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Yankee Stadium’s ‘secret kosher kitchen’ revealed

The door that can only be opened with two keys simultaneously.

Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York, 2010. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York, 2010. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most iconic baseball stadiums anywhere has a “secret kosher kitchen.” That’s according to the blog YeahThatsKosher.com.

“Well, maybe it’s not exactly a secret, but very few people know where it is,” Nati Burnside writes of Yankee Stadium’s “secret” elevator, which leads to a door that can only be opened with two keys simultaneously. The New York Yankees only own one.

“This isn’t some top-secret office for the owner. Nor is it some clandestine operation by the team’s analytics department. It’s not even something like the central security hub or the location of a vault,” he writes. “It’s the kosher kitchen.”

Burnside calls the operation, certified by the Star-K, “unprecedented” at a sporting venue. Matt Gibson, the park’s senior executive chef, told the blog that he had limited knowledge about kashrut but has “enjoyed learning more about kosher food and religion over the years.”
The kitchen prepares food for 700 people nightly, with five mashgichim kashrut supervisors on duty, including to distribute the food around the park.

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