Evan Longoria Reveals His Top Food Pet Peeve

Rays 3B Evan Longoria is a foodie who has strong opinions on Sriracha

Everybody has food pet peeves. Major League Baseball players are no different. 

Rays third baseman Evan Longoria has a lot of credibility in this area because he is a foodie and a restaurant owner.

During a recent appearance on Jimmy Traina's Off The Board podcast, Longoria revealed his No. 1 food pet peeve.

"I love sushi," Longoria said. "Sushi is one of my favorite things to eat. I hate when people slather their sushi with Sriracha. I used to do it just after college and I didn’t know how to eat sushi, so it was like, "I’m gonna eat this fish, but I’m just gonna put Sriracha all over it and it’ll taste like Sriracha."

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He continued, "But now you go to these nice places, there’s a place [in New York] that started in Boston called O Ya, and it’s one of my favorite sushi places. They sauce it for you, the fish is unbelievable, It doesn’t need anything else. So that’s my biggest pet peeve. I love Sriracha don’t get me wrong. I think it fits well with what it fits with." 

Longoria also talked about the best road city for food. 

"New York is probably tops on the list. Sheer volume, variety. Normally I try and go somewhere different every time. There’s always something new. I used to go to STK. It’s still one of my favorite steakhouses around. 

I’m like an accoutrements guy. I like all the stuff that goes with the meal. At Peter Lugers, you’re gonna great a great steak, you’re gonna get potato, veggies. I’m for the oysters, the specialty cheese-and-meat plate and a seafood tower. I want all those things before I eat my steak. My favorite steak place to go to is Berns in Tampa. It’s actually my favorite restaurant in all the land. The variety is unbelievable the quality is unbelievable, the experience is great."

Longoria, who owns Duckys, a sports bar in the Tampa area, explained the difficulties of being in the restaurant business.

"I won’t act like I do a whole lot there," Longoria said. "I’m just the front or whatever you want to call it. My best friend is the GM there and I get the updates and all that and it’s tough. Especially being a sports bar. We’re kind of geared towards a more upscale sports environment. We have 55 TVs and our food leans more toward healthy. We don’t just serve a bunch of fried food. But being that we are [a sports bar], there’s gonna be a slow season. Obviously, NFL season is when we pick up. We have Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, Saturday college and Sunday all day NFL. That’s our best season -- right now until the Super Bowl. But when you get into the middle of the summer when just baseball is on and golf on the weekends, it’s tougher to do those numbers all year round and that’s the toughest part of being in that industry."

You can listen to the interview with Longoria below or download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher.

Longoria also discussed a variety of baseball topics (the home run record, unwritten rules, the Rays struggle), his love of Game of Thrones and much more.