Food Bowl : Football Team Keeps Chef Busy

During his career Maurizio Binotto has cooked for the Rams, Bears, Giants and just about every other visiting professional football team. But Binotto, executive chef at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel in Costa Mesa, said they don’t come close to the Sun Devils of Arizona State when it comes to putting away the food.

Binotto and his staff of 40 cooks have been preparing meals for the past 10 days for the 94-player team that’s staying at the hotel while it prepares for its game Thursday in the Rose Bowl against the University of Michigan.

“These college guys are eating twice as much as professional players do and three times as much as our normal customer,” said an amazed Binotto during a Tuesday tour of the hotel’s massive kitchen.

During a typical breakfast the players have finished off 1,000 Danish pastries and 10 gallons of orange juice. They have followed this with a lunch of 550 pieces of chicken and 350 roast beef sandwiches, along with two slices of pie each, a quart of milk and a couple of helpings of salad, Binotto said.

“Yeah, we’ve got some substantial eaters,” said Gary Rausch, Arizona State sports information director, with a hearty laugh. “And we give them plenty of opportunity to put the food away because coming to the Rose Bowl is a reward for them.”

Added Rausch: “These guys are still growing and burn off a lot of calories because they’re real active. You won’t see any kids walking around here with big pot bellies. They’re all solidly built.”

Before he came to the Westin 1 1/2 years ago, Binotto worked for more than 13 years at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. “I’ve served every professional football team, but I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said about his current guests.

For the first time in his career, Binotto said, he ran out of food while serving the Arizona State team their first meal, a buffet lunch Dec. 20. Pointing to some large pans on a shelf, he said, “See those, they’re hotel pans. On the first day Arizona State was here, we prepared 20 pans of lasagna. That’s normally enough to feed 350 people. But when it looked like these (94) guys were going to go through the (meat) lasagna we’d prepared, we had to start making vegetable lasagna.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” Binotto said. “Since then I’ve tripled the amount I’d normally serve. . . . You’ve seen the size of those boys out there; those aren’t the kind of guys you want to argue with.”

Tuesday morning, Arizona State guard Randy McDaniel, 22, dined on a continental breakfast of five croissants and two glasses of orange juice. The 255-pound, 6-foot, 4-inch all-American acknowledged he had a hearty appetite.

McDaniel fondly recalled the team’s dinner a week ago at Lawry’s restaurant in Beverly Hills, when he feasted on five slices of prime rib. “That night I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten anything all day,” said the junior from Avondale, Ariz.

“There was a limit of two ribs, but I was able to talk the waitress into giving me a third. But I was still hungry, so I moved to a new table and ate two more. Another one was on the way, but the bus was waiting, so I had to get up and go.”

During his 2 1/2-hour repast at Lawry’s, McDaniel also managed to down 10 servings of mashed potatoes, five helpings of green beans and another five servings of spinach salad.

“It’s hard for me to keep the weight on,” said McDaniel, who added that he weighed a mere 218 pounds when he entered Arizona State three years ago as a tight end. “I’ve got to do a lot of weightlifting and eating because I drop down (in weight) easily.”

McDaniel said it’s easy for him to devour five pieces of chicken and “a couple of turkey sandwiches” for lunch during his Southern California stay. Although lunch is his biggest meal of the day, by 3 p.m. he’s ready for a snack. “I like to go to McDonald’s and have two or three Quarter Pounders, three orders of fries and a couple of Cokes. That’ll hold me till dinner.”

“Everybody likes to eat a lot of food. It’s part of our training. Back home (at Arizona State) I go through the (food) line three or four times. But that’s because we’re allowed only so much on our plates at one time.”

Danny Villa, 22, a senior from Nogales, Ariz., said he believes that he and his teammates have big appetites because “we’re still growing.”

Villa, a 305-pound, 6-foot, 6-inch all-American tackle, said he preferred Carl’s Jr. for his mid-afternoon snack of a “couple of burgers.” However, for his 11 p.m. bedtime snack he has to settle on McDonald’s because that’s what the team provides.

“And they only let us have two Big Macs. Personally, I could use three or four.”

Villa confessed that he wasn’t much of a continental breakfast man. “At home for breakfast, my mom usually makes me three omelets and five or six slices of bacon.”

Hotel banquet manager Ronnie Topinio said the players didn’t seem to like sweets and desserts. But he said they more than made up for it with hefty helpings of “energy food” during lunch and dinner.

“They really clean their plates at lunch,” Topinio said. “Yesterday at lunch a lot of players had at least 10 pieces of chicken and three or four sandwiches. And they washed it down with a quart of milk.”

Topinio, who over the past five years has helped serve the Los Angeles Rams their pregame meals when they play at home in Anaheim, said: “The Rams don’t eat half as much as these guys.”

At the Industry Hills and Sheraton Resort, where the 95-member Michigan team is staying, hotel convention services manager Patti Ridgley said the team was “eating a lot” but not on Arizona State’s scale.

“We’ve hosted three Rose Bowl teams over the past few years, and the eating habits vary with each team. Some coaches and trainers think it would be suicide, for training purposes, to let players loose on a buffet table where they could eat all they want.”