Pittsburgh Pirates: Hidden Heroes – PNC Park Executive Chef Adam Holt

The Pittsburgh Pirates Have Many Hidden Heroes.

There are the men who play on the field every night, whose jerseys we wear, whose names we chant, whose triumphs we celebrate, whose losses we mourn. They are a special kind of hero – the ones on the baseball cards – they are members of an elite brotherhood just 750 strong who every year captivate our minds and our hearts playing a child’s game on a very grown-up stage. But for every Major League Baseball team that takes the field each night, there is another team working behind the scenes to make sure every game goes off without a hitch – for the players and the fans. They are the Hidden Heroes of baseball – and these are their stories.

For PNC Park Head Chef Adam Holt, the Simple Approach is Always a Home Run

The myriad of tunnels and hallways of PNC Park are bustling with activity. Littered with pallets stacked high with anything from energy bars to Gatorade coolers to plastic cups and boxes of garbage bags, the concrete passages also serve as a reunion point for many seasonal workers returning to the stadium after a four-month hiatus. The massive kitchens for the premium spaces at the park, which are located behind and above the visiting team dugout, are buzzing as 50 cooks, 10 dishwashers and other assistants scurry about. They aren’t chopping, prepping or sautéing food for any of the 5,000 fans they serve for seven hours a night, roughly 80 times a year, just yet. Instead, fresh from another morning training session, these folks are cleaning, disinfecting and setting up the already immaculate spaces where they will spend the next six (hopefully seven) months of their lives. They are a team as closely unified as the one those fans they cook for come to PNC to see play. And they march behind Executive Chef Adam Holt, who is extremely calm and centered considering the week in front of him. It’s Tuesday, March 29, 2016 and baseball season starts in five days.

It’s not a surprise that Holt is a chef. “It’s all I’ve ever really done, food.” he said, relaxing back into a plush chair in an empty luxury box at PNC Park. His mother, grandmother and aunt ran a catering business named Potpourri in his hometown of Butler, Penn. during the 1980’s and little Adam was right in the thick of things with them.

“I’ve always been around food. I grew up working with them, helping them with catering, providing all of the manpower a little kid could do,” he recalled. “As I got older, they gave me more things to do involving food and I really liked doing it.”

During high school, Holt worked in a variety of restaurant jobs but found himself directionless after graduation. But one Saturday night, while watching television at around 2 a.m. with his girlfriend at the time, they saw an infomercial for a culinary school. “She looked at me and said, ‘Oh, by the way, you have an interview with them on Tuesday – I called them and set it up Friday,’” he said smiling. “She knew before I did that this was what I was supposed to do.”

And in the way that fate works, Holt started coursework in 1996 at the International Culinary Academy, which he said, pointing out the window of the box toward the scoreboard, “was across the bridge, across the river, right there.” At that time, the Pirates still played in Three Rivers Stadium, and the current site of PNC Park was a parking lot. But not just any parking lot. “This was the lot we parked in at the culinary school,” Holt said almost incredulously. “I basically parked on home plate. So yeah, it’s crazy that I ended up back here, running this operation.”

Holt described his adventures following graduation from culinary school as “one big Northeast loop of the country that brought me back here.” He started at The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort in New Hampshire, where he took on entry roles as a sous chef and saucier, eventually making his way through working in all 18 of the resort’s various restaurants and food stations in two years. “I got a lot of great experience there and exposure to so many different types of operations, by the end the chef could put me anywhere and know I would do my job well,” he said.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”Adam Holt” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=”24″]“It’s all I’ve ever really done, food.”[/pullquote]

From there, at the age of 22, he took on an executive chef role at a restaurant in the middle of Maine, which is where he first started to get an inkling of the type of chef’s role he’d like in the future. “I was there for one and a half years and it was great for the title and the work,” Holt recalled. “But it wasn’t what I wanted to do at the time. They were making more home-style food, and I wanted something more.”

That led him to take on roles in New Jersey at first a luxury golf/country club and then a cricket club.

“I was young and those jobs were such great learning opportunities for me as a chef. It was before everything in the kitchen became so PC, so that image you have in your head of chefs yelling and screaming – things you aren’t allowed to do anymore – that really did happen. It sounds harsh, but really, I learned so much that made me a better chef in those environments,” he laughed.

Those roles set him up to work at the former King of Prussia Hilton property, which gave him experience in creating gourmet menus and cooking on an elevated level for “large volume rooms.” When that property was being sold, he began looking for his next adventure and found it online – a job posting as Executive Sous Chef for PNC Park through Levy Restaurant Group. Knowing that it would take him back home sealed the deal.

“This is the perfect city for me – it’s not too big, it’s not too small, there’s great growth and things are only going to keep getting better here,” he said. “The culture of this city, the people in this city…it’s what made me want to be back here. It’s home to me.”

He started working at PNC in 2007 and was promoted to Executive Chef three years later.

