The Cardiac Kids: New Truist Park Concessions Power Rankings

The Douille Dog and the Cleanup Burger compete for your taste buds' attention this season

As the 2023 MLB regular season approaches, Truist Park today took part in what has become an annual spring tradition - the announcement of multiple new, extremely gaudy stadium concession options. The phrase "food porn" may or may not accurately convey what's on offer here, so let's dig deeper into the matter with a quick power ranking. (Note - this is a purely speculative list. Hopefully, I get a chance to remove the speculative aspect of it sometime this season and live to tell the tale.)

1. Submarine Sandwich

@TruistPark on Twitter

Unveiled by the ballpark's Twitter account today as the #2 item (let's face it, eventually they're all #2 items), I'm going to top the list with the Submarine Sandwich. First off, the names evokes memories of submarine relief pitchers of yore, such as '90s Braves bullpen mainstay Brad Clontz. Second, this thing features smoked turkey, Red Dragon cheddar sauce (which I assume is made from the Welsh cheese of the same awesome name), bacon, fried green tomatoes, butter lettuce, and avocado crema. You know it's gaudy when even the lettuce is buttered. But most importantly, you can get either a foot-long or a three-footer, which is just worth it for the visual alone.

2. Cleanup Burger

@TruistPark on Twitter

The first item Truist Park listed today lands in the second spot. The Cleanup Burger doesn't sound very clean, what with maple syrup oozing out of it, but this part-breakfast, part-lunch, part-prisoner's last meal beast of a burger essentially dumps an entire Waffle House cook line onto a Belgian waffle bun. It's basically the baseball equivalent of The Simpsons' Good Morning Burger, with all the Homer Simpson-style drooling that that implies.

3. Douille Dog

@TruistPark on Twitter

Heading up from the Bayou at the number three is the 'Douille Dog, which gets a bonus point for the alliteration. Andouille sausage topped with beef chili, onions, and cheese certainly rivals the Braves' lineup for, um, potential explosiveness, but what is a baseball stadium without powerful and possibly lethal hot dog options?

4. Triple Play

@TruistPark on Twitter

Some Latin flavor here at número cuatro, the Triple Play is essentially mashed potatoes stuffed with chicken and then fried. Bonus points for making them look kind of like fried baseballs, which may find their way on the menu next year. This one has a chance to be a sleeper pick.

5. Georgia BLT

@TruistPark on Twitter

The Georgia BLT comes in fifth, and mostly that's because I have to dock some points for changing the B in BLT from bacon to bologna. Bologna is good, but I feel like the state of Georgia has more respect for bacon than to dismiss it in such a callous fashion. The butter lettuce from the Submarine Sandwich returns to lubricate (?) another dish, while pimento cheese and garlic mayo join the party as well. (Those last two items are not favorites of mine, so I'll admit they may be coloring my thinking here.)

(Ed. note: I adore both BLTs and pimento cheese so this is pretty high on my list.)

6. Closer

@TruistPark on Twitter

Perhaps fittingly, coming in last is the Closer. Here we have a corn dog-like creation where a hot dog is covered in mozzarella-whipped potatoes and fried. Spicy mayo again works as a demerit, but the biggest key for both this and the Triple Play is the frying. There's an art to it, as I'm sure most of us have by now had at least one thing that was fried into a soggy, greasy mush and at least one other thing that was fried so perfectly, you could hear angels singing after taking your first bite. So the variance is high, is what I'm saying. If you're a bigger fan of meat on sticks than I, perhaps you'll dig on this more, but the best thing I can say for this Closer currently is at least we're not paying a guaranteed 16 mil for it.

What say you? Are you digging the dogs? Or are you ready to Cleanup (all that syrup from your gross, sticky fingers)? Let us know, and let's all get excited for another season of Acuña bombs and gut bombs.

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