Kickoff Kitchen is not your typical cookbook. Created by former Eagles’ chef Tim Lopez, it dives into the food culture of every NFL city, offering a fantastic array of regional cuisine, spanning coast to coast. The carefully curated concepts and detailed recipe development spring from Lopez’ passion for food culture and his interest in the stories behind the dishes we love.
We chatted with Lopez, whose cookbook was released on August 26, about a week before the Eagles kicked off the 2025 NFL season with a win over the Cowboys. It offers 64 recipes (two per team) for casual, savory game-day delights, including appetizers, snacks, sandwiches, dips, stews and more. He told us what it was like cooking for “the Birds,” how he went about creating the book, and what these foods tell us about their cities of origin.
The Impetus for a Cookbook
As Chef for the Philadelphia Eagles for 14 years, Lopez cooked for players, coaches, trainers and the staff of the Novacare Complex on a schedule mirroring the rigorous training routine and voracious appetites of the professional athletes. It was on-demand, custom cooking, from the predawn hours until the evening, and Lopez had a blast.
Nick Foles, Lopez and Nate Sudfeld a week before Super Bowl LII
“It was one of the best times of my life,” he says. The unique experience brought him face to face with superstar athletes and even earned him a Super Bowl ring after the team won it all in 2018. During that time, Lopez developed a podcast called “Feeding the Birds,” on which he hosted the likes of Jordan Mailata, Carson Wentz, Jason Kelce and Zach Ertz to talk about food and food culture. It was so popular that it ran for nearly 50 episodes.
“No matter who you are or what you do for a living, people love discussing what they like to eat,” he says. “In learning about where people had certain foods or who created a dish or where you can find the best recipe for a particular style of food, you learn a little bit more about people’s connection to it, whether ethnically, geographically or nostalgically.”
Lane Johnson and Lopez
Lopez and the Eagles had to strike a balance between satisfying cravings and fueling for performance. “When they had days off or weren’t worried about being on the field, they were looking for classic foods and comfort foods,” Lopez says. And they sometimes got quite creative. One of the players’ favorite “cheat day” foods was called “The Wolfpack.” Invented by then-Safety Earl Wolff, it was a burger topped with ham, bacon and seared tomato sandwiched between two grilled cheese sandwiches and slathered in mayo and mustard. However, this kind of decadence was more the exception than the rule.
Lopez says, “During the season, it was all about performance nutrition. We would cook them something really healthy but personalized.” He says that lean protein was in constant demand including smoked meats, salmon, shellfish, elk, ostrich, lamb, high end beef steaks, poultry and duck. At that time, the Eagles consumed a staggering four tons of salmon during training camp, alone. Barbecue, pasta and pizza were also in near-perpetual rotation.
Lopez says, “It was all about figuring out how to provide them with health and nutrition while still making the menu exciting. And the way we made it the most exciting was to lean into a lot of ethnic foods and favorite regional recipes.”
Inspired by players’ requests, Lopez and his fellow Novacare Chef Gabe Nesmith began cooking cuisine from around the country on a regular basis. They developed an initiative called “Devour the Competition,” serving the food of the team’s rivals each week. Lopez says, “It was something that we were able to offer to all the staff, the team and the coaches in the café. Sometimes those recipes turned out to be more of a special treat because they’re not all highly nutritional, but they’re still very much beloved foods throughout the country. So, that was our way of highlighting those places and connecting to the game in a different way every week.”
Lopez really honed in on regional authenticity and did his research. He called up chefs and mainstay eateries throughout the country, seeking tips for making signature dishes. Sometimes, he was swiftly dismissed. But many other times, he learned insider techniques and ingredients for getting it just right.
Devour the Competition was a hit with the players and stoked Lopez’ passion for regional food culture. It laid the groundwork for what he’d eventually create with Kickoff Kitchen.
Kickoff Kitchen
Through his time with The Birds and his podcast, Feeding the Birds, Lopez had made something of a name for himself. He caught the attention of global publishing company Quarto, which approached him about creating a recipe book. He readily agreed and got to work.
Lopez with Kickoff Kitchen at Binding Agents
Lopez’ first task was structuring the project. “Quarto told me, ‘We’re not going to tell you how to write it. We’ll give you notes but, at the end of the day, you will organize it,’” Lopez says. He decided on a conference-based outline, with recipes divided by AFC and NFC North, South, East and West. “I wanted the book to have a similar organization to the NFL. It makes it easy to find your team and access your food directly,” he says. It also contains a photo of each recipe, map, an exhaustive index, fascinating tidbits about each team, food safety tips and an equipment list, which Lopez believes every cookbook should contain. The book, itself, is flat bound to lay open to your chosen recipe. Lopez says, “That makes the book easier to leave open on a kitchen countertop or next to the grill while you’re cooking.”
