Tristan Straub likes baseball and loves cooking, but he never envisioned a career combining the two until he found out the Madison Mallards were looking for an executive chef.

Straub got the job and recently began his second season in charge of the menu at Warner Park, where the Mallards annually lead the country in summer college baseball attendance.

It’s not easy to come up with a menu to satisfy 6,000 hungry fans a night – hot dogs and burgers are only a small piece of the puzzle, in case you haven’t been to a ballpark lately – but Straub, 31, enjoys the challenge.

A Philadelphia native who got his start in the food business as a dishwasher at a restaurant, Straub worked for five years at a restaurant at a boutique hotel in State College, Pa., before moving to Madison, where he has had stops at L’Etoile, The Bayou and Brickhouse Barbeque.

He lives in Madison with his wife, Melanie De Jesus, and their 1-year-old daughter Isabella.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge when you’re preparing food for more than 6,000 people a night for 35 home games a season?

A: Ordering is the most difficult. It’s easier earlier (in the season) because I have time. As we’re getting to the last seven, 10 games, it starts getting tricky. When it’s done, it’s done, and whatever products we have on hand we either have to eat ourselves or donate – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we have budgets. The all-you-can-eat packages here are great, and that’s what we’re known for, but it can make it very difficult to assess what the average fan is going to do every night, let alone 6,000-plus.

Q: What’s a typical game day like for you?

A: Generally, I come in and establish our specials everywhere for the night, do any ordering at that point that I have to do for the next day or two days out. Then I basically hit the kitchens, organize whatever is left to be organized, check the freshness on everything and then start cooking the specials. At 3:30, (the staff) starts coming in for a 7 p.m. game.

By the time the game starts, it’s all supervision. Ideally, during the game I’m wandering throughout the ballpark. But sometimes, we’ll fall short in some areas. On Opening Night, there was a point when Brian (Sather), our assistant GM, was scooping ice cream, I was making cotton candy and (Mallards president Vern Stenman) was helping cook burgers.

Q: How do you know if something you think is good is going to be well-received ?

A: It’s really interesting to see the trends with fans — how they eat at the ballpark. What may not be popular at our Maynard’s Slide-In or our Stoddard’s Smokehouse may be very popular at the TDS Hot Corner Grille.

We’ve had three or four specials this year that have sold very well in one area, so we moved it to try and shift traffic and it didn’t sell.

I think one thing that surprised a lot of people here was how well certain things, like calamari, would go at the ballpark. I remember the delivery guy was taking it off the truck and he looked at me and said, “You know you’re at a ballpark right now, right?” I was like, “Let’s see. Let’s see what we can and can’t do. Let’s try it.”