In his role, Holt manages the kitchen operations for all of the premium areas of the stadium – the luxury suites, Club Cambria, Pittsburgh Baseball Club and the Lexus Club. Combined, they seat up to 5,000 people and offer a variety of different food experiences throughout.

“I get to experience the ultimate in variety here,” he said. “When you work at a restaurant, really, the biggest change you get regularly is with the menus. Here, though, I have three distinct areas that let me draw from all of my previous experiences.” Serving the Luxury Suites is closest to a mass production catering operation because each order is for large quantities of menu items that don’t rotate too often. The Lexus Club more closely resembles a restaurant-style setting where chefs can incorporate more interesting ingredients and fine-tune dishes while creating new menus regularly. The Pittsburgh Baseball Club area allows his chefs to try their hand at creating “More traditional baseball park food – but with a big gourmet twist” and finally, in Club Cambria, the food is prepared practically right in from of guests.

“It’s always an interesting day because I can go up to the different levels and really cook in as many different ways as I want,” he said. “I get to play with menus constantly, which is also a lot of fun because I’m the kind of guy who gets bored fast – so the more variety the better.”

All of that flexibility comes with a price, though. On prep days – meaning when the team is out of town prior to a home stand, he may work closer to a “regular” eight hours. On game days, he routinely puts in 12-14 hour shifts. The kitchens are always working a day ahead whenever they can, but never have more than three days’ worth of food on hand. “I buy everything as fresh as possible. Food is just better that way and that’s what our guests deserve. The best, freshest food possible,” Holt said. “We flip everything really quick here.”

He estimates that more than 80% of all of the food sold in the premium areas is made in-house. The exceptions are breads – although they do use local bread companies (and receive daily shipments) and the desserts, which are provided by Sweet Streets. “We would do them in-house if we could, but we don’t have a full pastry kitchen on-site, so we work to source the best quality products we can,” he added. Additionally, sponsored items like – Sugardale hotdogs and Mrs. T’s Pierogies are obviously not made on site. “But really, can you get better pierogies than Mrs. T’s?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”

One surprising element made completely onsite – all of the sauces, salad dressings, dips, spreads, etc. In fact, there is one team dedicated to their creation and a 10×10 freezer just their storage. How much are we talking about? 700 gallons, including 25 different vinaigrettes, all of which is consumed in less than two days.

Also cooked 100% on site – the meats served in the BBQ Pit in the Pittsburgh Baseball Club Level. Its legendary brisket is smoked in-house for 14 hours and hand sliced in the stand as it’s ordered. Holt said they go through an average of 250 pounds of brisket every game.

One thing that amazes him, even nine years into his career at the park, is the management of something that seems as simple as kegs. “It is crazy to see them staged, stacked ceiling to floor. And until you see it in action, people just can’t understand what it takes to get something like beer here, and the amount of organization it takes to get it into the stand and to get those empties out of the stands and back behind the scenes again, and full kegs delivered back into the stands without interrupting service,” he said.

It is an effort the team excels in, he added. [pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=”24″]“From the curb coming in to leaving the stadium after the game, the Pirates do a great job of thinking through the whole fan experience.”[/pullquote]

And for as much as we hear about the science that goes into fielding a winning ball club, there’s a lot that goes into feeding their hungry fans, too.

“Just one of the things we spend a lot of time on is looking at how much lines move in all of the concession stands,” Holt revealed. “There are people out there all the time just to clock how long a guest is in line, how long their transition time is and how long it takes them to walk away from the stand. [The front office people] don’t want you to be away from the game that long. Because that is the most important thing that happens at PNC – the food is just part of it.”

Holt credits his team with making that food part exceptional.

“Just this morning I had all of the staff into a training session and I told them how proud I am of what I do – but that it was more important to me that they are proud of what they do,” he said. “Because I’m just the mastermind behind what happens. I make sure they have the tools they need, I make sure the food is delivered and the ovens work. They’re the ones doing it night after night.”

That’s not to say that Holt is a completely hands-off chef. There are “chef-manager” types he explained, but that isn’t him. “If I had to go 2-3 days without being in the kitchen with the guys, I’d go nuts,” he said laughing. “And one of my favorite things to do isn’t always the cooking – it’s working with someone who’s never been in a kitchen like this before, or never made a particular dish before. I always tell them, ‘This isn’t scary. It’s intimidating. But that’s okay – we’ll get you through it.’”

And if the guy who seems to always wear a smile is having a bad day?

“We all have bad days. And when we do, to collect ourselves, most chefs have to go out the back door of the kitchen and see a parking lot and dumpsters. But when I have a bad day?” he says pointing out the windows of the suite, “I take 20 steps out of my kitchen and see that – this stadium, the river, those bridges. And suddenly, I’m not having a bad day anymore.”

 

This is the first article in our new series, The Pittsburgh Pirates: Hidden Heroes, where we go in-depth with the people behind the scenes in Pirates baseball. Is there a Hidden Hero you’ve always wondered about? Let us know in the comments!