How the Washington Commanders’ restaurant-trained chefs chop, cook and serve hundreds of pounds of high-end fuel each day
The first delivery arrives shortly before 6 a.m. and is dollied down the concrete stairs, past the pantry of pots and cookware and into the walk-in refrigerator amid a concert of knives chopping and metal spatulas clanging. It’s a typical October morning at the Washington Commanders’ headquarters in Ashburn, where players are in the throes of preparation for the Chicago Bears and beginning to trickle in for another day of work.
In the back wing of the facility, however, the prep started long ago. The Commanders’ kitchen, led by executive chef Connor McGuire, operates nearly 80 hours per week, churning through roughly 93,000 eggs per year and more than 200 pounds of meat in a single meal.
It’s a vital operation for any professional sports team. But in Washington, where the finer things have lacked for much of the century, the Commanders’ cuisine has been a consistent luxury for 12 seasons.
McGuire, chef de cuisine Brandon Laurent and sous chef Kendall Applewhite trained at restaurants that earn Michelin stars or James Beard Foundation honors, so Washington’s 15-person culinary team functions much as a high-end establishment would, with plated dishes such as miso koji butter chicken, mushroom and nduja sausage pasta, and bourbon street tri-tip.
“Everything is still made in a way that makes you feel like you’re in a restaurant,” Applewhite said. “We’re not cooking for people just to enjoy their food. We’re here to give them the fuel and energy that they need.”
(Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
A delivery truck arrives in Ashburn before sunrise on a November morning.
The Commanders will serve more than 225 people each day.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are offered to players, coaches and staff members.
Charles Anderson II, shown loading the fridges, is a line cook who makes pizza from scratch.
When breakfast service begins, the egg orders roll in.
To understand just how much it takes to keep the Commanders fueled, consider this: McGuire and his cooks serve three meals most days to players, coaches, football executives, personnel staff, athletic trainers and others, totaling around 225 people.
The midday meal is the largest here, and the carefully curated menus always include multiple entrée options — usually a fish, chicken, red meat or pork — along with a pasta or rice, stir fry, vegetable side dishes, freshly made breads and dessert.
Salmon is a favorite. The Commanders go through 120 six-ounce portions when it’s served as a lunch entrée. That’s 45 pounds.
Steak, such as the tri-tip served on this Thursday before practice? Around 80 pounds.
Poultry, such as their glazed boneless chicken thighs or garlic parmesan airline chicken, usually totals 60 to 80 pounds.
The pastas and stir-fries require another 40 to 60 pounds of protein mixed in.
The team also goes through 25 to 45 pounds of vegetables for a single lunch, depending on which ones are used and how they’re prepared; roughly 14 pounds of pasta; up to 20 pounds of rice; and 10 pizzas, made from scratch by line cook Charles Anderson II.
Connor McGuire has been with the Commanders since 2013 and was promoted to executive chef in 2018.
The Commanders have five ovens, including a pizza oven (ownership purchased two that were installed in July, along with a new dishwasher), but storage is limited in the team’s 32-year-old facility. So McGuire never orders new shipments of food more than a week out from when it will be served. For some foods, such as the high-protein rice he orders from a farm in Illinois, he has a salesperson on retainer whom he texts every few days to send another 250 pounds.
Finding vendors is another piece of the puzzle. McGuire has a network of 20 to 30 suppliers — some in the D.C. area and others across the country.
McGuire has to factor in the timing of deliveries to ensure food is fresh but not wasted. Certain techniques take longer, requiring the food to arrive earlier. Vegetables typically come in no more than a few days before they’re cooked.
And then there’s training camp, when rosters balloon to 90 players and the work days are longer.
The Commanders rent an additional walk-in refrigerator for extra storage during camp because their food output nearly doubles; instead of 120 portions of chicken for lunch, they’re serving 220.
McGuire talks with members of his staff at the start of the day.
Chef de cuisine Brandon Laurent prepares focaccia that will be served with lunch.
Prep cook Margarita Palacios slices bell peppers for the salad bar.
A decade ago, having an in-house chef wasn’t a priority for many NFL teams. But more have placed an emphasis on “creating edges,” as Commanders owner Josh Harris likes to say, which has led to the creation of state-of-the-art practice facilities, improved strength and athletic training, more recovery modalities, investments in analytics and better nutrition.
