There has been a lot of talk about whether the new ballparks in New York are too expensive and too elitist for their own good. Maybe they are, but as the actual-baseball-to-architecture-review ratio grows larger and larger, that meme is going to start to fade and we'll begin to talk about other, more important things like whose fault it is that the Yankees finished third again and how Johan Santana managed to get 23 no-decisions with a 1.11 ERA.

But let's just have one more fluff piece, shall we? This one a restaurant review of sorts by the Wall Street Journal's Eating Out folks. The bulk of the review is spent assessing the stuff that is right and proper ballpark fare. For the most part anyway. This passage about the food that wasn't reviewed, however, is pretty darn telling:

For this battle of the food halls, I am deliberately excluding elite restaurants and facilities open only to VIP ticketholders, although it should be said that the dramatically glassed-in Acela Club in left field at Citi, overseen by local restaurant genius Drew Nieporent, raises the bar for all sports-arena food anywhere. Its $48 prix fixe, featuring hors d'oeuvres and selections such as heritage pork with world-class sauerkraut (a top-drawer take on the New York hot dog) or lavishly crab-filled crab cakes with cauliflower-tomato chutney, is top value.

I've had the good fortune of sitting in high dollar seats and luxury boxes in a handful of parks, but I have to say, that may be the first time I've seen the word "chutney" used in connection with a ballpark, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it.

(thanks to reader Pete Toms for the link)