The Tailgate of the Southwest
A Winning Combo of Cuisine, Culture -- and Sunshine
We do Mexican food, and we do it well. What we decided to do early on is not try and do the same cuisine every game or else we'd be doing Southwestern style and Mexican food every tailgate, but it's always there, and we always have margaritas and tequila on hand.
— Rob Greer, founding member, the Arizona House of Cards tailgating group
Tailgates are synonymous with sporting events, but they've come to stand for more than just a community of rabid sports fans. A modern tailgate expresses the culture of the city that the team calls its home; it's an open celebration of not just the sporting event, but of heritage, family and friends -- both new and old.
Each city may boast the nation's "best" tailgate, but fans in the Southwest have an argument buttressed not only by fairer climes, but also the infusion of the culture of an entirely separate country. With sun-dappled Sundays that would drop a Packer fan's jaw -- and a variety of cross-cultured foods that often feature the best of Mexican-American cuisine -- the NFL cities that sit on the border can easily claim that their tailgates are the best fiestas on concrete.
From Humble Beginnings ...
Even with what you might call a geo-cultural culinary advantage, a proper tailgate is a labor of love, a work of preparation and planning. A tailgate isn't some slapdash, stadium-side, "stone soup" folktale; it's a daylong celebration honoring foodies and fanatics alike.
Tailgaters in border-hugging cities like San Diego, California, and Glendale, Arizona, understand that what happens on the field is out of their hands, but that they're the ones calling the plays on the grill. Being a fan is never easy -- and with the Chargers and the Cardinals, it can prove to be a Sunday of frustration -- but in football terms, 'tis better to have loved and lost the game, than to not have a team to root for.
"When we first started, we quickly started to focus on the food because the team was going through some very tough times, and the product on the field wasn't all that," said Rob Greer, a founding member of the Arizona House of Cards, an award-wining Cardinals tailgating group. "But even then, at first it was a group of friends, a card table with a few bags of chips and one of those little hibachis."
The Cardinals were a transplant team, and they're still building an Arizona legacy and history, despite being the oldest continuously operating football club in the U.S.
For San Diegans, theirs is a team that's been playing in their backyard since 1961, making Chargers' games a integral part of Sundays for more than two generations. Unfortunately, not all tradition translates into success, and "Bolt" fans have similarly come to embrace the tailgate, developing it and making it their own -- regardless of their team's ups and downs.
"We used to be those guys sitting on the edge of the tailgate with a 12-pack and no cooler to put it in," said Dominic Giammarinaro, founding member of the San Diego Chargers Tailgating group. "What started with a group of four in 1993 was soon 20 to 25 people coming to every tailgate, and we decided that we needed to do something each week other than saying: 'See you at 9 o'clock on Sunday!'"
San Diego Chargers Tailgating
Qualcomm Stadium is a stone's throw from the Mexican border -- 20 miles, give or take, so it helps if the person throwing the stone has Philip Rivers' arm -- and each home game is a celebration of a fan base that embraces its diversity.
Authentic Mexican fare is so much a part of Sundays in San Diego that the unambiguously named San Diego Chargers Tailgating group will sometimes look farther South and do some much-appreciated tailgate taco outsourcing.
"Once or twice a year, we hire a taco guy from Tijuana to set up in the parking lot," Giammarinaro said. "So we have a few guys who come up from a restaurant down there, and they bring a taco cart, and they cook steak tacos, tostados and quesadillas. It's one of our top tailgates, and everyone comes for the taco guy."
A good taco can change a Sunday, but that isn't all that a visit to a San Diego tailgate has to offer for the armchair anthropologist who decides to make a visit.
Keep a hungry eye out for the group's Iron Tailgater-winning green chile chicken and cheese enchiladas, the Mexican-themed Lucha Liga T-shirts -- and don't be surprised if you come across a wandering mariachi band.
"Obviously being so close to the border there's a lot of Spanish music playing in the parking lot as well," added Giammarinaro, "which really adds to the atmosphere."
But fans of a team that survived the drafting of Ryan Leaf, and who were the first to originate the term "Fearsome Foursome," aren't ones to let others take over the grilling duties that easily. A home team win makes everything taste better, but on any given Sunday it's nice to have bacon on your team.
"Anything with bacon is going to taste good, but jalapeno, bacon and shrimp is an amazing combination," said Giammarinaro with a laugh, referring to his bacon-wrapped, shrimp-stuffed jalapeno tailgate recipe.
The Arizona House of Cards
True Arizona Cardinal fans have more than just a keen understanding of a multicultural menu; they also understand barbecuing in a way most football fans cannot.
"The Cardinals have moved around a lot, and when I started going to games in 1988, they were playing in a college stadium," Greer said. "We would be out there in September in the hot Phoenix sun sitting on metal benches, and it wasn't the greatest. I think I still have the burn marks on my backside from that."
The Cardinals found a home -- and a stadium -- in Glendale, a city that is about 185 miles from the border. And while the city embraced the Cardinals, the team embraced its passionate tailgaters.
"There are two areas that are specifically designated just for tailgating," Greer said. "And we have what is called the Great Lawn, which is about three football fields long, and it's all grass, and when you unload your gear and set up, you're surrounded by nothing but fellow tailgaters."
The House of Cards, the regional winners of the Bing National Tailgating Championship held in 2010-2011, incorporate enough tents to make up a small Bedouin village -- and enough grills and stoves to qualify as a micro-food festival. But while diversity of menu rules the afternoon, the spicy bedrock of a Sunday outside University of Phoenix Stadium is Southwestern fare with a heavy Mexican influence.
"We do Mexican food, and we do it well," Greer boasted with a confidence befitting a long-time tailgater. "What we decided to do early on is not try and do the same cuisine every game or else we'd be doing Southwestern style and Mexican food every tailgate -- but it's always there, and we always have margaritas and tequila on hand."
The group's Southwestern heritage was on full display in the 2010 Tailgating Championship, where Greer and his House of Cards offered up a twist on a Southwestern classic with their Southwestern rubbed pork tenderloin with bourbon-ancho sauce.
- Photo Credit Stephen Dunn/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images Donald Miralle/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images Ezra Shaw/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images
