So The Caz stand does look nice and fast when empty but of course this picture did not reflect the case for a crowded opening day as expected. I guess these guys did not get the memo on how Astros opening day always is and it did not take long for things to turn into a disaster in their kitchen. The Caz is famous for their big 1/2 pound gourmet burgers and some specialty dogs, but the only thing anyone saw coming out of the kitchen for a while yesterday was chicken tender baskets. It’s not that yesterday’s crowd preferred the chicken tenders, it was more because of the chaotic kitchen trying to deal with an extremely high demand of burgers at the same time, so they were just not completing any orders. When I arrived to get a burger, some people had been waiting since the first inning for their burgers! So I waited as well. It was the 4th inning in action and still no burgers for anybody! The lady working there told us wisely that the reason for the delay is because burgers take time to cook! It really was an eye opener! And after that things just got better and better.
By the time they were finally taking out some burgers to complete orders, none of the orders they were calling were for the people who were waiting. The burgers looked really badly cooked and looking nothing close to what was advertised. It was now the 5th inning and Keuchel was having a great battle against Kluber and people were missing out because they were still stuck in line for their burgers! At this point, things got even more chaotic and all people switched to a “grab anything you can for yourself” strategy and just started grabbing whichever burger was coming out. People were grabbing old burgers with just onions as toppings that were just sitting on the pantry even though most of them had been waiting on a daisy cutter (beef patty topped with pepper jack cheese, roasted poblano peppers, house fried onions and sriracha mayo served on a challah bun) or the double meat version. I even saw a burger come out with just bacon or onions and no meat patty. It was truly a mess in that kitchen!
Finally, more help was called into the kitchen and some better looking burgers started to come out. The order numbers were still messed up and people were just grabbing burgers by what was out first since it was the beginning of the 6th inning and no one cared if it was their order, they just wanted to get back to the game. I finally got what looked somewhat similar to the burger I ordered and headed to my seat after 3 innings of waiting. I was lucky to get a burger in a shorter time than most but there were people waiting for theirs since the 1st inning and got them in the late 4th or 5th innings.
It was definitely a disaster last night for The Caz kitchen. They were not prepared for the high demand of an opening day, the establishment looked short staffed and confused until the 4th inning where thanks to the help of more managers that intervened in the kitchen they were able to deliver some food! I definitely felt like I was in a real life Hell’s Kitchen episode meltdown!
At the end I got my burger and watched the end of an amazing game last night. I hope for future events they have a better estimate of the volume of people and find ways to deliver those patties faster.
Talking Astros 