Go inside a fancy hospitality house at The Masters, where 3 Texans serve 1,000 meals a day

For five days a year, two businessmen from Plano run a country club at The Masters.

For the other 360 days a year, the house at 1018 Azalea Drive in Augusta, Ga., is unoccupied, despite its proximity to one of the world's best-known golf clubs, Augusta National, which hosts one of the world's most-watched sporting events, The Masters Tournament.

Five days of frenzy — breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks for wealthy golf fans — is enough to pay the bills at The 1018 Club. In all, the 9,000-square-foot hospitality house serves up to 1,000 meals each day for five days. Patrons spend as much as $300 a day to be there.

To make the house worth the price, Plano residents Ram Silverman and Steve Parry asked another Texan, Dallas chef Kent Rathbun, to join the team six years ago. They're a trifecta of Texans who work hard to make visitors at The Masters feel at home, regardless of where home may be.

"They have always had one thing in mind," Rathbun says, "and that is to have the best food available in Augusta."

'It all sounds very romantic'

Many of the 1018 Club customers are men and women who have purchased a ticket to The Masters from Golden Tickets, a ticket broker founded by Silverman and Parry. While they also sell tickets to major sporting events like the Super Bowl, The Masters has become Golden Tickets' main event.

Tickets to watch the golf tournament can cost $2,000 a day or more.

Plano resident and PGA golf professional Lee Singletary has brought as many as 40 people to the 1018 Club as part of his corporate hospitality business. In a single year, he'll spend tens of thousands of dollars entertaining at The 1018 Club.

"What Kent [Rathbun] does is first-class," Singletary says. He's been eating Rathbun's food in North Texas for well over a decade and has taken dozens of his cooking classes over the years. "All of my clients love the place. Obviously, the Masters is a highlight, but The 1018 Club is a second highlight."

For Silverman and Parry, The 1018 Club is a natural part of their ticket-selling business. Many customers, they found, were willing to tack on another few hundred bucks per day to have a comfy place within walking distance of The National to eat, drink and valet park from sunup to sundown. They bought the house 16 years ago.

"It all sounds very romantic," Silverman says, "but to be honest, it's an incredible amount of work and there's a lot of expense to provide the service and food level."

Harder still, their hope is that fans who lounge in this multi-level home with a Tommy Bahama aesthetic never realize how complicated it is to feed and entertain 500 people a day.

5 days of food

Rathbun formerly ran Dallas restaurants Abacus and Jasper's and is now an owner at Imoto, Shinsei, Lovers Seafood Market and Republic. He's fed hundreds of people, lots of times, but the all-day grind during The Masters is especially long and tough.

"But it's a lot of fun," he offers.

This year, his team of about 15 chefs will fly in from across the country: Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Portland and Houston. The 1018 Club employs about 65 people total, Silverman says.

And what do hundreds of golf fans want to eat all day? That's complicated, so the house offers a little bit of everything: pizza, cooked in outdoor pizza ovens. Meat and seafood, smoked and grilled. Pasta. Taco salads. Grilled cheeses. Quesadillas. Breakfast. Dessert. And more.

Singletary says the blueberry pancakes at breakfasttime are tops, and he also likes the Kobe beef burger and the Sunday afternoon lobster feast.

Of course, Rathbun's team also makes a pimento-cheese sandwich, a snack many people eat out on the golf course. One year, Rathbun's team decided to have a contest, letting 1018 Club members informally vote whether they liked the sandwich inside the hospitality house or the one on the golf course.

"We killed it," Rathbun says after the votes were tallied. "We won."

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.