Serve and Return: Feeding the Masses at the Open

When you're feeding 700,000 people in two weeks, you're running a sizable food-service operation. When many of those people spend 10 or more hours on your premises, you're feeding them a lot. When half of them are New Yorkers and much of the remaining half are people well-heeled enough to spend days at a time visiting and paying for not-cheap tickets, you have to try to feed them at least decently.Welcome to the United States Open, which is obviously about tennis, not the food. Although no one comes here to eat ("Hey, let's take the 7 out to Flushing, skip the Sichuan food and eat at the Open!"), almost everyone winds up eating not a snack but a series of them, or even meals. When you consider that the Open will run two sessions almost every day for the next two weeks, and that the average stay on the grounds is six hours and the average ticket-holder visits several times, you recognize that if the food here was as bad as it is at, say, Yankee Stadium, it would be a serious turn-off.Almost all of the food at the concessions and the restaurants is produced by Levy Restaurants, an arm of the gargantuan food service corporation Compass, and it is at least making noise about doing things well despite the scale: a third of the produce and a portion of the fish is sourced locally. Still, most of offerings are typical, and these are generally better than those at other major New York sports arenas. (The hamburger, sadly, is not; I'll get to that.)You may be quite happy eating the slightly more unusual items, like the meatball hero (actually tastier than most of what you would find on the street in the city these days) and a credible lobster roll, and you could look forward to a corned beef sandwich that comes via the Carnegie Deli and is served with appropriately spicy mustard, thankfully. (The pickle, however, doesn't cut it, and it's a given that there is no good rye bread left in New York. Oh, well.)Some SurprisesNone of this is surprising. Surprising, maybe, are the few creations by New Delhi Spice, an Indian concession in the main food court. It offers samosas filled with mashed potatoes, peas and good spices (sadly, the dipping sauce adds nothing), as well as a better-than-average spiced chicken or lamb with vegetables and rice, and a vegetarian wrap with fresh paneer and vegetables that actually taste like something.That's the best of it. (I'm sure it's not a coincidence that the owners of Curry & Curry, a "known" restaurant on 33rd and Lexington, are actually running the place.) The stir-fries at the Chinese place are overcooked beyond belief but hot and at flavorful. (I was warned that the Sichuan chicken was spicy hot; it wasn't.) Some of the well-seasoned Mexican-style stuff — the tostadas, for example — are more satisfying than I would have expected.And I could be wrong about this, but I could swear that the savory crepes — I tried the beef, spinach, mozzarella and mushroom, then the same one without the meat — were good enough to eat again. (My report is based on two gut-stuffing visits, hurriedly done between the opening of the concessions last week and the beginning of the tournament.)Everything I have discussed so far is sold in the food court. Alternatively, you can take a seat or belly up to one of the wine bars (run by Tony Mantuano of Chicago's Spiaggia), and many people do.I wish the food were more adventuresome: they're selling tuna tartare (maybe it's time to find a new trendy dish?), a plate of mozz and sun-dried tomatoes, and a fortified pan Catalan (bread, tomato, ham, manchego). The best item is the ouzo-spiked shrimp and potatoes.There are sit-down restaurants too. If, like 20 percent or so of ticket-holders, you have seats on the Club level, you can get into Champions, a steakhouse (I had just a tiny sampling of this food), or Aces, a fish restaurant that holds no surprises, unless you count the signature tempura-fried portobello mushroom, which didn't impress me. It features a sushi bar organized by Masahuru Morimoto, which guarantees nothing other than that you can get something fancy and pricey.Club ticket-holders may also dine at the Club restaurant, whose undistinguished menu doesn't differ much from that of the Patio, which is open to everyone. The Patio, on a nice day, could be as pleasant an experience as eating in, say, Bryant Park. I would try the roast chicken. (It wasn't open on my visits.)The one real restaurant open to everyone is the Latin-themed, Miami-like Mojito. Over all, I'm not sure this is such a great idea: the ceviche is dull, the lobster quesadilla obvious (and expensive), and the Cuban sandwich not close to the ones you buy in the Miami airport. I will say that the scallop over sweet cornbread is the kind of dish Nuevo Latino restaurants were getting raves for a few years ago, and I had fun eating it.Only Kind of Pricey Back to the hamburger: Levy is bragging about its LaFrieda short rib burger blend, which I imagine is supposed to evoke some kind of Daniel Boulud-ish wizardry. But as good as the meat may be, the standard at the Open is to cook it nearly to death, presumably out of fear of poisoning someone. (Someone could tell Levy that you can run tests on meat to prevent this.) So this is one item I would pass up.You are no doubt wondering about the cost. In contrast to the days when the Open featured jaw-dropping prices, they seem less outrageously high now than they are at many sporting events, even a bargain by some standards. A few examples: corned beef, 13.75; pulled pork, 10; grilled chicken sandwich, 9.75; roast chicken on the patio, 26; seared scallops at Aces, 34; ouzo shrimp at the wine bar, 13 (a small plate). The good samosas are 7.50. And so on.Almost all of the choices are nonvegetarian. Vegetarian options include burritos, tostadas, a curry, a (kind of pathetic) fried rice, the vegetable wrap and a couple of salads. This area of the overall <a href="http://www.salehandbagsbags.com"><strong> Chanel handbags</strong></a> menu should be improved, and it probably will be by next year. It's clear that the organizers recognize the need, but they haven't quite figured out how to get it done right. (Even the Stonyfield concession is pretty meat-friendly.) Vegetarians and especially vegans who are spending a lot of time at the Open will run out of options in a hurry.In general, your level of satisfaction will depend on where you're coming from. When I'm wearing my Midtown-office-worker-get-lunch-in-a-hurry hat, some of this stuff — price aside, of course — would be quite welcome in Times Square. Same would be true at an airport or, as I said, at another sporting event, and some of it would put to shame most of the stuff served at "fast casual" restaurants. Just don't compare it to a place where attention is paid to individual dishes.On the other hand, those places don't feature great tennis.