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Earlier this week I wrote about how a 1950s Frigidaire promotional glass led me to do a deep dive on the subject of decorator colors. But as I mentioned in that piece, there’s another aspect of the Frigidaire glass that I particularly liked, and I want to talk about that today.
As you probably know by now, I’m fascinated by vintage catalogs, which I collect and sometimes write about. They appeal to me because, much like collections and lists, they create order out of chaos. Each catalog has its own categories and subcategories, its own taxonomy, its own alphanumeric inventory system, and so on. Plus many old catalogs are just flat-out gorgeous.
The only downside to collecting catalogs is that they spend most of their time filed away on a bookshelf. So unlike, say, wall charts or coin-operated gadgets, which constantly make me smile because they’re displayed in my home, the catalogs only make me smile when I pull them off the shelf and flip through them, which isn’t very often. The lesson, which I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve grown older, is that having an object — even a truly remarkable object — can be a somewhat empty pleasure if that object is usually stowed out of sight.
That’s part of why I like the Frigidaire glass so much. In addition to being a de facto color catalog, it’s a functional object, so I can have the fun of engaging with it on a regular basis. In fact, it’s already become my beer glass of choice for meet-ups on my neighbor Jason’s porch (as seen in this article’s header photo).
Of course, Frigidaire makes home appliances, not glassware, so there’s a slight disconnect there. It would have been better if they’d made a sample refrigerator rendered in all five of the colors. Granted, that might be impractical to produce (and harder to bring to Jason’s porch), but some companies have managed to create catalog-like versions of their signature products. For example:
PITTSBURGH — A regular intake of lime wedges served with his favorite beer at local dive bar The Rock Room was apparently the only thing keeping punk Dennis Koranski from succumbing to scurvy, sources report.
“I guess I don’t think too much about proper nutrition,” Koranski admitted as he sucked on a lime wedge plucked from the top of his can of Tecate. “Maybe I’ll eat some kielbasa or pierogies if the bar I’m in is serving them and someone else is buying, or I’ll find something good in the trash while I’m walking home, but other than that, I’m more interested in beer than food. It’s probably not the best thing for me, but I actually feel great minus the hangovers and occasional alcohol poisoning. Other than that I must be doing something right, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. You mind if I bum a cig?”
Koranski’s friend Diane Lowery was puzzled at his physical state.
“Dennis and I have basically the exact same lifestyle, and I feel like shit all the time,” Lowery noted. “We eat the same stuff, so I don’t know how he feels so good. The only difference I can think of is I prefer Pabst Blue Ribbon while he drinks Tecate, but that can’t be it. My muscles are constantly sore and I’ve actually started to lose teeth. I don’t know what’s going on with me, or why the same things aren’t happening to Dennis. Just the other day we both got worried when my skin broke out in this horrible rash, but we ultimately decided to just go to the bar instead of the hospital.”
Koranski’s doctor Theo Czekovic was not surprised by the situation.
“You have no idea how many punks are narrowly avoiding catching diseases that have been all but eliminated in modern society,” Czekovic opined. “Clearly, Dennis is staying alive solely because of the lime wedges he’s consuming with his daily alcohol. I’ve had unvaccinated punk patients who are only staving off smallpox by eating a daily leaf of lettuce with their McDonald’s burgers, and I’m convinced one of my patients doesn’t have polio solely because I instructed him to begin washing his hands regularly. I guess I’ll just tell Dennis to keep drinking his Tecates.”
At press time, it turned out the only reason Koranski didn’t have bubonic plague was because he had inadvertently been inoculated through his constant exposure to fleas.
The post Lime Wedges Served With Cans of Tecate at Local Dive Bar Only Reason Punk Doesn’t Have Scurvy appeared first on HARDTIMES.
Chef Oakason Hoffman, known professionally as Chef O., is splitting this NFL season between Miami and Pittsburgh, 1,200 miles apart, and the reason is Jalen Ramsey.
Ramsey got traded from the Dolphins to the Steelers in the offseason. The cornerback, Hoffman’s client of two years, wasn’t about to face a new challenge without her cooking fueling his performance.
When Ramsey got injured in the Sept. 28 game against the Vikings, Chef O. shifted her usual approach to recovery mode—whole foods, fresh juices, anti-inflammatory ingredients, nothing processed. “You’ve really just got to go back to the basics,” she tells Front Office Sports. “Food is one of the key ingredients to having an incredible season. I think private chefs don’t always get all the credit for what we do to lay out the groundwork.”
For many elite athletes, private chefs are as integral as trainers or physical therapists—trusted members of a tight inner circle. They have keys to their clients’ houses, earn six-figure salaries, and make decisions that have implications on the field. The right diet can extend a career and create competitive advantages worth millions in contracts and endorsements.
Hoffman, who trained under the world-renowned chef José Andrés before launching her company, Sweet & Savory Kitchen, never set out to work in the sports world. Her first athlete client came by chance after her neighbor connected her with a big-time sports agent. That agent had an NBA player coming to town who needed a chef, and word soon spread quickly among the city’s offseason regulars. “Everyone comes to Miami,” she says of its city’s popularity as a training hub. “Basketball, football, baseball—the seasons are all different, so it’s year-round here.”
What started as a solo operation has grown into a team of 13 chefs: predominantly women, many of them single mothers. Hoffman didn’t plan for this demographic makeup, but she’s embraced it, creating opportunities for her team to travel for contracts and develop their skills.
Some chefs are connected through team dietitians, others through agents or word-of-mouth referrals among players’ wives. Some land their first athlete client after catering an event. But once they make it into these close-knit circles—and prove they can be trusted for both discretion and delicious meals—there tends to be plenty of opportunities available.
