Veteran Wichita chef prepares insane amount of food for NCAA visitors, athletes

When Ben George finally went to bed on Tuesday night, he couldn't sleep.

He had visions of 40,000 burger patties, 16,500 chicken fingers, 5,000 pretzels, 550 hungry journalists and dozens of college athletes in want of chicken breasts and grilled veggies dancing in his head.

He'd finally drift off then wake up with a start, remembering that 4,000 school children awaited individual boxed lunches at the next day's open practice, that the suite owners were expecting charcuterie and chilled beef tenderloin on Thursday, and that the walk-in fridge was so stuffed with palettes of hot dogs and boxes of pizza crust, it was almost impossible to move around.

No one in Wichita has cooked for more people this week — or maybe even this decade — than George, Intrust Bank Arena's executive chef, who was handed the gargantuan task of feeding everyone involved with the first-round NCAA tournament games in Wichita.

On his menu this week: Feeding six of the eight teams, who were able to order specific meals each day. A media buffet for 275. Food for 125 for Prime Sports in the VIP Cox Lounge. Up to four meals a day for the staff of CBS Sports. Sustenance for the tournament's 150 volunteers. And all the food for the arena's more than two dozen concession stands, each of which was serving chicken and barbecue and hot dogs nonstop on Thursday.

"There are so many moving parts to this thing," he said.

Normally, George's kitchen is busy in fits and spurts. A big concert event like Pink will have him and his staff scrambling and buzzing. But in between shows and events, the pace is slower.

There was nothing slow about the tournament.

The planning started in October, when George was required to make up a long list of proposed menus. He filled them with dishes like homemade lasagna (which tournament organizer Mike Ross called "better than Olive Garden"), beef stroganoff, chicken fajitas, smoked pork, and chicken penne pasta. In December, a panel of NCAA taste testers came to sample it all and make sure it was up to snuff.

In January, he started smoking pork in his mega-industrial kitchen smoker. All day, every day, he and his staff smoked, shredded and vacuum sealed, smoked shredded and vacuum sealed.

Product was ordered — plates and bowls and condiments and buns and chips that were stacked to the ceiling in every storage area of the arena's massive industrial kitchen in the arena's bowels.

The real insanity started this week, George said. SMG, which manages Intrust Bank Arena, lent George the chef from Tulsa's BOK Center, and George hired cooks who he'd worked with during his long career to come help him for the week, increasing his kitchen staff from its usual 10 to 22. They chopped and fried and assembled and wrapped and carted and organized until they were like cooking zombies.

George, who came to the arena three years ago from the executive chef's job at The Ambassador's Siena Tuscan Steakhouse, has experience working in high-demand situations, and with feeding crowds. He's cooked at The Anchor, Tallgrass Country Club, the Warren Theatre and several hotels, where his job was to cater to restaurant guests as well as banquets and conventions.

He had a small dress rehearsal in 2015, when Garth Brooks performed six sold-out shows in four days in 2015. That was crazy, George said, but it was nothing like this week.

Thursday, when all eight teams played over two sessions, was the day that really mattered. George arrived at work at 6:15 a.m. and got home around 10:45 p.m., estimating he'd walked 30 miles through the course of the day. It's all a blur of frying kettle chips (how can people eat so many kettle chips?!?) and stressing about how to get the suites from session one cleaned up and restocked in the short window before they were re-populated for session two.

"It was the busiest day of my life," he said. "And I've been cooking since I was 20."

Now that it's almost over, George said, he was finally able to sleep on Thursday night. Friday was an off day, so food demand was low, and Saturday, with just two games in the evening, will be an easier turn-around, sort of like a regular concert.

What's he going to do if he survives?

"I'm going to take three days off," he said. "Well, I"m going to try."

Disney on Ice arrives in a few days.

This story was originally published March 16, 2018 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Veteran Wichita chef prepares insane amount of food for NCAA visitors, athletes."