Intended for game-day consumption, the recipes are all casual snacks and meals spanning a wide array of savory flavors and styles. Meats and cheeses figure prominently, with a solid showing of seafood and shellfish, too. Many recipes remix classic staples in new forms, like sliders, egg rolls and dips, playing with the translation of iconic foods.
Upon opening the book, the instinct is to find one’s own team(s) right away. Of course, we went straight to the Pennsylvania recipes. For the Pittsburgh Steelers (AFC North), Lopez offers recipes for chipped chop ham sliders and seared Polish sausage with pierogis. For the Philadelphia Eagles (NFC East), he shares recipes for cheesesteak egg rolls and a roast pork sandwich. These mouthwatering dishes represent not only the local favorites, but the heritage, diversity and history of these cities. Italian roast pork sandwiches were once a simple, tasty lunch for dockworkers in Philadelphia while the pierogi dish reflects the Polish heritage essential to Pittsburgh’s food culture.
Roast pork sandwich (Philadelphia Eagles
Likewise, many recipes in Kickoff Kitchen speak to the resilience and innovations of the people who first cooked them. Lopez says, “The city ‘chicken’ bites (Cleveland Browns) came about because chicken wasn’t readily available in inner cities during the Depression era. Someone had to go out of the city to buy a chicken and bring it back and there weren’t a lot of stores carrying it. But pork was widely available and very cheap, so people would cube the pork, stick it on a skewer and deep fry it. The skewer would act like a bone and they’d actually try to make it look like a chicken leg. The tater tot hot dish (Minnesota Vikings) came about in a similar way. It’s a Depression era food that combined what people had available to make a hearty meal that fed a lot of people. And po’boys (New Orleans Saints), short for ‘poor boys,’ are hearty, tasty shrimp or fried oyster sandwiches once served free to striking streetcar workers.”
Mini fried shrimp po’boys (New Orleans Saints)
From burnt ends sandwiches to lobster rolls and fried bologna sandwiches to tacos, burritos and avocado sourdough toasts, you’ll find loads of handhelds in Kickoff Kitchen. Lopez says, “You can express an entire culture through sandwiches.” Like Philly’s roast pork, the Italian beef sandwich (Chicago Bears) comes from the Italian immigrant community in Chicago. Kansas City’s burnt end sandwiches (Chiefs) offer a delectable, portable barbecue option. And San Francisco’s Mission burritos (49ers) offer a compact fusion of Mexican and Californian flavors still enjoyed for lunch by on-the-go workers.
Beef birria tacos (Houston Texans)
Lopez also gives a nod to eateries serving the iconic recipes within their cities of origin, like historic Parkway Bakery and Tavern for po’boys in New Orleans, Mariscos Jalisco for shrimp tacos in Los Angeles, Isaly’s for chipped chop ham in Pittsburgh, and Tommy DiNic’s and John’s Roast Pork for roast pork sandos in Philadelphia.
While it’s hard for Lopez to pick favorites, he’s really taken a liking to Florida’s food culture with its array of immigrant and African American influences. In Kickoff Kitchen, he includes salmon croquettes (Jacksonville Jaguars), deviled crab croquettes (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Cuban sandwiches and arepas con chicharrones (Miami Dolphins), the roots of which span numerous cultures.
Deviled crab croquettes (Tampa Bay Buccaneers)
What’s Next?
As his cookbook takes flight, Lopez remains busy with his work as a high school teacher. After making a pandemic pivot into education, he’s found his groove working with young people at Jules E. Mastbaum High School, where he guides them in exploring culinary arts through an integrated curriculum with a lot of cross-department collaboration. Each year, his students create a new, signature hot sauce that they develop, test, produce, market and sell to benefit the program. Their most recent batch, “Long Hot Summer” incorporates garlic long hot peppers into a sauce Lopez says “goes great on any sandwich, pizza, scrambled eggs and seafood.” Grab a bottle for yourself by contacting Lopez or attending one of his cookbook events.
One of the student-created hot sauces at Jules E. Mastbaum High School
As for passion projects, Lopez has a new podcast called “Brunch-ed in the Face!,” on which he chats with fellow educators about all-things-brunch. And keep your eyes out for a dessert cookbook from Lopez in the same vein as Kickoff Kitchen. It’s something he’s working on to further explore our nation’s incredible food cultures and to sweeten game day even more.
You can order Kickoff Kitchen through Quarto and Amazon. Follow Chef Tim on Instagram to stay in the loop about book signings and other special events!
- Photos of Kickoff Kitchen book and Tim Lopez at Binding Agents: Leigh Green
- Photo of Lopez with players and on podcast + hot sauce: Tim Lopez
- Salmon and burnt ends photos: Bigstock
