What’s new to eat at Broncos home games this season?

DENVER — Those who advise to enjoy everything in moderation haven’t checked out the food at many professional-sports stadiums these days.

Gone are the years when your options were limited to hot dogs, rudimentary hamburgers, chicken tenders, peanuts and soft pretzels. Now, stadiums try to one-up each other with unique items — all the way down to the minor leagues. A baseball trip that included three different A-ball leagues served as a reminder of that.

So, when you get to the top tier, where the Broncos sit? Every year is about upping the game.

And that brings us to some of the new food items at Empower Field at Mile High, which local media were given a chance to sample on Tuesday inside the west club level.

Among the new items are a double-smahburger topped with pepperjack cheese, spicy avocado and roasted Anaheim peppers at the Atwater Grill on the 100 level, a Korean marinated barbecue bowl from Cupbop (section 518), Italian beef and Italian sausage sandwiches from Carmine Lonardo’s deli (club level market stations), the Cali burrito from Carrera’s (sections 508 and 542), the sesame-poke bowl at Aloha Cones (section 326), and “The Beast in a Blanket,” a two-foot-long tornado of brisket burnt ends, cheddar cheese, goat cheese, secret sauce, crispy onions, pickled onions, avocado cream and jalepeños, all topping the two-foot hot dog at the core of the dish — and then cooked in a puff pastry.

“The Beast” is at sections 119 and 128.

The standouts:

Bronco Cheese Dog: Food on a stick can work quite well functionally at games, but this is a terrific item even if it were a knife-and-forker. Provide day Mukja and available at the club-level markets, it looks like a corn dog, but it’s half-hot dog/half-mozzarella cheese, with dust of Takis added for flavor.

Cali Burrito: The best part of this? In addition to the pleasant mix of flavors and textures — with cheese, cream, carne asada and French fries — it held its structure exceptionally well, even when removed from the foil wrapper. It’s a complete meal in your hands.

Shredded Pork Belly Bao: From MAKfam, this is at the club-level grill stations, and it’s an ideal mix of flavors with the hoisin sauce, pickled radish, sesame seeds and scallions.

Watch the embedded video for more as I put the food to the taste test … and test myself with “The Mile High Reaper,” a Nashville-style hot-chicken sandwich from local restaurant Birdcall that adds habanero aioli and pickled jalapeños to the mix.

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