Strawberry buffalo chicken tenders are the signature dish at Houston Stadium during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Aramark Sports + Entertainment
Houston is known for its fajitas. Its barbecue. Its Viet-Cajun crawfish. Its kolaches.
But at Houston Stadium, for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the city’s signature food isn’t any of those things. No, it’s a basket of slightly sticky, candy-red chicken tenders — dressed in a strawberry buffalo glaze.
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They arrive four to a basket with a pile of fries, and sell for $17.65. Almost pinkish in some light, the tenders combine a faint and fruity sweetness with the mild spice of a concession-stand meal hesitant to scare off any customers. Plain white chicken meat hides inside the neon shell.
As for how this became Houston’s signature?
“Houston’s one of the most diverse cities in the world, obviously,” said Brent Culp, Aramark’s concession chef and the mastermind behind the dish.
But for a stand-out stadium snack, he continued, “You want to find something that isn’t too strange, but also is well-received. This is something that is not too far out there, but also just a good flavor overall.”
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Tossed tenders have long been popular at the stadium (NRG Stadium, before the World Cup came to town). To dream up this variant, Culp sat down to think about flavors that were “outside of the boxes.”
He remembered visiting Atkinson Farms out in Spring as a child, where his family would pick ripe strawberries and boil them with Fresno chiles into a hot sauce. He “put two and two together” and decided to put the flavor combo on chicken, blending buffalo sauce, cayenne and strawberry puree.
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The stadium launched the offering during the Texans’ last season, Culp said, and the sweet-and-spicy combo “kind of took off.” So Culp and the Aramark concessions team made it the star of the show for the World Cup.
People have snapped them up, Culp said, with sales a few percent higher than average for tossed tenders. (He couldn’t share more exact sales numbers.)
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Not every city has taken an approach as creative as Houston’s, though. In Philadelphia, the signature dish is — what else? — a cheesesteak. In Kansas City, it’s barbecue mac and cheese.
Houston Stadium, of course, sells some of the city’s more well-known specialties, like tacos and brisket. And the concessions team put international flavors on the menu, too: peri peri nachos, Caribbean jerk nachos, pork belly bao.
In some of the hospitality areas, Aramark regional culinary director O’Brien Tingling specifically set out to “showcase Houston and the diverse cuisines that are available locally.” Think dishes made with Texas beef, smoked pork butt, chile-rubbed beef medallions, rose lamb sliders and edamame hummus, nods to both Houston’s food scene and those of the countries playing in the World Cup.
But when it comes to the signature, Aramark senior director of premium services Chad Clements said the team wanted to stick with something that was — at least mostly — classic.
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“Creature comfort foods is what we all really want: nachos, chicken tenders, all of those things,” he said. “Just taking them and morphing them into something cool and creative.”