Ball Arena unveils new gameday bites for Nuggets, Avalanche 

DENVER — While hot dogs, pizza and popcorn aren’t likely to go out of style anytime soon, stadium food has evolved beyond those ballgame staples. 

At Ball Area last week, stadium culinary allstars, alongside Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets officials staff and mascots, gave the media a sneak preview of this season’s beyond-the-basic concessions options dreamt up by a team of area restaurateurs. 

“We’re really focusing on local, variety and value,” Ball Arena executive chef Bret Workman told me, with offerings from “lots of new and returning partners.”

When building the Denver stadium’s roster of restaurants, Workman said his priority is highlighting Colorado-inspired flavors and ingredients, while “driving that local piece. We love knowing that we’re helping support local small businesses and community involvement.” 

The bite of the night for this intrepid (and hungry) reporter was a jump ball between two dishes.

If you’re looking for a can’t-miss, shareable, stadium classic with a twist, a high-percentage shot would be the Louisiana boil glazed chicken tenders from Nola Jane.  

The Denver Cajun spot boasts that these tendies are fried and tossed in a “Low County boil glaze.” As a Lowcountry denizen for several years before making the climb to the Mile High, I know my way around a boil, a coastal South communal favorite of shrimp, corn, potatoes and sausage, typically cooked up in a backyard and piled high on a newspaper-covered picnic table. The glaze on these tenders, to my amateur (but practiced) palette didn’t evoke many of the flavors I associate with a Lowcountry Boil — but, wow, was it delicious. Sauces for chicken wings and tenders are too often cloyingly sweet or face-meltingly fiery; Nola Jane’s glaze is surprisingly savory. There’s heat here, too. But, like the Big Easy (not technically a Lowcountry city, but why be pedantic?) in April, it’s more warm than oppressive.

Pre-sauced tenders (rather than those you dunk yourself) can be a risky play from a soggyness standpoint, but the breading on Nola Jane’s is up to the task. Despite being at least 10 minutes from when they were tossed in sauce to when I tossed one back, these tenders remained crispy. 

If you’re willing to risk spilling a bit of consomé on your Number 29 jersey while celebrating a third-period Nathan MacKinnon goal, give the beef birria tacos from Wild Taco a whirl. These are worth a trip to the drycleaners. 

Truth be told, birria — a food-truck favorite that seems, in recent years, to have been drafted onto the menu at every other restaurant along the Front Range, filling up the stat sheet in everything from pizza to ramen  — isn’t usually my preferred taco taxonomy. If I’m eating tacos, I want to eat three (to seven) of them. And while often delicious, birria — a Mexico-born barbacoa of beef, goat or lamb served alongside a dipping cup of the broth it was cooked in — is usually just a tad too rich for me to indulge my preferred style of (over)eating.

So I was surprised that of the many taco styles available at Ball Arena, Wild Taco’s birria were by far my favorite.

“It’s a family recipe with a really cool history that’s always been really carefully made,” Wild Taco employee Jose Canedo said of the dish that takes its inspiration from birria made by the matriarch of the Aragon family, several of whom co-own Wild Taco, in Chihuahua, Mexico.

Some of the other culinary highlights from around Ball include:

After opening a location at Denver International Airport last year, Maria Empanda has expanded the reach of its Denver-based handheld Argentine pie empire to Ball Arena. My go-to is Maria’s beef empanada, whose subtle olives pair nicely with the rich, beefy filling. Plus, the portability of an empanada is clutch when maneuvering from the concession stand back to your seat. 

Infinitus Pie, which has locations in Denver, Boulder, Broomfield and Louisville, is slinging several varieties of its pizza at Ball, including the Trainwreck, a classic, thin crust supreme pizza topped with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, red onions and green peppers. Infinitus’ pesto pizza provided a nice contrast — simply topped with just pesto sauce, cheese and sliced tomatoes — to the over-the-top Trainwreck.

Bao Brewhouse dumplings come in a handful of styles and flavors. I tried the pork soup dumplings and the mushroom dumplings, both of which were slightly too sweet for me. The cheeseburger dumpling actually had a nice flavor, but if I’m eating a burger I prefer it in burger form. Ditto for the buffalo chicken dumpling, which had an unexpected zippiness to that sauce. 

If you’re interested in any of these Ball Area bites, the Nuggets next play at home Monday against the Golden State Warriors, and the Avs return to Denver for a Tuesday tilt against the Nashville Predators.

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