Eating at T-Mobile Park these days is as much Cracker Jack as it is Dungeness crab pizza. In this Q&A, Seattle chef and award-winning food writer J. Kenji López-Alt maps a game plan to bring local flavor to every inning, including with his very own Seattle-style teriyaki pop-up.

J. Kenji López-Alt is wearing a “I <3 Teriyaki” T-shirt underneath a Seattle Mariners jersey with his last name on the back. As the acclaimed chef and best-selling cookbook author takes the pitcher’s mound at T-Mobile Park, two thoughts cross his mind.

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Eating at T-Mobile Park these days is as much Cracker Jack as it is Dungeness crab pizza. In this Q&A, Seattle chef and award-winning food writer J. Kenji López-Alt maps a game plan to bring local flavor to every inning, including with his very own Seattle-style teriyaki pop-up.

“My primary goal is not to embarrass myself in front of my kids,” he says, jokingly. “And then my secondary goal is being completely okay with embarrassing myself in front of my kids. I figured there was a 50/50 chance that I’d get it somewhere near the plate.”

Turns out, he had nothing to worry about. The ball sailed right over, landing into the waiting glove of Mariners third base coach Kristopher Negrón.

Cheers from the crowd naturally followed. Of course, there was also plenty of excitement for the heat López-Alt brought to the park that night as a culinary pro. The main point of the chef’s MLB debut: his Teriyaki Night pop-up.

As is often the case with López-Alt’s endeavors, the event was a hit, with tickets selling out well ahead of time and the evening ending with many a satisfied baseball — and teriyaki — fan.

To anyone familiar with his work, his stats and bona fides in the food world are packed. His popular books include The Food Lab, one of two to win a prestigious James Beard Foundation award. He’s a regular in both print and video for the New York Times, and has some 809,000 Instagram followers and over 134,000 followers on TikTok. And, of course, he is the creator and host of Kenji’s Cooking Show on YouTube, where he has nearly 1.7 million YouTube subscribers — and where he recently posted a video about his favorite foods at T-Mobile Park, serving as a walk-up to his Teriyaki Night event.

Here he reveals his secret sauce (somewhat literally) for the perfect teriyaki plate, the real importance behind throwing the first pitch and eating anything and everything at T-Mobile Park.

Your sold-out Teriyaki Night pop-up at T-Mobile Park was huge success. How does teriyaki fit into the world of Seattle baseball?

I grew up in New York, and in New York, pizza is the big democratizer, the one that everybody eats and the one that everybody enjoys and the one that you can get. It’s like every neighborhood has their local pizza spot and they’re all a little different, but they’re all New York pizzas. So when I moved to Seattle five years ago, I found that teriyaki is the Seattle equivalent. It’s a dish that was created and is still mostly cooked by immigrants. It’s inexpensive and filling. Every neighborhood has its own spot. And it is really unique to Seattle: Chicken teriyaki was invented here by a Japanese American immigrant in 1976, Toshi Kasahara, and it’s since gone on to sort of take over the entire area. There are over a hundred teriyaki shops in and around the Seattle area.

I’ve been following the Mariners since I moved here in 2020, and I love going to games. They reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in talking to them about teriyaki, because, despite the wide range of food options available at T-Mobile Park, they’d never done teriyaki. It felt like it was time to add it to the menu. It’s a hometown dish for the hometown team.

What does your Major League twist on the local dish look like?

Of course, rice and chicken teriyaki with sauce. People could get hot sauce if they wanted to make it spicy for themselves, but it’s not spicy by default. And then a little salad of pickles, daikon and carrots, which is not the traditional accompaniment to teriyaki. Traditionally teriyaki in Seattle would come with either a cabbage salad or an iceberg salad that’s served cold. But because we serve teriyaki hot and ready to go, it didn’t make sense to include warm wilted iceberg. So we went with a pickled carrot and daikon salad instead. I think it goes really nicely with the teriyaki. It’s tangy, a little bit sweet, crunchy. A nice contrast to the chicken.

What’s the strategy that you would recommend for people coming to see a Mariners game and wanting to try out some great local food?

I mean, there are so many choices and a lot of them are really amazing. I have two little kids, and so usually when I go to a game, it’s with a couple of other parents and all their kids, and we'll divide and conquer. We'll each take a little different section and pick up a few different things and then bring it all back to our seats, and then we'll all just share everything.

You recently posted a video where you pretty much ate your way through T-Mobile Park. What are some foods that people can get at T-Mobile Park that you think really represent Seattle cuisine?

T-Mobile Park offers a lot of foods that are just a mesh of various cultures and cuisines. It is, I think, actually quite a good cross section of the immigrant community in Seattle and the types of food that have developed here and have taken root here.

There’s a very big Japanese influence in Seattle cuisine, so curry katsu from Tamari Bar, the teriyaki, obviously. Moto Pizza has Detroit-style pizza, but it’s got some very personal twists as far as the toppings and the presentation goes. You can’t really get it anywhere else. And it’s wonderful. People waited online for it for months when it was just a small shop, and now you can get it at the ballpark and it’s just as good.

I also would say getting garlic fries from Ivar’s. I think most cities that have a garlic-growing region near them have their own version of garlic fries, but that feels like a real T-Mobile Park staple. I think it’s amazing the quality of sushi and poke that you can get there from Sushi Nakagawa. I never would've imagined when I was a kid that one day I’d go to a baseball game and get really good sushi. Seattle has a very strong seafood culture, and so that's represented in the ballpark as well.

It's not just peanuts and Cracker Jack and hot dogs. There’s a lot of local representation.

How was throwing the first pitch on Teriyaki Night?

I thought about it sort of the way I think about cooking a meal, which is that not everything you cook is going to work out. But the important thing to remember is that when you’re cooking for your friends and family, the food is only the consolation prize. The more important part is that you're showing this expression of hospitality and generosity, and you’re getting your friends or your family around a table so that you can all hang out and enjoy each other’s company. And so I thought about throwing out the first pitch the same way.

It's like, who really cares if the ball goes over the plate or not? As long as everyone is there having a good time, then that’s the more important part.

What’s next on your plate for teriyaki and the city of Seattle?

I’m going to continue going around Seattle and trying all the teriyaki I can and sort of celebrating it as much as I can, as a way to get to know my new city. I think the best way to get to know a place is to eat its food. We have had thoughts of a long-term project, having a teriyaki festival of some kind or having made-to-order teriyaki at T-Mobile Park. Right now, the teriyaki that you get is from the hot and ready to go walk-off kiosks, but having it cooked to order so that you get a more true teriyaki experience top to bottom would be really nice. So that's something I’d be interested in helping them develop at the park. But for now I'm just thrilled to be part of this and to be part of the pride of my adopted hometown.

I’ve been working on a teriyaki recipe for a long time and refining it now that I’m in Seattle and have a new perspective on specifically what Seattle teriyaki is. So I’m planning on releasing both a recipe and a video showing people how they can make Seattle style teriyaki at home sometime this summer.

Finally, the Mariners have started off the season doing really well. What are your predictions, are we going to see a teriyaki pop-up in October?

Hopefully we’re going to go all the way!

For more information on Magenta Status benefits at T-Mobile Park, including information about Post Malone’s concert on June 26, visit https://www.mlb.com/mariners/ballpark/information/t-mobile-perks.

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