A parking lot next to Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium has turned into a culinary map of the NFL this week, with one dish representing every team from the Buffalo Bills to the Las Vegas Raiders. The USA TODAY Great American Tailgate, running August 5 through 9 in Canton, Ohio, offers Cleveland hot dogs with Cleveland Stadium mustard, Philly cheesesteaks, and Nashville hot chicken sliders side by side, all part of the fan fest surrounding Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Week.
The tailgate is a new addition this year, created by USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures in partnership with the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a flagship piece of the broader Sugardale Fan Fest, according to USA Today. Every dish on the menu was prepared by Strongsville-based A Taste of Excellence Catering, led by certified chef William Rini, whose firm sources ingredients from regional vendors including Ohio Proud beef and Ohio City Pasta, as PR Newswire reported. As Cleveland.com detailed in its rundown of the menu, the tailgate features one dish endemic to each of the NFL's 32 cities.
A Menu That Spans the League
Cleveland Browns fans get hot dogs with Cleveland Stadium mustard, while the Cincinnati Bengals are represented by buckeyes, per Cleveland.com's item-by-item breakdown. Baltimore's crab dip, Minnesota's cheese-stuffed Juicy Lucy burger, and Kansas City's barbecue mac and cheese round out the AFC and NFC North entries, while New Orleans brings jambalaya and Philadelphia offers its cheesesteak.
Further down the list, the same report notes Green Bay's cheese curds, Seattle's beignets with coffee-infused chocolate sauce, and Jacksonville's white chicken chili. Las Vegas is serving street tacos, Buffalo has its buffalo chicken dip with pita chips, and Dallas rounds out the sweets with Texas sheet cake. Tennessee's Nashville hot chicken sliders sit alongside New England's Boston baked beans topped with candied bacon.
More Teams, More Flavors
The list continues with New York's two entries — the Jets' New York-style cheesecake and the Giants' breakfast bagel — plus the Los Angeles Rams' chicken quesadilla and the Los Angeles Chargers' street corn, according to the same Cleveland.com account. Atlanta brings peach cobbler, Miami serves a Cuban sandwich, and Detroit is represented by coney dogs. San Francisco's cold noodles, Washington's smash burger, Chicago's Chicago dog, Denver's pretzels with green chili queso, Pittsburgh's sausage and peppers, Indianapolis's Korean barbecue dogs, Tampa Bay's mojo chicken nachos, Carolina's Carolina-style pulled pork barbecue, and Arizona's churros complete the set, along with Houston's smoked brisket nachos.
Beyond the 32-dish showcase, Cleveland Browns Hall of Fame tackle Joe Thomas brought his Wisconsin-raised Hall of Fame Farms Wagyu beef to Ohio for the first time, teaming up with Cleveland pitmasters Antz BBQ and Mr. Brisket to serve samples and sell products throughout the festival, according to a Hall of Fame Farms post. Thomas played 11 seasons for Cleveland and earned 10 Pro Bowl selections before his 2023 enshrinement.
Tickets, Hours and Getting There
Admission to the tailgate itself is free, but fans wanting to taste the food need a general-admission tasting passport priced at $40 for six samples, $70 for 16, or $110 for all 32, per Cleveland.com's ticketing breakdown. The passports are non-day-specific, meaning attendees can reuse the same pass across multiple days until every sample is redeemed, according to Visit Canton. Passports also include unlimited bottled water and chances to meet Hall of Famers, while VIP add-on tickets run $149 and include two full-size food selections, access to a VIP tent with dedicated seating, and gifts. Fans who just want a full meal without the tasting pass can also buy individual food tickets or full-size portions separately.
The tailgate runs from noon to 10 p.m. on Friday, noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday. Beyond the food, the site includes a beer garden with cocktails, merchandise areas, a music stage with bands and a DJ, cornhole and a football toss, and an arts station, per the same Cleveland.com report. A free shuttle runs from the Stark County Fairgrounds at 305 Wertz Ave. NW in Canton, though fairgrounds parking is only allowed Saturday and Sunday, not Friday.
Where History Meets the Festival
The tailgate sits in the Stadium Park parking lot on the east side of Interstate 77, right beside a bronze statue dedicated in 2022 to Marion Motley, the Canton native enshrined in 1968 who helped break professional football's color barrier with the Cleveland Browns in 1946, a year before Jackie Robinson entered Major League Baseball, according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The location also hosts a display of Cleveland Browns memorabilia from superfan Ray Prisby, known as “Showdawg,” who was inducted into the Ford Hall of Fans in 2021 after building his collection since 1961. Prisby is a U.S. Air Force veteran from Youngstown, per reporting from The Vindicator. Medical technology firm Smith+Nephew, the Hall of Fame's Official Joint Replacement and Sports Medicine Technology Partner through 2028, added a display of knee, hip and shoulder replacements alongside an interactive booth offering a signed Class of 2026 helmet raffle.
More than 70 Hall of Famers, including Dan Fouts, Isaac Bruce, Earl Campbell, Warren Moon and Joe Thomas, are scheduled for autographs, interviews and meet-and-greets across the five-day festival. The whole event builds toward Saturday's formal enshrinement of the Class of 2026 — Luke Kuechly, Drew Brees, Larry Fitzgerald, Adam Vinatieri and Roger Craig — set for noon at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, a lineup Hoodline previewed with JJ Watt's take on Kuechly's case last month. Enshrinement Week as a whole draws roughly 700,000 attendees to the Canton area, generating an estimated $43 million in economic impact for Stark County and $77 million across Ohio, according to the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce.
