Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne,Maanvi Kapur, Margalit Cutler
Grub Street Diets are something of a miracle. Every week, a new chef, writer, actor, podcaster, comedian, and everything in between allows us to sit across from them at restaurants and stand on line next to them as they shamefully pick up yet another slop bowl; to go on dates with them; to visit their families and peek, however briefly, into their fridge. Among this year’s subjects, Monica Lewinsky told us about the pizza poem she wrote when she was 10, and Liza Treyger was kind enough to explain what a “geographic tongue” is. Brad Lander was feeling optimistic on the heels of a historic election, and Sarah Sherman learned her TMJ was “not beyond help.” Our diet travels took us to Los Angeles, London, and Colombia, down to the coveted back table at the Comedy Cellar and up to the Met Gala. Here, in purely chronological order, are 15 especially excellent moments from yet another miraculous, occasionally stressful, and always revealing year of Grub Street Diets.
Photo-Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
“At 7:30 I make, as I do five or so nights a week, a fruit salad. This is the only part of my diet that reads ‘gay’ to me — I can get very gay with fruit. I’ll turn a pear into 65 absolutely adorable batons; I’ll suprême a grapefruit until it looks naked and afraid.”
Photo-Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne
“The host orders nachos for the table, Tom Papa style, which means all the toppings are on the side. This way, you get way more cheese, and I don’t have to eat around the black beans and olives. I only fuck with the lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and, recently, jalapeño. I have a ‘geographic tongue,’ which a dental hygienist once told me is the reason I can’t handle spice, but I’ve been pushing myself and have made great strides. To be fully honest, though, I mostly like to scrape the cheese off the plate.”
Photo-Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
“We run up Sendero Ziruma, a raised footpath that climbs about 300 feet, to go over an arid pass with a view of the ocean. Chrys takes the downhill fast, streaking far ahead of me. We meet up again at Cafeteria Sebas, on Carrera 4 in Rodadero, a family-run frito stand that (for my money) fries the best empanadas in town. By the time I arrive, Chrys is already sitting in one of the plastic chairs set out on the sidewalk. She doesn’t need to ask what I want: a cup of orange juice with no sugar and no ice and a chicken-cheese-and-corn empanada. Chrys is likewise predictable. She gets an arepa de huevo perico, which is an egg mixed with onion and green pepper and pressed into arepa masa and then deep fried. A guy at the stand notices our sweatiness and asks us why we bother to run if we are just going to eat fritos. Chrys says that he has it backward: We’re going to eat fritos anyway, so why not run to get them?”
Photo-Illustration: Margalit Cutler
“Ever since I was a kid, I would often have a banana before going to a party, because my mom told me that they make you glow. Because of the, er, potassium, I assume?”
Illustration: Adam Mazur
“I collect different types of mustard and end up making a deviled-egg flight using some of my favorite mustards that I kind of associate with spring and summer flavor profiles — a blueberry-seed mustard from Raye’s, a company in Maine, and a blackcurrant Dijon, a tarragon mustard, and another honey-balsamic mustard, all from Edmond Fallot. It is a lotta eggs, but they’re really good. And they kind of look like the Pretty Patties from SpongeBob.”
Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
“Coffee is perhaps the one thing I can’t live without. I’ve always enjoyed the taste, ever since I was a kid in Mexico walking along the highway, where food stands would serve fresh hot milk with a shot of coffee. I also love coffee ice cream. But ten years ago, it became an obsession. At one point, I stopped drinking it for six months, but I missed it so much. It was a feeling worse than heartbreak — though, for the first time in a while, I began dreaming again. Since then, I’ve found a healthier balance: I drink less coffee, and I dream, too.”
Illustration: Clay Hickson
“A hatlike crab shell sat in the middle of the plate, surrounded by a field of swaying bonito flakes. Beneath the bonito thicket: crab brain, sticky rice, a lot of crab claws, and a lotus leaf. (Can you eat lotus leaf? Not really, but I tried anyway.) The dish arrived with a lot of accessories — tiny forks, plastic gloves, that metal thing you use to crack the claws open. We tried with the gloves at first, but it was more trouble than it was worth. Ultimately we went at the crab claws bare-handed. The gloves, we concluded, are for people who don’t know what their own vaginas look like.”
Illustration: Clay Hickson
“Somewhere between my relationship ending, having a television show come out, and my dad dying, I lost control of my control issues. My specific ‘complicated relationship with food’ began in college and has gone through different phases. This is by far the worst it’s ever been. I don’t have food rules. I don’t weigh myself obsessively. I don’t study my body in the mirror. I take the more simple approach by creating a reward system in my mind. Limiting food as much as possible means I am in control. So much is out of my control, but not this. To publicly chronicle a week of my food consumption under these circumstances feels moderately psychotic.”
Illustration: Adam Mazur
“This neighborhood has spawned an impressive array of soulless corporate restaurants, and this La Colombe feels like an airport lounge, but there is AC. I think I went on a first date here with my ex. Growing up in New York means being haunted by your dating history at every turn. There’s something deeply embarrassing about working on your screenplay in public. In L.A., it’s ubiquitous, but in New York, people have more shame.”
Illustration: Ryan Inzana
“Wimpy is, for the uninitiated, Britain’s oldest and most out-of-touch burger-bar chain. Imagine an American diner but with the mannerisms of a British greasy-spoon café: There are knives and forks with which to eat your cheeseburger; there’s malt vinegar on the table for your chips; people in here are variously eating burgers, grill plates, and hot dogs, but all are pairing these with a mug of English tea. Wimpy reminds me of those drawings of lions by medieval scribes who had never seen one in their lives. It is British Americana at its best. I get the Fish in a Bun, an analogue of the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, and it is genuinely excellent. Naturally, I also order tea.”
Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne
“There are few places in New York where I feel more like I live in a shtetl than Zabar’s, not least because of the heimish comestibles, but also because the Zabars are my lifelong family friends, which, to people on the Upper West Side, is like mentioning you summer at Balmoral with the queen. Unfortunately, this does not mean I get to skip the fish line, and all I get for this in store is the honor of being lightly bullied by Aaron Zabar, who is usually stationed at the front.”
Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
“On my walk back to the subway, I pass Sophie’s Cuban Cuisine. There’s a few around town, and I walk by them all the time … I was planning on going in there and grabbing something light and quick — not that you can grab something light in a Cuban sandwich shop, but lightish. I pop in and get their pulled-pork sandwich, which has mayo and marinated onions, with yucca on the side. I end up dining in, and it does not disappoint. I exhale and eat my meal leisurely, thinking, Oh my God, this is so good.”
Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne
“I like to move through the greatest hits of my coffee-mug collection, which is pretty good. Some of my mugs are humorous, some are glamorous, and some have sentimental value. I have a pair of sexy Putin mugs that I got in Moscow, which are standouts.”
Illustration: Margalit Cutler
“I’m walking over the Brooklyn Bridge at 6 a.m. with the Zohran crew, so I only have time for coffee. Fortunately, Josh Binderman, the Jewish outreach coordinator for Zohran’s campaign, has made pumpkin-cardamom muffins. ‘Cardamom’ was Zohran’s rapper name back in the day, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Honestly, they’re delicious.”
Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne
“By noon, I drink approximately 100 more cups of coffee and only realize I’ve had too much once I start feeling a crazy panic attack coming on. Not a capital-P, capital-A Panic Attack, just a small, low-grade Jewish one. I usually have about three to four small Jewish panic attacks a day.”
