For as long as people have taken the field or stepped into the arena to test themselves against each other, there have been spectators, and for as long as there have been spectators, there have been pies.

 
Well, not pies exactly, but something like a pie – something to eat while cheering (or indeed booing) the battle playing out before you. And while things have come a long way since the days of oiled Spartans duking it out in the original Olympics (everyone usually wears clothes now, for one thing), for most of our modern era in the West, the food served at stadiums hasn’t changed that much. Even as broadcasting, advertising, changing attention spans and the rise of the professional athlete have dramatically transformed the games themselves, food stayed basic.
 
Or at least it did until now. Restaurant chefs are getting in on the business of how we eat when we’re watching sport, and it is, as they say, a game changer.

As stadiums and arenas became more established, food concessions were set up on the premises, with more varied menus and more comfortable seating. One of the earliest examples of stadium food was the hotdog – the first of them sold at a baseball game in New York City in 1893.
 
In the early 20th century, with the rise of organised sports leagues, the variety of food available at sporting events began to expand. In the US, hamburgers began to be sold at baseball games in the 1920s, while in the UK and Australia meat pies became a popular food served at football matches. As sporting events became more professionalised and commercialised, food vendors began to see the potential for selling a wider variety of foods to hungry spectators.
 
Take a look around today. At the FIFA World Cup in Doha last year, punters at Al Bayt Stadium had the option of potato chips, popcorn and (beef) hotdogs but also the more Qatari-leaning likes of faytayer, a triangular almost-pie, filled with minced meat and spinach, and luqaimat, a sweet flour dumpling drenched in sweet syrup spiced with cardamom. If you want to get really fancy, consider making a booking at Geranium, the fine-diner in Denmark named number one in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2022. It’s located on the eighth floor of Parken, the home of Copenhagen FC – so you could conceivably nip in for a taste of the Spring Universe menu (for a crisp $800 AUD a head) and smash a bit of salted herring in crisp algae with dill stems and aquavit before a game. Not so much with the pies, though.
 
And in 2023, Australia is now well and truly in the game, following a string of high-profile announcements connecting restaurants and major sporting venues. Melbourne chefs Guy Grossi and Alejandro Saravia signed on with the hallowed ground of the MCG last year, and today, when members roll into the Long Room on a game day, Saravia offers them a buffet laden with the likes of leg of O’Connor beef, cooked over a wood fire and served with smoked chilli salsa and chimichurri. Grossi’s menus at the swank Committee Room, meanwhile, place duck and porcini tortellini with caramelised pear, and a rigatoni sauced with a spiced veal ragù and a healthy dusting of pecorino alongside King George whiting presented with a Sicilian-accented arrangement of breadcrumbs, pine nuts, sultanas, saffron and zucchini, and a serious herb-crumbed veal cutlet with bitter leaves dressed with lemon and capers.

Speaking of the MCG, next door in and around Rod Laver Arena, The Australian Open has done an incredible job putting Melbourne well ahead of its international Grand Slam brethren in the food stakes. This year’s talent included Jacqui Challinor offering a Nomad menu (hello mushroom and bone marrow empanadas) on the rooftop, Saint Peter chef Josh Niland with his fast-casual Charcoal Fish concept, plus full-service versions of Rockpool Bar & Grill, Supernormal and Stokehouse and a Penfolds restaurant powered by the team from Magill Estate, not to mention Tacos y Liquor and Ca Com, the casual offshoots from celebrated chefs Aaron Turner, of Igni, and Thi Le from Jeow.
 
It is, says Matt Moran, a sign of the times. The Aria chef reckons it’s tied up with sport being such a key place for corporate entertaining, and also just the general elevation of the food conversation in Australia.
 
 

“It’s all about good produce and just done well. People just want good food that hasn’t been sitting in bain-maries for God knows how long. You don’t have to serve five garnishes with it and trick it up, we just want to make it fresh and clean.”

 
 
Moran is now culinary ambassador across two large Sydney venues, CommBank Stadium in Parramatta and Accor Stadium at Sydney’s Olympic Park, and he says his mission is to put good produce first.
 
“If it’s going to be a chook, it’s going to be a really good roast chook with a good gravy. Slow-cooked lamb shoulder, he says, is the perfect thing in this context for chefs and punters alike. “You can do it in advance, and it’s so bloody easy to reheat in a Rational and put it on a platter and let people share it. That’s delicious.”

You might know Mike Eggert as the chef behind the smash-hit success of Totti’s, which has just spread its wings from its Sydney home base and opened in Lorne on the Victorian coastline. But he also answers to another label: lifelong cricket tragic. (He has fond memories of the sandwiches his nan would make for a test-match: chicken and lettuce with butter and white pepper.)
 
So when Merivale signed on to step up the food offering at the SCG and Allianz Stadium, bringing its exec chefs Jordan Toft, Dan Hong, Ben Greeno and Vincenzo Biondini into the mix, Eggert was ready to lead the charge. And while you can now get noodles and dumplings from Queen Chow and Ms G’s, “the elevated, coastal European stylings” of Bert’s, Coogee Pavilion, wraps from Jimmy’s and a pasta bar from Totti’s, it’s Eggert’s pie and a burger from Biondini that bring it on home for the crowd in the stands.
 
 

“We had a couple of parameters,” says Eggert of the signature SCG pie he developed with the team from Sonoma Bakery. “It needed to be a one-hander. None of this two-handed pie crap.” Structural integrity, as with all good sandwiches and pies, was paramount. “You have to be able to nurse both a beer and a pie.”

 
 
For the filling, braised beef was the starting point. “I didn’t want anything at all fancy. No red wine, mushrooms and stuff. I just wanted an elevated version of a classic beef pie.” The winning mix is simply seasoned with black pepper, “a micro-amount” of onion and garlic, and that’s pretty much it. No packet gravy-flavour, no veggie boosters or chicken booster or MSG. “Just a beefy, meaty, gravy flavour stuffed inside a pie.”