Washington’s facilities pale in comparison to most in the NFL, though ownership has poured in millions to make improvements over the past year-plus. And given the franchise’s troubled history over the past couple of decades, it’s perhaps no surprise it had the lowest overall ranking for its workplace in the 2023 and 2024 NFL Players Association report cards.
But a D-plus grade for its food doesn’t add up for many in Washington.
“A lot of things needed upgrading around here over the years, but I think one thing that was pretty consistent was the food,” wide receiver Terry McLaurin said. “They have everything you could ever need. … I think those are little things that kind of go over a lot of people’s heads.”
Multiple NFL team chefs provide personalized menus and higher-end options, but they’re often plucked from the catering industry or work with a food service provider. Few have restaurant backgrounds and treat player dining more like fine dining.
McGuire, a D.C. native who graduated from Virginia Tech in 2010, joined the restaurant business as a line cook at the now-defunct Michel by Michel Richard, owned by the late French chef. That’s where McGuire learned from Jon Mathieson, who became the executive chef for Washington’s NFL team in 2013 and brought McGuire with him as his sous chef. When Mathieson left in 2018, McGuire took over the top job at 30.
Top: Palacios slices warm focaccia for serving. Above: Luz Serpa works on breakfast sandwiches.
Laurent, 32, attended L’Academie de Cuisine Culinary School in Gaithersburg and was hired in Washington in 2021 after stints at the famed French restaurant La Chaumiere and the Michelin-starred Komi. At Laurent’s recommendation, Washington brought in Applewhite, 30, who previously worked at Michelin-starred Albi.
“We came up through the same kind of system, and the same chefs really taught us,” McGuire said. “So we just know what each other’s thinking. It’s that thing where, I’ll put down a pan and he knows to scoop it up or vice versa. Or he’s cooking something, steps away, and I see it, and if he’s gone another second it burns, so I’ll stir it. When you get that, it’s magic.”
The appeal of Washington for the chefs? This NFL kitchen retains the creativity and sophistication of cooking in a high-end restaurant, with plated meals and menu-building, but with a better work environment and unique purpose. They collaborate on the menus each week, typically starting on Wednesdays the week prior and finishing sometimes as late as Monday morning.
“We get the building blocks of it — ‘What protein are we doing?’” McGuire explained. “The next three days are like: ‘What is the seasoning on that? What’s the sauce that goes best with it? Is risotto the best thing to pair with a New York strip? When did we do risotto last? It was two weeks ago. Is that too soon? Let’s change to something else.’”
The process is as much of an art as it is a calculated exercise, factoring in which foods are in season, which items they have in store, how soon they can get other foods, players’ practice schedule and any allergies.
“They serve some good food, honestly,” second-year safety Quan Martin said. “It’s portioned out for you, set up on a plate and all that. I hear all the other guys, and they love it compared to the places they’ve been.”
(Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
McGuire puts the final touches on the bourbon tri-tip steak. He and his staff build their menus each week by first selecting the proteins.
Anderson makes 10 pizzas for lunch, some of which are named after Commanders players.
Juana Ortez plates spaghetti squash that will be served alongside the steak.
The kitchen has five ovens, including one for pizza.
The Commanders’ chefs work closely with team dietitian Samantha Hawkins to build menus that fit Washington’s 330-pound tackles and its 180-pound defensive backs while also accommodating those who are gluten-free, nut-free and free of anything else. If they make mashed potatoes, there’s a separate pot without dairy.
Breakfasts in Ashburn always have the standards, laid out in cast-iron skillets — crisp bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and egg whites — and made-to-order alternatives, such as omelets, which many players take with them to the 9 a.m. team meeting. (Ryan Kerrigan, the Commanders’ assistant linebackers coach, would always request an egg-white omelet with chicken, vegetables and jalapeño during his playing days.)
Coach Dan Quinn holds practices around 1 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so lunch is served before and is lighter — and never includes beans or any food that is difficult to digest.
One day they’re offering Scottish salmon, grilled beef flank steak, Togarashi-tossed fingerling potatoes, chili-garlic kale, roasted red pepper sauce pasta with chicken, garlic koji butter chicken and Heath bar cookies. Another day it’s grilled swordfish, garlic parm airline chicken, dirty rice, sautéed broccolini, bacon and crab carbonara pasta, Vietnamese lemongrass beef stir-fry and snickerdoodle cookies.
