Charge ‘em with an error

As a die-hard Dodger fan for the last 52 years -- and a season ticket-holder for 23 -- I was thrilled when the team got off to such a great start this year, winning 12 of its first 14 games. But I didn’t expect it to continue, and while I’m disappointed, I’m not surprised that the Dodgers lost four of their next five games.

Like several baseball analysts -- and every other Dodger fan I know -- I thought throughout the off-season that executives who run the Dodgers made one bad move after another, on player personnel, stadium seating and ticket pricing.

But given how badly management has screwed up food service at Dodger Stadium in recent years, it never occurred to me that the new regime could -- or would -- make things even worse there too.

In fact, when I heard that management had changed concessionaires this season, replacing Aramark with Chicago-based Levy Restaurants, which previously was responsible only for the “premiere dining” -- in stadium suites, the Dugout Club and the Stadium Club restaurant -- I thought the food might even be better.

I was wrong.

When I went to the Dodger game Monday night -- my third visit to the stadium this season -- I decided to try every new item that Levy has started to serve.

Gone (temporarily, according to Levy executives) was one of my former standbys, the “Southwestern” dog, topped with chili, cheese and jalapeno peppers. So I’d start with Panda Express.

Panda Express? At Dodger Stadium?

I realize the Dodgers are trying to cater to their Chinese fans (and other lovers of Chinese food) -- much as they cater to their Japanese fans (and other sushi lovers) with a sushi stand on the loge level, behind home plate.

But Panda Express?

Most folks would probably skip lunch or have nothing more than a salad if they planned such a ballpark orgy that evening. I belong to the prime-the-pump school of heavy eating, though, so to get my stomach in shape for Dodger Stadium, I had a double-chili-cheeseburger at Tommy’s for lunch.

Then, suddenly remembering that I was supposed to go to my doctor the next morning for my annual cholesterol test, I called his office and rescheduled the appointment for several days later, hoping my arteries might at least partially unclog by then.

As usual, I got to Dodger Stadium 45 minutes before game time and went straight to the concession stand.

Panda Express offers several combination plates at $7.25 each, all featuring something called “orange-flavored chicken.” It also serves a “Mandarin chicken” bowl ($6), a chicken egg roll and a “veggie spring roll” (both $3.75 apiece).

I ordered so much I couldn’t have carried it all back to my seat if my friend Michael hadn’t come along to root, kibitz and help tote.

I started with the veggie spring roll, which was nicely crunchy but largely tasteless -- proof anew, if I needed it, that anything called “veggie” anything should always be assiduously avoided.

Next up, the chicken egg roll. I had trouble finding the chicken in it. That may have been a blessing in disguise, given the chicken I did find in the No. 2 combination plate.

The orange-flavored stuff was starchy and overly sweet; it reminded me of very bad sweet-and-sour chicken. Kung pao chicken is supposed to be spicy, but the kung pao chicken in this combo was anything but. And the few peanuts in it were mushy.

Worse, the entire dish, served alongside fried rice and what was described as “chow mein,” looked utterly unappetizing, much like the food Ed Norton used to eat in the old Jackie Gleason show, food that prompted Gleason’s character, Loudmouth Charlie, to say, “What’s that slop you’re eating? It looks like an old toupee floating down the gutter.”

By the time I finished -- well, OK, I didn’t exactly finish -- my kung pao chicken and moved on to the equally flavor-challenged Mandarin chicken bowl, the seats around me were filling up, and folks were beginning to look suspiciously at my gathering dinner detritus.

Undeterred, I washed down this misbegotten attempt at Chinese food with another of Levy’s new additions to the 2005 Dodger Stadium menu -- a margarita.

Given how concerned most sports executives are these days about rowdy fans, I was surprised to hear that the Dodgers had added more hard liquor to the traditional ballpark beer selection -- of which Dodger Stadium has more than a dozen varieties.

But I needn’t have worried. My $7.50 margarita, served on the rocks in a large, plastic cup with salt on the rim, as I requested, didn’t seem to have enough tequila in it to lower inhibitions or trigger misbehavior in even the most unstable fan.

It was sweet, much like a glass of industrial-strength margarita mix over which someone had whispered, “Tequila.”

The man serving the margaritas told me they’re made with “premium tequila -- Jose Cuervo Gold,” he said, pointing to an empty Jose Cuervo bottle.

The drinks are pre-mixed and come out of a spout, though, so I didn’t actually see him pour the tequila.

Derek Lowe, the Dodgers’ starting pitcher, had been rocked for three runs in the first inning, and the Dodger offense showed no signs of life, so I could have used a stiff drink about then. But Senor Cuervo was no help.

