Trying The Best Food at Petco Park with Don & Mud

San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

This week we got out-broadcasted on Happy Half Hour, and we couldn’t be more honored to pass the torch, to, as Troy dubbed it, “the best monosyllabic baseball broadcast duo in the major leagues.” The crew went to Petco Park ahead of the start of the Padres/Rockies series to chat with the voices of the franchise, Don Orsillo and Mark Grant (the Friars lost last night, but there’s another game beginning as I type. Go Padres!). Orsillo and Grant are better known to the masses as Don and Mud, the announcers of our beloved Major League Baseball franchise. The voices of the Friar Faithful, or, as we like to call it, two brotherly types yukking it up as if they were hanging out on a fishing pier, or, as so many fans like to imagine, in our own living rooms. Mud’s been with the team as PadresTV’s color analyst for 29 years, since 2024. He actually pitched for the Padres from 1987 to 90, and was originally selected by the San Francisco Giants with the 10th pick in the first round of the 1981 Draft out of Joliet (IL) Catholic High School. He played parts of eight Major League seasons with San Francisco, San Diego, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston and Colorado before retiring from the sport 1995 and beginning his broadcasting career as a sports anchor at KMFB Radio, eventually moving to the Padres airwaves over time. Outside of baseball, he’s a passionate advocate for the Down Syndrome Association of San Diego, as well as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of San Diego and St. Madeleine Sophie’s Center in El Cajon. Orsillo, beloved throughout the country and the MLB for his 15-year-long tenure at the Red Sox before joining the Padres in 2016, also calls nationally broadcasted MLB games for FOX, FS1 and TBS during the regular season. His numerous accolades include five Emmy Awards for outstanding play-by-play (2003 and 2004 with Boston, 2018, 2019 and 2022 with the Padres) and two New England Sports Best Play-by-Play awards (2014 and 2015). The current Coronado resident and lifelong broadcaster was named Massachusetts Broadcaster of the year twice in 2005 and 2015, and, through his role with the Red Sox, has also appeared in a few movies, including 2013’s The Heat, 2010’s The Town and 2005’s Fever Pitch. Orsillo is also, we learn in this episode, a cult-famous home cook, regularly cooking for friends and enjoying his wares so much that–we also learn!!—he has never tried Petco Park stadium food. No Cardiff Seaside Market tri-tip, no An’s Dry Cleaning Gelato. Nary a Board-n-Brew Turknado in sight. He tells us that it’s hard to get up, considering his job requires him to be tied to a mic. But the real reason he doesn’t dabble in Petco’s many incredible food options is that he’s such a good cook, he just doesn’t really need to eat anyone else’s food (which we respect on this here food podcast). Unable to resist the obvious temptation at hand, and being the friendly trolls that we are, Mud, along with the hosts, ushers Orsillo into his first-ever stadium bite on this show. I won’t spoil the goods here, but it’s worth tuning in to find out because it includes a fried fusion mash-up dish that’s likely to become a Petco Park food icon after this season ends. There’s a lot more brotherly banter to go around, and the truth is it’s best heard wherever you listen to your podcasts, and probably not in this written post, owing to the fact we are talking to some of the most celebrated broadcasters in the game. But we also talk the news: CH is bringing pan-Middle Eastern cuisine to North Park, Rancho Valencia is launching a summer dinner series with newly minted Michelin-starred Baja chef Javier Plascencia, as well as Fauna’s David Castro Hussong, and Izola is staying in East Village by opening its new, enormous Fault Line Park storefront soon.