Fridays are the lightest and shortest days, so the food is lighter, too, with options such as chicken sandwiches.
Top: Juana Ortez washes lettuce. Bottom: Palacios, left, and Gabby Perez, prepare vegetables.
The day after games, when players are recovering and need a caloric boost, McGuire’s team serves heavier meals — think braised short ribs and chicken Alfredo pasta.
Lunch also comes with the bonus of pizza, including some tailor-made — and even named after — players. One is the Scary Terry pizza.
As with many of the other staffers in the building, Washington’s culinary team has developed bonds with players. Anderson has with McLaurin, whose namesake pizza is served once a week.
The Scary Terry pizza, named after wide receiver Terry McLaurin, has pineapple and pepperoni as toppings.
“First time I saw it, I was like: ‘Is that pineapple on pizza? Let me get one of those,’” McLaurin recalled. “So from then on, Charles, every Wednesday or Thursday, he’ll make pepperoni and pineapple pizza called the Scary Terry.”
Safety Jeremy Reaves has his own as well: the Reavo Special.
“He’s not a big pork guy, so we use turkey bacon or turkey sausage,” Anderson said. “Our job is to keep the players happy. And they’re winning right now.”
(Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
“You know you have to be prepared when they come down,” sous chef Kendall Applewhite said of the lunch rush.
Center Tyler Biadasz grabs a meal to fuel his 318-pound body.
Practices begin at 1 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so lunch is served before and is lighter.
McGuire typically arrives at the facility around 5:30 a.m. to oversee the final touches to breakfast and await the morning deliveries. Shortly after 6, he gathers his chefs and eight cooks around the steel table in the back for their daily prep meeting to review the menu and how every food should be prepared. With a lengthy checklist in front of him, he details in Spanish and English how every ingredient for every dish should be chopped, sliced, seasoned, marinated and mixed, and which tasks for dinner and the following days need to be completed early.
Lunch on this Thursday — which will be served before practice — features citrus-glazed shrimp, bourbon tri-tip steak, tubetti pasta and spaghetti squash, along with pasta primavera with chicken, chicken stir-fry and M&M cookies.
When the prep meeting wraps, the cooks disperse to begin on lunch.
Lettuce is washed and spun dry, and bell peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes are cleaned and sliced for the salad bar. Onions are diced for multiple dishes, and carrots and celery root are julienned to later be sautéed with cooked spaghetti squash.
Laurent handles bread, first baking the sourdough boules until they’re crusty, then spreading homemade focaccia dough in sheet pans for baking. His seasonings vary and often are experimental, much like the butters he serves. (The honey chili butter is a hit.)
The tri-tip is made sous vide, requiring four days from start to finish. Seventy-nine pounds of beef are marinated, then grilled, cooled overnight, then vacuum sealed and immersed in water. After a final roast, Laurent slices them for serving just before the 11:30 a.m. blitz when players arrive for lunch.
“You know you have to be prepared when they come down,” said Applewhite, 30. “I’ve seen guys get lunch, go sit down and eat, come back, grab two or three boxes of food, then come back for dinner.”
Applewhite has a variety of tasks and is often in charge of homemade sauces. He uses a tomato-based sauce for the tubetti pasta.
Top: McGuire mixes spaghetti squash, celery root and carrots. Above: Line cook Austin Baird tosses chicken stir-fry.
Meanwhile, line cook Austin Baird, who already grilled dozens of chicken breasts for his stir-fry, fires up the woks and tosses it all together.
Anderson, in the far corner of the kitchen, puts the final touches on his pies before sliding them into the pizza oven.
Near the end of the lunch prep, Laurent moves on to seasoning and searing six-ounce portions of red fish that will be served for dinner that evening, along with honey butter cornflake chicken, roasted Korean sweets and wild boar ragu pasta.
Eventually, the day will wrap, and the next one will begin — before dawn as another delivery is dollied down the concrete stairs amid the sounds of breakfast.
McGuire and his team work long days to keep the Commanders’ kitchen open for about 80 hours a week.
Photography and video by Craig Hudson. Design and development by Michael Domine. Photo editing by Toni L. Sandys. Video editing by Joshua Carroll. Design editing by Virginia Singarayar. Story editing by Mark Selig. Copy editing by Ryan Romano.