“It’s about the relationship. You want to create an environment where they are like, ‘She will be our go-to,’” says Hoffman.
For these cooking pros, one-off work, like a celebratory dinner or a yacht spread—a frequent ask in Miami, with plates laden with sliders, fruits, and dips—typically comes with a per-person fee. If a player wanted to take 10 friends out for a day on the water, at a rate of $200 a head, they would pay $2,000 plus the cost of groceries. For longer engagements or returning clients, Hoffman says she’ll negotiate a discounted rate.
“Miami’s a money-driven place,” Hoffman says. “But you’ve got to leave a good taste in their mouth, both literally and figuratively.”
For experienced chefs, she says annual earnings typically start at six figures: “$100,000 is probably the base rate for someone who’s with you on a day-to-day basis.” More experienced chefs can command significantly more, up to $250,000 or so annually.
Chef Montez Hymon, who runs Chef Tez, a private-chef business in Charlotte that serves Panthers and Hornets players, bills NBA clients on a daily rate because their schedules are too irregular for weekly structures. For NFL clients, he charges a consistent weekly rate since the schedule remains stable, though he avoids salary structures so a mid-season trade doesn’t leave a contract in limbo.
He estimates he spends as much time on logistics as he does in the kitchen. “There’s no real balance to it,” says Hymon, whose small team of four chefs juggles contracts with NFL and NBA players alongside upscale private-dining events. “A lot of ordering, a lot of ripping and running, sourcing certain materials, writing out menus, getting on calls and talking to different clients, and speaking with the team.”
The work is grueling and physical. Hoffman describes days starting with shopping at 5:30 a.m. and ending past midnight after cooking for eight hours, cleaning, driving to a commercial kitchen, and prepping for the next day.
The caloric demands of elite athletes alone require careful planning. “We take care of a lot of O-line guys,” Hymon tells FOS. “They eat, like, 5,000 calories a day.”
Much of a private chef’s work begins in the offseason, where feeding players has massive implications for the months on the field.
After more than two decades teaching culinary arts, Chef Ana Machado returned to private-chef work in 2021, cooking for 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa, whom she worked with in Florida for four consecutive offseasons. When Machado began cooking for Bosa during his recovery from an ACL tear sustained in the 2020 season, her focus was singular: performance nutrition. Bosa wanted to get leaner while maintaining energy for eight-hour training days. He wanted no starches, no dairy, high protein, and maximum vegetables.
“Because they’re so big and athletic, and they burn so many calories, they have to eat every two to three hours,” she says. “And we’re not talking snacking—we’re talking full meals.” Whatever meals she prepared, she would make five portions of them, serving one hot and packing the rest, and making a gallon or two of green juice on top of that.
The work kept her busy with 10-hour days that started with early-morning trips to the grocery store and ended with leaving the kitchen spotless, “as if I was never there, better than when I arrived.” She cooked for Bosa on Mondays and Wednesdays and for his brother, Joey (then between seasons playing for the Chargers, now with the Bills), on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She worked in their respective home kitchens, arriving after they left for training and having meals ready by the time they returned. Fridays were for menu planning—ensuring variety across both brothers’ different preferences.
When Nick Bosa returned to California for minicamp in June 2021, his trainers and team nutritionists immediately noticed changes. He’d achieved a 9% body-fat level while maintaining his muscle mass and energy. ESPN interviewed Machado about Bosa’s transformation, which sent other NFL players contacting her.
She took on another client for her business—Jordan Poyer, a Bills safety playing for the Dolphins at the time—but she has otherwise declined to expand High Performance Cuisine. “As good as I was for Nick,” she says, “I couldn’t fit more than the two of them on my schedule, because the days are so long and so customized to them.”
Working with players during the season requires a different approach. Chef Crystin Hardgraves launched GlamGourmet after her pandemic cooking videos gained enough traction on social media that she began picking up private clients.
Seahawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed was one of the followers who reached out, and she signed on for the 2024–25 season. “His main thing was: I want to eat some good food. I want to feel good. I want to stay in shape,” she says.
Hardgraves works with Reed five days a week during the season: Tuesday through Saturday, starting each day at 6 a.m. She prepares breakfast before he leaves for the practice facility, delivers him lunch there, and has dinner ready when he returns home. She’s at the grocery store daily, and Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market almost as often. She tries to create variety. His favorite is A5 Japanese Wagyu steak, but Hardgraves keeps the dishes rotating, pivoting when plans or preferences shift.
“The other day, he’s like, ‘No more gluten, no more dairy.’ So I’m like, ‘O.K., it’s gone,’” Hardgraves says.
Changing eating habits requires patience and creativity, particularly with players who want to stick with what they know. Ramsey, a Nashville native, grew up on Southern comfort food—dishes heavy with butter, cream, and dairy. “He loves Southern foods,” Hoffman says. “Along with that comes a lot of heavy foods that really satisfy him, but we have to figure out ways to still be able to scratch that Southern itch without as much butter and cream and milk.”
Hymon takes a similar approach, researching players’ backgrounds to understand their food preferences and childhood influences. “You may have a football guy that grew up in southern Texas, then went to Alabama or something like that,” he says. “So, you can kind of gauge what the culture was and what his palate was growing up, and you try to put a creative spin on it, a creative and healthy spin on it.”
For all the planning, adaptability, and nutrition science that goes into private chef work for elite athletes, the kitchen pros who spoke to FOS say the intangibles are really what make their jobs work.
“You come in and you’re always on time, always professional, always trustworthy,” says Hymon. “There are times when I’m in these clients’ homes more than they are.”
“Trust is everything,” agrees Hardgraves. “When you take your job very seriously … you walk into their homes, and you know what time it is. You know what you need to do.”
The post Inside the NFL’s Private Chef Network appeared first on Front Office Sports.