I'll Have What He's Having: The Joe Bastianich Marathon Diet

(Photo via: sidedish.dmagazine.com)

By Meredith Brody

OK, so he's cut out the 42-ounce-steak-for-two that he'd tuck into at 3 a.m. And the "legendary feats of consumption" with business partner Mario Batali, with whom he owns many restaurants, including Babbo and Otto in New York: "We would eat...all night," Joe Bastianich remembers. His other business partner, mom Lidia, of famed New York restaurant Felidia, muses: "He fell into the pressures of decadence. It's a potent current, a beautiful, enriching current." (Hey, well said, Mom!)

But when I read what Joe is eating in his quest to run the New York City Marathon on Sunday, I get more than a little jealous.

For breakfast, it's boiled arborio rice (naturally creamy) with a splash of soy milk and honey from his own backyard bees: "it's like risotto with honey." And a couple of espressos.

Dinner? Rib-eye steak with a porcini rub, pan-seared; garlicky broccoli rabe; and mashed potatoes with a touch of butter and soy milk.

(Photo via: farm2.static.flickr.com)

But this is the meal that made me weep: a thin-crust pizza topped with mozzarella, parmesan, an egg, and thin-sliced guanciale, cured pig jowl, enticingly described as "a sort of face bacon", further enhanced with shaved black truffles. Lunch? No. Mid-afternoon snack.

Sweet Jesus. And this is the food that's helped him shave off 45 pounds (well, along with twenty hours of running, weekly). I think they should put this stuff on their menus: The Joe Bastianich marathon diet specials.