THE NYC FOOD MARATHON: 26.2 DISHES IN 26 LOCATIONS IN 24 HOURS

“The body’s not a temple. It’s an amusement park.”—ANTHONY BOURDAIN

In my favorite food memoir, Heat, I high-lighted close to 100 passages. Most were related to topics for further exploration, questions I needed answers to.

Six months later, only two passages remained mysteries. Both related to profes-sional chefs who had gone on “food tours,” eating at 15–30 restaurants in single days. One had done it for pleasure while in Italy, the other for research prior to opening his own joint in NYC.

I couldn’t figure out the logistics. How is it possible to hit that many places? How could anyone eat that much food? Was it remotely plausible, or a literary exaggeration? I asked JZ to help me test-drive it.

I proposed an “NYC Food Marathon”: 26.2 dishes, all at different places, in 24 hours. It was a nod to the 26.2 miles in a normal mara-thon, and we would walk the whole thing.

But which 26.2 dishes? To narrow it down, JZ asked more than 40 NYC chefs and foodie friends: “If it were your last day to live, what would you eat in NYC?” That created the starter list, which JZ honed down to items unique to (or iconic in) NYC. Needless to say, all of them had to be amazing. The locations also had to be close enough together that we could hit them by foot in a single day. For this reason, we focused on Manhattan.

On December 20, 2011, less than 24 hours after I’d tackled the 14,000+ calorie Vermonster, we did it. Like all first-time

marathons, it was brutal. Without a doubt, it was also totally worth-

while. We ended up eating 20+ New York Times stars from 9 a.m. to 3:23 a.m. In a footrace, that’d be slower than the bag lady pushing the broken grocery cart, but in a food mara-thon, 18 hours is an MVP hustle. The morn-ing we started, JZ’s partner and chef-owner at Riverpark, Sisha Ortuzar, texted: “I want reports every hour.” He expected us to lose our lunch before lunch.

We didn’t. A meticulous plan, a minute-by-minute

blueprint, was our savior. It’s included in the next spread, with adjustments and notes in parentheses.

Seem like a lot of food? It wasn’t. It was a freaking Godzilla-killing buttload of food.

To replicate our NYC Food Marathon (or a food marathon in your own city), which I totally encourage you to try, a few guidelines are mission critical. It’s all worth saving up for. Think of the stories for the grandkids! Now the golden rules:

•Do this with a friend. It’s 100 times more fun.

•Split everything (food quantities and cost). Our marathon cost about $550 total, but your mileage may vary.

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• If you don’t want to finish something, don’t force yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Challenging? Of course. Nausea-inducing for days? No. JZ and I left quite a few bits unfinished, even though we tried to polish off anything that wasn’t a com-plete gluten bomb. Pierogies were tough.

•Have backup plans in case of rain, which could be as simple as umbrellas, a tighter cluster of restaurants, or the budget for cab fare between 26 places.

• In all seriousness: Do not expect to get anything productive done in the subse-quent 24 hours. It ain’t gonna happen. Remember Lance Armstrong (freakin’ Lance Armstrong) walking sideways downstairs after his first marathon? That’s how your brain will feel.

Biochemical insurance: PAGG, Cissus, and friends.

469 NYC FOOD MARATHON

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ARRIVAL EAT DEPART RESTAURANT DISH

9:00 AM 9:05 9:15 1. ABRAÇO 86 East 7th Street

Cortado and egg sandwich with pickled beets, and olive cookies They were out of egg sandwiches, so we had cortado and bought olive cookies to save for our last 0.2 meal of the 26.2.

9:17 AM 9:27 9:42 2. CAFÉ MOGADOR101 Saint Marks Place

Haloumi and shakshuka

9:45 AM 9:53 9:59 3. TARALLUCCI E VINO163 1st Avenue

Almond croissant

10:20 AM 10:25 10:30 4. DOUGHNUT PLANT 379 Grand Street

Coconut cream and carrot cake doughnuts

10:45 AM 10:53 11:04 5. RUSS & DAUGHTERS179 East Houston Street

Belly lox on an everything bagel with capers, tomatoes, and onions The bagel with lox truly saved us. We couldn’t have done another sweet dish, and the salty wonder of the cream cheese with salmon offered the taste-bud contrast we needed to continue.

11:14 AM 11:24 11:34 6. ’WICHCRAFT60 East 8th Street

Beer-braised beef brisket with pickled vegetables and cheddar on ciabatta We took the top slice of bread off of our sandwiches to treat them like tartines, open-faced French sandwiches. I wanted to minimize gluten-loading too early in the game.

11:44 AM 11:49 11:54 7. LIQUITERIA170 2nd Avenue

All Greens smoothie This provided both ginger for digestion/force-feeding and a small amount of fructose to help prevent enormous blood sugar swings. I drank half and saved the rest for later.

12:09 PM 12:14 12:29 8. COCORON61 Delancey Street

Pork kimchi soba and green tea

12:44 PM 12:49 1:04 9. MOMOFUKU171 1st Avenue

Pork buns This is where I said to JZ, “I think I burned my mouth at the last soba place,” to which he rightly responded, “That’s like getting a hangnail at mile four.” He was right. Taking stock of the rest of my body, I noticed another problem: “Uh-oh. I dropped two of my pills.” I had brought nine capsules of anti-obesity cissus quadrangularis (CQ) and 6 g L-lysine (an immune system hedge), all to be taken in three divided doses during our race.