OK, with a weak margarita and bad Chinese food under my belt, I was ready for the second inning -- and what Scott Goldberg, regional director of operations for Levy, told me was “our new, premium pizza, made by Freschetta.”

I ordered the pepperoni -- a small eight-inch pizza, with just five slices of pepperoni on the whole thing -- not nearly enough for a guy who routinely orders his pizzas with “double pepperoni” and certainly not enough to justify the $7.25 price tag.

The pizza was warm, and the pepperoni was fine, but the cheese and tomato sauce also seemed skimpy, and the crust was too thick and doughy. I felt like I was eating bad bread -- or the cardboard box the pizza came in.

As with the Panda Express food, I offered some to my friend Michael, who wisely declined each time.

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Craving a sausage

By the start of the third inning, with the Dodgers trailing 3-0, I decided that even though I was getting full, I should order the one item I’d come to like the most since it was introduced at Dodger Stadium two seasons ago -- the $5.75 Louisiana hot sausage made by Saag’s.

At the home opener this year, I had ordered two of them, but the counter person gave me bratwursts by mistake. They were the color of oatmeal and tasted like you’d expect a sausage made of oatmeal to taste.

So this time, I asked her to please be sure she gave me the Louisiana hot sausage. She did.

But I also ordered garlic fries ($5.75), and I had to wait so long for them that I missed two complete innings, including J.D. Drew’s home run.

And neither TV set at the concession stand was working, so I had no idea what was going on in the game.

By the time the fries arrived, the Louisiana hot sausage had become a Louisiana tepid sausage. But it was still good -- in part because it’s grilled, the best way to get any dogs or sausages at the stadium.

Grilling lends a quasi-charred flavor that greatly enhances the otherwise insipid taste of the steamed Dodger Dogs in particular.

The Louisiana hot sausage doesn’t have the snap or the juiciness I like in a good hot dog, but it is spicy and flavorful and chewy, not mushy like the Dodger Dog.

The garlic fries were good too -- not crisp enough for me but clearly tasting of potato and so redolent of garlic that the woman sitting next to me oohed and aahed over the penetrating and alluring aroma until I offered to share them with her.

When the sixth inning rolled around, having sampled every new item -- and at least one old one -- that could be considered a “main course,” I found myself unwilling to subject my palate or my digestive system to a Carl’s Jr. burger or the dreadful Camacho’s Mexican food. So, it was dessert time at Dodger Stadium, with the home team still trailing, 3-1.

Goldberg had told me the Dodgers are now serving Dreyer’s ice cream. I went looking for it at every concession stand on the reserved level, where my season seats are.

No luck -- and no Dodger Stadium employee could tell me where to find Dreyer’s. Meanwhile, I missed Jeff Kent’s home run, the only other run the Dodgers would score all night.

I’d seen a few Dreyer’s vendors circulating in the stands earlier, before I was ready for ice cream, but now -- and for the rest of the night -- no Dreyer’s vendors came anywhere near my seat.

I got an Altadena soft-serve ice cream instead. Vanilla. In a cup. A Big Cup, overflowing, for a mere $3.75. I knew I was too full to finish it, but I was determined to try as many things as possible, and the futile search for Dreyer’s had left me with a hankering for ice cream of some sort.

It was delicious.

Earlier, when I got my Louisiana hot sausage and garlic fries, I’d also bought a $4.50 bag of popcorn (fresh-popped this year, not pre-packaged as in seasons past), and it was also good.

So were the peanuts that Michael had purchased on the way in. (They come from a new vendor, All-American Peanuts of El Paso, and are mercifully devoid of that excessively salty, bottom-of-the-Dead-Sea aftertaste of the peanuts previously sold at Dodger Stadium).

He bought a big bag for $5, and I tried a few. But I bring my own peanuts to Dodger Stadium -- nuts that I buy a couple of times a year by mail order from the Hubbard Peanut Co. in Sedley, Va. They’re already shelled, and a friend teased me recently about this.

“Isn’t cracking the peanut shell part of the fun of going to a baseball game?” she asked.

No. I go to a game for the crack of the bat, not the crack of the peanut shell.

But the Dodger bats aren’t cracking (or crackling) much tonight. They had only five hits in the whole game and lost 4-2. So I stuffed myself on bad food in a losing cause. I went home with a mild stomachache.

I’ll eat more modestly -- and more selectively -- the rest of the season, so I don’t expect any more stomachaches.

But the Dodgers will probably give me -- and their other fans -- plenty of headaches.

I still can’t believe that management let Adrian Beltre, last season’s star, go to Seattle. Or that it dumped so many other good players.

I sure wish the Dodgers would sign a top, power-hitting catcher sometime soon. But there’s probably no more chance of that than there is of Dodger Stadium selling a truly great hot dog.

*

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous “Matters of Taste” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.