How do you feed a team of professional athletes? Just ask chef and executive culiniary diirector Elii Collins, who does it three times a day (at least).
How do you feed a team of professional athletes? Just ask chef and executive culiniary diirector Elii Collins, who does it three times a day .Chef Eli Collins, 32, executive director of culinary nutrition for the Sixers, is peering at me through the screen on our Zoom call from his office. There are stacks of paper towels, boxes of food prep gloves, and jugs of kitchen cleaning chemicals behind him. “My office doubles as a storage room,” he laughs.
“We talk about position-less basketball and two-man games,” he says. “These are analogies we use to describe what we do in the kitchen, too.” In explaining how he builds menus, he breaks dishes down according to type: “Three to four proteins, two starches, three to four veggies of varying degrees of cookedness, a giant salad, maybe a sweet treat, maybe a soup.”He is easily the most exuberant chef, or even person, I’ve ever met.
Collins is as unfailingly loyal to his basketball team as he is to his favorite foods and coffee. An avid childhood athlete, he grew up in Fallsington and went to college in upstate New York where he got into basketball. I ask him if there are any no-no ingredients or dishes. There aren’t. “I like to push people. I like to show people things I’m excited about,” he replies. “There are guys who are creatures of habit. They want the same thing every day, like shrimp pesto or a chicken sandwich.”
While Collins and his team make all the food for the players and staff while the team is in Camden, it’s a different story when the team is at the Wells Fargo center for games, which is how I went “backstage” to feed the players, post-game. Earlier this season, I occupied one slot in a roster of chefs and restaurants brought in to feed players.
“Rob of Sauce Boy – that was killer! He came in and mixed up all the pastas and brought rondos down and emulsified the sauces! I was able to bring you out of retirement for Spam musubi! That was a victory – I loved when Poi Dog was open!”
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