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MILWAUKEE — Secrecy surrounds Secret Stadium Sauce, the way the government keeps mum about Area 51.
This much is known (which is not much) about Milwaukee’s most famous sauce: Its top five ingredients are water, tomato paste, corn syrup, vinegar and high-fructose corn syrup. Everything the sauce touches emerges as a maroon shellac, glistening with savory promise.
Beyond that, nobody knows what’s in it, but everybody seems to want it.
Sports Illustrated did, too. It recently named Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers, as serving the best food in Major League Baseball. Singled out for distinction: Secret Stadium Sauce.
Given that the team was named after the city’s storied tradition of beer-makers, Milwaukeeans are as passionate in their reverence for food and drink as they are for a Ryan Braun home run.
A friend and I set out to verify SI’s claims on a recent road trip. We wanted to know whether its stadium sauce warranted such secrecy.
The first sign of the fans’ fervency for food can be found in the stadium parking lot (parking runs $8 to $18 depending on day and proximity of lot).
Under canopies and by SUVs, families sat in folding chairs with paper plates and plastic cups, as the sound of grilled-meat-meeting-hot-grate sizzled in the air. The one constant is bratwurst, the German-indigenous pork and veal sausage traditionally served with mustard and sauerkraut. One cooking method we witnessed involved simmering the brats in a pot of beer, which supposedly imparts a headier, more robust flavor to the sausage.
Here, outside the stadium, was where we first inquired about Secret Stadium Sauce.
Ahhh, their faces seemed to say. The Area 51 of condiments. They lit up, a glint in their eyes, as if we had discovered their fountain of eternal youth — only this was an accouterment for sausages.
“Personally, I’m not a ketchup fan,” said Mark Holman, tailgating with friends and family. “But I do enjoy Secret Stadium Sauce on everything at home you would traditionally eat with ketchup.”
Like ketchup ... but not ketchup. And secret. We were intrigued.
We entered the ballpark, dreams of condiments dancing through our heads. Walking the concourse is a bit like circling a mall food court. One stand, Wok Off Noodles, even offered free samples of its lime-ginger noodles to passers-by. Free food samples at a Major League ballpark!
There are the fish fry, the snow cones, soy dogs, turkey wraps, a dessert cart that sold tiramisu brownies. One beverage vendor sold 20 varieties of beer (my favorite is Lakefront Brewery’s Riverwest Stein Beer).
But Secret Stadium Sauce was what we sought, and it greeted us at every turn. It is the third spigot of the condiments trio, to the right of ketchup and mustard. Several ballpark grillmasters keep the SSS simmering in a saucepan and dip a burger patty or sausage into the sauce before serving.
Upon further investigation, we learned this: Secret Stadium Sauce began in the 1970s at the Brewers’ former home, County Stadium. A gentleman named Rick Abramson, a vendor at the ballpark, suddenly found himself running low on ketchup and mustard during one game. He mixed ketchup, mustard and a few other ingredients, and voila, a new condiment was born.
We bought a bratwurst and chorizo sandwich each, requesting ample SSS.
How best to describe?
It was barbecue sauce at 80 percent, ketchup with more chutzpah. It had the slight zing of Worcestershire sauce, a more acidic version of the Japanese tonkatsu sauce, with a barely there spice kick that tickled the tongue.
The sauce was fine, but alas, it was just a condiment.
Then came the sad realization that this story premise is utterly ridiculous: we drove 80 miles to taste sauce. Silly but sated.
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