When a full-size tractor trailer pulls as much as the Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville it might maintain mainly something wanted to tug off one of many largest single-day sporting occasions in North America. It could possibly be a trailer filled with Kentucky bibb lettuce for a single salad on the Kentucky Derby menu.
The grandeur of the annual occasion can’t be overstated. Neither can the dimensions. So, the year-long course of for creating the menu for the oldest repeatedly run sporting occasion in North America should consider logistics for feeding 60,000-plus premium friends for a complete day whereas offering a novel culinary perspective for a contemporary expertise every year.
For the operating of the 151st Kentucky Derby on Could 3, meaning returning to the roots of the Louisville racetrack, fairly actually.
Daniel Boczarski / Getty Photos for Churchill Downs
“This 12 months we took a very good have a look at the seasonality of issues,” Robert Lopez, senior government chef at Churchill Downs for Levy, tells Meals & Wine. “Lots of people are going outdoors the seasonality of their areas, and we wish to get again to that throughout the area.”
Grand plans can solely develop into Derby-day realities in the event that they’re executable at an enormous scale. The Kentucky Derby hosts roughly 157,000 guests, with greater than half of these in premium areas (not concessions). Every year the cooks develop a base menu to serve 60,000 friends who will dine, with one other 20 menus to serve even higher-end places, catering to all kinds of taste preferences.
“This isn’t simply burgers and sizzling canine,” Lopez says, including that greater than 100 cooks from across the nation work the occasion. Levy and Churchill Downs work with almost two dozen native farmers and producers to make it occur. “That is advantageous eating at a mass stage. We’d like expertise to execute that.”
The official 151st Kentucky Derby menu incorporates a pair of salads, three sides, three entrees, and a number of desserts.
The Bluegrass Fields salad is the one with Kentucky bibb lettuce, topped with seasonal berries, toasted almonds, a raspberry, and poppyseed French dressing. The 5,100 heads of lettuce come regionally. “That’s only for one salad,” Braxton Cubero, the produce procurement professional at Piazza Produce for Churchill Downs, tells Meals & Wine. “We’re additionally bringing in 6,000 kilos of spring combine.” In complete, the occasion will serve 25,000 kilos of lettuce.
The opposite key salad is the grilled corn and tomato salad with child arugula, cherry tomatoes, grilled corn and a creamy pimento cheese dressing. The seasonality of the grilled corn and tomatoes supply freshness, whereas the pimento cheese dressing brings a brand new format for a well-liked Southern ingredient.
This 12 months’s entrees characteristic a pan-roasted rooster breast with native Vidalia onions, a slow-cooked beef tip with Kentucky peppercorn sauce, and an Previous Forester butter shrimp with orzo. Lopez will supply 3,000 kilos of shrimp for the occasion and says he wished to get again to the spring-focused Vidalia onion for its sweetness.
To maintain a menu contemporary, particularly coming off a milestone a hundred and fiftieth occasion, Lopez received’t do the identical dish twice. The crew creates new themes contemplating culinary traits, just like the rising use of duck fats. This 12 months that comes within the type of duck fats roasted fingerling potatoes with crispy rosemary.
Further sides embrace brown butter farro, roasted root greens, and lemon honey harvest brussels sprouts, which requires 3,120 kilos of brussels sprouts.
A part of each Derby menu is the drinks, a menu dominated by the Mint Julep. There’s loads of wine provided by Jackson Household Wines and cocktails from Woodford Reserve. You’ll see cocktails with refined nuances of mint and bourbon to match the Julep.
The costlier the ticket to a premium area, the extra shock additions to the menu. In some locations, the bottom menu is the staple, whereas in at the least 20 others it serves as a backdrop. Final 12 months, for instance, James Beard Award-winning cooks had been cooking reside in some locations, contemporary oysters had been served tableside in one other, and high-end components marked others, from wagyu prime rib to bourbon cherry brisket burnt ends and loads of black truffles. “We maintain thriller behind it,” Lopez says about offering new parts every year.
Charcuterie boards are loaded with Indianapolis’ Smoking Goose Meatery and Capriole Goat Cheese from Greenville, Indiana. Capriole founder Judy Schad, who was at Churchill Downs the day Secretariat received in 1973, tells Meals & Wine she’s lengthy had a Derby ardour and has created cheeses, akin to the favored aged Previous Kentucky Tomme, for the Kentucky Derby. Churchill Downs now makes use of greater than half-a-dozen Capriole varieties throughout the grounds.
With friends arriving at 9 a.m., cooks begin arriving at 2 a.m. for a day of races earlier than the almost 7 p.m. operating of the Kentucky Derby. The menu will get flipped at the least 3 times in the course of the day, however there should be dishes that may be saved contemporary.
“We attempt to break these dishes,” Lopez says. “We stress-test them to ensure they don’t solely final 30 or 45 minutes. “There are loads of formulation behind penning this menu.”
The famed style of the Derby — high-end sundresses, fits, and hats — performs into culinary decisions, as cooks wish to maintain friends tidy, particularly when advantageous motor expertise could dip after a day of consuming. So, creating finger-food-style desserts is vital. This 12 months that features tens of 1000’s of Kentucky whoopie pies, mini bourbon muffins, bourbon balls, and the standard jockey silks cookies. Even the cookie will get an improve with a brand new model that the cooks hope folks style and deem to be higher than the 12 months earlier than.
Cooks are additionally pondering of Instagram. “After I sit down and write a menu, I consider my spouse and would she wish to take an image,” Lopez says. Many occasions, the hand-held desserts get taken onto a balcony for a backdropped picture that’s then shared on social media. “You wish to get that one merchandise, and go present the world. We wish to make recollections.”