Italian food from LaScala’s Fire and a Schwarbomb Sundae join the 2026 Phillies’ lineup at Citizens Bank Park

With 44,000 fans expected at Citizens Bank Park for Opening Day next week, Aramark Sports & Entertainment is preparing for its gametime crush — the usual 10,000 hot dogs, 4,500 soft pretzels, 4,000 orders of Chickie’s & Pete’s Crabfries, 3,500 cheesesteaks, and thousands more burgers, pizzas, and cups of ice cream served in souvenir batting helmets.

But for Aramark, the 2026 season will not just be about feeding crowds. The nation’s eyes will be on the Phillies as they host the All-Star Game this July, and Aramark has spent the offseason revamping the food lineup.

New dishes will be added throughout the ballpark, including a Kyle Schwarber-inspired Schwarbomb Sundae as well as spicy Cristopher Sánchez-branded chicken sandwiches known as Sánchez Sliders.

The Phillies announced two major changes Thursday: Harry the K’s, the sports bar that opened with the ballpark to honor broadcaster Harry Kalas, has been rebranded, and Shake Shack’s stand behind home plate has been replaced by Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers and an outpost of Chickie’s & Pete’s after seven seasons.

Also notably, the team and Aramark have partnered with the regional Italian restaurant chain LaScala’s Fire to provide a menu for the 1,300-seat Philadelphia Insurance Club — popularly known as the Diamond Club — behind home plate. Previously, it had served a rotating menu.

While Phillies manager Rob Thomson has been putting his players through spring training in Clearwater, Fla., Vonnie Negron, Aramark’s executive chef at Citizens Bank Park, is drilling his kitchen team.

Negron, starting his 11th season this year, has overseen weekly menu tastings to allow Aramark and Phillies employees to try the LaScala’s dishes as well as those that will be available in different areas of the ballpark.

For the final tasting of the LaScala menu last week, Negron and his chefs set out a buffet, including cheesesteak egg rolls, mozzarella carrozza, a ricotta board, cheesesteaks, meatball parm panini, and four entrees: spicy chicken cutlet rigatoni, lemon crab and shrimp over linguini, sausage bolognese over rigatoni, and risotto tartufata with pancetta, peas, parmigiano, and truffle cream sauce.

The LaScala collaboration fits a model that has become familiar at the ballpark. Every season, Aramark works with local restaurants — Campo’s, Chickie’s & Pete’s, Manco & Manco, P.J. Whelihan’s, and Federal Donuts & Chicken among them — folding hometown names into the concessions to give them visibility. Aramark prepares and serves the food.

In addition to being a business move, the partnerships are fun for the restaurants and their staffs, said Kevin Tedesco, Aramark’s regional manager at Citizens Bank Park.

“This is the Phillies — it’s Major League Baseball,” said Tedesco, a native Philadelphian who opened the ballpark in 2004 as the concessions director. “They’re fans. It’s their hometown team. There’s something special about that.”

Rob LaScala, who grew up in Ocean City, N.J., and owns 10 LaScala’s Fire locations among his 18 restaurants, said he had noticed that major-league teams have been setting up partnerships.

“I go to Phillies games all the time with my son, and we go to the Diamond Club, and I always thought it would be amazing if our brand were in there,” he said. Initially, he had thought that LaScala’s Fire would work as an on-site restaurant at the ballpark; this partnership, he said, could be a first step.

The work of translating LaScala’s food to a stadium’s scale fell in part to Jason Santillo, Aramark’s chef de cuisine in charge of the Philadelphia Insurance Club. Like many stadium chefs, he has fine-dining experience. Before he started with Aramark two years ago, Santillo was executive chef at Boro, a white-tablecloth restaurant in Pennington, N.J.

Earlier this year, Santillo, Negron, and other Aramark staffers visited LaScala’s location in Marlton, where LaScala’s corporate executive chef, Terry White, and Fire’s executive chef Quentin Wills served them the entire menu. “We really got to experience what they do,” Santillo said.

Santillo and Negron later spent a day working at the restaurant. Adapting and scaling the recipes was not a major challenge.

“We speak the same language,” said Negron, 63, a chef for four decades, having started in the 1980s at Lily’s in NewMarket before heading banquets at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel. For several decades, White, 62, was corporate executive chef for Del Frisco’s, Sullivans, and Lone Star steakhouses before heading out to consult.

White said Aramark’s team largely kept LaScala’s dishes intact. “We gave them the recipes, then came in and watched them prep,” he said. “They’ve executed exactly the way we want it.”

“Once our partners understand [the quality is] as important to us as it is to them, it’s easy street,” Tedesco said.

Not surprisingly, the Phillies and Aramark employees at the LaScala’s tasting said they enjoyed every dish. “Oh, this crab pasta is insanely good,” said Abby Carpenter, a Phillies premium-services intern. “I’m not usually a big cream-sauce person, especially with pasta, but this is definitely an exception.” She excused herself to get seconds.

All the dishes sampled will make the ballpark menu. White said the spicy chicken cutlet rigatoni is LaScala’s top seller, while the tortellini with prosciutto, peas, and truffle cream runs a close second.

Seasonal considerations shaped some of the rest. “We’re doing a meatball panini because the first homestand is in March,” White said. “We wanted to give guests a nice, warm panini.” Later in the season when the weather is warmer, he said, guests may see meatballs and ricotta instead. For Sunday games that start in the early afternoon, LaScala’s and Aramark plan breakfast-style options, including omelets and dishes from Chicken or the Egg, a LaScala-owned concept that serves breakfast.

The effort is backed by a sizable year-round operation. Aramark has six full kitchens at Citizens Bank Park, and Negron heads a team of 120 people, including seven chef-managers.

The kitchens do not go dark after baseball season, either. Amid the menu development, Tedesco said, the ballpark hosts about 250 private and corporate events a year — weddings, bar mitzvahs, trade shows, galas, proms, and company parties, and its spaces can accommodate small meetings up to concourse receptions of 1,500 people.

Among the changes for 2026 will be Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers’ replacing Shake Shack, two new stands for Manco & Manco Pizza, and a partnership with Ghost energy drink rebranding the Harry the K’s space in the Left Field Porch/Scoreboard Building, with cocktails, snacks, and rotating promotions. The statue honoring Kalas, who died in 2009, remains on the concourse, the broadcast booth still carries his name, and the Phanavision will continue to broadcast Kalas singing “High Hopes” after home wins.

The concession menu will feature several foods inspired by players, with donations going to their charities. Pitcher Cristopher Sánchez lends his name to Sánchez Sliders (hot honey-glazed chicken tenders), benefiting Clinica de Familia. Slugger Kyle Schwarber’s Schwarbomb Sundae is soft-serve with a funnel-cake fried strawberry Uncrustable, strawberry sauce, and fruity cereal pieces served in a 2026 MLB All-Star Game batting helmet, benefiting Schwarber’s Neighborhood Heroes. When Jesús Luzardo is the starting pitcher, Campo’s stand in Ashburn Alley will serve the Sweeper, a ribeye sandwich smothered in pizza sauce and topped with provolone cheese and pepperoni, to benefit the Luzardo Family Foundation. Pitcher Aaron Nola is promoting a limited-edition Yuengling Lager Phillies Powder Blue can.

Among other new features this year:

For Negron, the challenge is to make all of it work at ballpark speed without losing sight of the broad audience the stadium serves.

“You’ve got to consider who’s coming to the ballpark,” Negron said. “You’ve got a whole walk of life. So we kind of meet them somewhere in the middle.”