football, is often a work in progress. Take Newcastle. Its restaurant/bar is called Shearer's, not after a celebrated chef but after their popular former player and manager. Here diners can look forward to "Shearer's surf 'n' turf" (steak with scampi). Still, at least the restaurant flirts with local sourcing by offering beef and Newcastle Brown Ale pie. And with soup for £2.95 and hand-carved ham sandwiches with pease pudding for £4.75, it has the merit of being cheap.
Edible food has even caught on in the third tier of English football. At Norwich, where Delia Smith is a major shareholder, there is talk of seasonal ingredients, dinners with actress Julie Walters and evenings with the executive head chef. Even cookery courses are on offer.
Only the most romantic fan could say going to football was better in the Seventies, prices apart. And most fans realise this. The frustration is not that football has changed, but that for the average fan it hasn't changed fast enough. While corporate facilities have been growing ever grander for years, clubs are only now realising that it's not only moguls and models that demand decent facilities.
The good news is that QPR are on a good run, so if you just excuse me a moment I had better just pour myself a splash more Bolly.
The food on offer at football stadiums has gone upmarket, says Jasper Gerard.
By Jasper Gerard
Published: 12:00PM BST 15 Oct 2009
Game on: hamburgers rather than oysters may be the staple for most football fans, but not for moguls and models such as Lakshmi Mittal and Naomi Campbell, or Marco Pierre White, who has opened a restaurant at Chelsea
Football was still mired in an era of pies and potbellies when Roy Keane, then captain of Manchester United, made his famously chippy denunciation of Old Trafford's corporate box holders and their supposedly fancy eating habits. Nowadays if you are served a mere prawn sandwich before a game you might well send it back and demand oysters.
In the past decade, the experience of watching football has been transformed. Today it's all celebrity chefs and cashmere blankets, at least in the smarter seats. No wonder many spectators now look more Boden than bovver boy.
Before watching my team, QPR, last season, I tried its restaurant, W12, and was astounded. It was run by Cipriani, the flashy Mayfair restaurant owned by the championship club's controversial chairman, Flavio Briatore. W12 still caters for high rollers, but has just been taken over by the equally smart Azure, which does society weddings. Here you might run into Briatore's fellow directors Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, or fans of more recent vintage such as Naomi Campbell and Tamara Beckwith. You could be forgiven for wondering if you are at a football match or at Briatore's opulent club in Sardinia. Aromatic girls float past proffering wine while white-suited waiters serve delicious pasta, rounded off with fabulous chocolate torte.
Contrary to the grumbles of some club supporters, W12 also contains its share of long-standing fans who have simply made a few quid. Everything about the evening is superior to the first match I saw at Loftus Road in the Seventies, when a fan was ''glassed'' before my seven-year-old eyes. Even a couple of years ago my W12 experience would have been unimaginable. Then, I had been invited to sit on the club's executive board and suggested that if the club wanted to increase revenue it could try serving edible food. I was greeted with blank looks.
Belatedly the food has also improved for ordinary fans. Now I can choose between five different red wines with my half-time panini and although the stewards still render the trolley dollies on easyJet almost charming, catering staff actually make me feel like a customer rather than a hooligan.
And standards are slowly improving right across the board. In what pass for the cheap seats today many fans can now enjoy paella or crêpes before cheering on their team. Whisper it, but you might even find a discreet salad or quiche. If Jamie Oliver can teach fans of Rotherham United how to make Parmesan chicken breasts wrapped in prosciutto with asparagus, then football has come a long way since the manager of Leeds told fans if they wanted entertainment, they could visit a circus.
At the newly built and very smart Emirates Stadium, Arsenal has the modish Fans' Restaurant. A three-course lunch (£39.95) includes paysanne vegetables – what would Keane make of that?
But such progress is beer and pork scratchings compared with Chelsea, where Marco Pierre White runs Marco for Roman Abramovich (even though the chef supports Arsenal). Foie gras comes with toasted brioche, naturally, and the menu also offers oysters, crab and salmon. If S****horpe draws Chelsea in the Cup, its fans might recognise black pudding, but not, perhaps, with a "panache of sea scallops".
It's all about appealing to both sexes. "We offer steak and fish and chips for the blokes, but we also have lots of girl stuff," says Marco Pierre White. He sees the opening of Marco as part of a wider trend. "It's incredible how it's changed,'' he says. ''Chelsea has Marco, Arsenal has Raymond [Blanc], Norwich has Delia and Rangers has Gordon."
Actually, that is his little joke, Rangers is about the one place the empire-building Gordon Ramsay has yet to open, though his old club does boast a restaurant with "award-winning chefs". This, by the way, offers haggis, though Glaswegians brought up on Mars Bars in batter might blanch at duck salad, oriental stir-fry and blackened Cajun salmon.
Food, like football, is often a work in progress. Take Newcastle. Its restaurant/bar is called Shearer's, not after a celebrated chef but after their popular former player and manager. Here diners can look forward to "Shearer's surf 'n' turf" (steak with scampi). Still, at least the restaurant flirts with local sourcing by offering beef and Newcastle Brown Ale pie. And with soup for £2.95 and hand-carved ham sandwiches with pease pudding for £4.75, it has the merit of being cheap.
Edible food has even caught on in the third tier of English football. At Norwich, where Delia Smith is a major shareholder, there is talk of seasonal ingredients, dinners with actress Julie Walters and evenings with the executive head chef. Even cookery courses are on offer.
Only the most romantic fan could say going to football was better in the Seventies, prices apart. And most fans realise this. The frustration is not that football has changed, but that for the average fan it hasn't changed fast enough. While corporate facilities have been growing ever grander for years, clubs are only now realising that it's not only moguls and models that demand decent facilities.
The good news is that QPR are on a good run, so if you just excuse me a moment I had better just pour myself a splash more Bolly.