- The Plate
History of Tailgating
In the Venn diagram of life, good-food people and sports fans haven’t historically yielded significant overlap—bring deconstructed kale salad to a Super Bowl party and see what I mean. Good food and sports both require one’s full attention, and a passion divided cannot stand.
However as the good-food movement has gone mainstream over the past decade or so, sports fans have upped their culinary games. It’s apparent at stadiums where for example the Washington Nationals has stalls selling shawarma, pad thai, and cupcakes as well as specialty gluten-free, Kosher (by the Rabbinical Council of Greater Washington), and DC microbrew stands.
And sports fans’ increased good food awareness is apparent in American tailgating, the century-old tradition of gathering to