‘Chef Herb’ sets the table for athletes’ success

Last year, when incoming men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves decided that his team could afford to drop a few pounds, he didn’t turn to the Atkins diet. He turned to Chef Herb.

Herbert Hackworthy, executive chef for the athletics department, helped Eaves turn his charges into a lean, mean (and, sometimes, fighting) machine. After 23 years cooking in country clubs, the man everyone calls “Chef Herb” took over the kitchens at UW–Madison’s Kohl Center two years ago. Now, he’s as integral to the success of UW–Madison athletes as their trainers and advisers.

Chef Herb oversees the care and feeding of the Badgers who practice and compete at the Kohl Center, a responsibility that puts him in direct consultation with coaches and trainers. Working out of a large industrial kitchen inside the arena, he and his staff prepare meals before all home games and at least one or two practices per week. Hackworthy’s job is to ensure that those meals are healthy and provide energy, and that they fulfill the specific goals the coaches have for athletes’ diets.

Feeding athletes only begins with nutrition. They’re also customers, and any chef knows the customer should always be happy. Hackworthy never serves a team the same meal twice in a month, for example. And never will he repeat a mistake he made his first year on the job, when in a rush he served sausage to hockey players in a pre-game meal.

“I got a lot of e-mail the next day,” he says. “Thank goodness they won.”

Hackworthy’s job is about to get bigger. In January, new kitchens will open in the renovated Camp Randall Stadium, at which point Hackworthy will take over food preparation for the football team, a job currently handled by the Wisconsin Union.

The athletes are only one group of customers. Hackworthy caters to another audience — literally.

On game nights, about an hour before the doors open to the public, Hackworthy is way down in the Kohl Center, past the parked Zamboni machines and stored hockey goals, behind a door marked by a large Bucky Badger wearing a chef’s hat. By that time, he’s fed the men’s basketball team lasagna, green beans, barbecued chicken, mashed potatoes and yogurt. Now, he’s leaning over a menu, preparing for an almost 180-degree shift to filling the custom orders of the luxury suites upstairs. (The concourse concessions stands, on the other hand, are run by vendors.)

Some suite orders are predetermined, but customers may ask for an extra homemade pizza or a plate of potato skins — a favorite. Before game time, the kitchen will turn out dozens of pizzas, deli platters and even plates of prime rib.

Hackworthy has plenty of help. With a rotating staff that includes a sous chef, a chef who works with each of the teams, and as many as 80 student employees, the kitchen is geared for high-volume production. Once everyone has assignments, the chorus of bangs, clanks, splashes and sizzles starts up. “We turn our hats around, and we have a whole different operation,” says Hackworthy. “By 6 or 6:30, we’re humpin’.”

Standing in the middle of the culinary commotion, wearing a double-breasted white uniform topped by a Badger cap, Hackworthy keeps watch over it all, but he doesn’t waste time peering over shoulders at every moment. Instead, he lends a hand working the deep fryer. The kitchen, he explains, is a team, and tonight there’s more frying to do than normal, and so that’s the hat he’s wearing.

The kitchen fills with long rows of homemade pizzas, hundreds of cheese curds and jalape? poppers and even a special-order tray of sushi — although Hackworthy admits he ordered out for that. (Less waste that way, he says.) Once the action begins upstairs, it slows in the kitchen, with only a few on-the-fly food orders from suites to prepare. That gives the chef an opportunity to walk around the arena, checking in on suites and even popping in to watch the Badgers sink a couple buckets. As he wanders, he passes people who greet him with a fond, “Hey, chef!”

While working so close to competitive athletics might strike some as the best part of the job, Hackworthy admits that he doesn’t watch as much of the games as some may expect. “It’s still a job,” he says, “and by the time we’re winding down here in the middle of the game, I’m ready to go home.”

But none of it takes away from what he considers one of the best working atmospheres anyone could imagine. He says coaches and staff couldn’t be nicer, and he enjoys the chance to see them out of the media spotlight. One day, he recalls, men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan came zipping into the kitchen on a Segway scooter, looking for a quick bite.

“Hey, chef!” he called out. Hackworthy got him a sandwich in no time.