1:11 PM 1:16 1:26 10. TAIM 222 Waverly Place

Sabich sandwich

1:46 PM 1:56 2:06 11. ABC KITCHEN35 East 18th Street

Kabocha squash toast, chicken liver toast, cheeseburger with fries, and roasted Jerusalem artichokes One of the biggest challenges of doing a food marathon with JZ was that most of the chefs and managers know him, so free dishes came out. This happened at ABC, one of my favorite spots (chef Dan Kluger trained JZ in his first job). I felt a second wind and sprinted through two bread dishes—“Ah, feeling light!” I said, smirking at JZ—and then I dove headfirst into the shallow end. This was my first sensation of “bonking.” In real marathons, this hitting the wall is associated with running out of stored glycogen, a carbohydrate. In food marathons, “bonking” is the opposite, something like insulin intoxication: stuffing too many carbohydrates in your maw.

2:26 PM 2:36 3:01 12. CRAFTBAR900 Broadway

Veal ricotta meatballs and two glasses of wine A Dolcetto d’Alba 2009 and an Elena Walch Lagrein 2009.

3:04 PM 3:09 3:14 13. CITY BAKERY 3 West 18th Street

Pretzel croissant Right on the tail of the Vermonster, there was no way I could even taste chocolate and peanut butter ice cream without puking, so we scratched our original plan to get ice cream at Sundaes & Cones. Then we took a 20-minute nap at JZ’s apartment and did GLUT-4 exercises. Sadly, 10 minutes after entering comatose bliss, a dog walker came banging through the door and started yelling, “Abbey, sit! Abbey, sit! Abbey, sit!” at JZ’s pit bull/dachshund mix. The dog defiantly freaked out instead, and nap time was concluded. With a sigh, I finished our brief time-out with 40 airsquats and 40 wall presses, both designed to increase recruitment of GLUT-4 receptors in muscle tissue.

NYC FOOD MARATHON

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ARRIVAL EAT DEPART RESTAURANT DISH

3:29 PM 3:39 3:49 14. PORCHETTA110 East 7th Street

Porchetta plate with white beans and sautéed kale

3:56 PM 4:06 4:21 15. GRAFFITI224 East 10th Street

Hummus-and-zucchini pizza

4:26 PM 4:36 4:51 16. HEARTH403 East 12th Street

Ribollita, autumn vegetable salad with whipped ricotta, cotechino with lentils, braised rabbit with olives, and a glass of Colli Orientali del Friuli Marco, a good friend of JZ’s whom I love to death, decided to pull a Tanya Harding here. He’s a mischievous one. “Oh, so you want a tasting?” Out came four dishes for each of us. “And you can’t leave without trying. . . . Just a little bit. Hold on. . . .” It was incredible, and he knew we’d eat it all. This little side-gorge was like stopping in the middle of a real marathon to do 100-meter sprints for 10 minutes before continuing.

5:16 PM 5:21 5:36 17. STAGE128 Second Avenue

Fried pierogis with sautéed onions

5:43 PM 5:48 6:09 18. PODUNK231 East 5th Street

Cupcake and a chocolate-chip cookie At this point, JZ did not feel well and couldn’t finish his cookie. I’m proud to report that I ate all of the cookies.

6:18 PM 6:28 6:48 19. RIVERPARK450 East 29th Street

Avocado-and-hamachi salad and Chilean bitters (for digestion) I finished off the second half of the Liquiteria ginger greens at this point.

7:08 PM 7:23 7:53 20. ELEVEN MADISON PARK11 Madison Avenue

Chemex coffee, venison loin with brussels sprouts, and a glass of Saint-Emilion Grand Cru

7:58 PM 8:08 9:08 21. CRAFT43 East 19th Street

Braised short ribs, butternut squash puree, and a glass of Domaine Vincent Paris Cornas Granit 60 All delicious, in part because of the decadent sauces. I nicknamed the but-ternut squash “butter, not squash.”

9:25 PM 9:35 9:55 22. BRUSHSTROKE30 Hudson Street

Your choice cocktail, sencha, and chawan-mushi (steamed egg custard) Brushstroke treated me to the best chawan-mushi I’ve ever had. The book-lined walls of the far-right bar are incredible, and the food and drink are even better. The sencha, a strong green tea, was consumed first for inhibition of fat-storage and better recruitment of GLUT-4 receptors in muscle cells. Then, we went for the house-made ginger ale with shochu.

10:15 PM 10:30 10:50 23. BLUE RIBBON97 Sullivan Street

Bone marrow with oxtail ragout, half-dozen oysters, and a Brooklyn lager Anything tastes amazing if you’re drunk and hungry. It’s quite another thing if you’ve had 24 meals sober and something tastes incredible. That was this dish. Truth be told, JZ and I expected it to be the final nail in the coffin.

11:00 PM 11:10 12:00 AM 24. TERROIR413 East 12th Street

Pork blade steak with arugula salad and a glass of 2009 Solane Santi Valpolicella

12:30 AM 12:35 12:45 25. SOUTH BROOKLYN PIZZA122 1st Avenue

Slice of pepperoni pizza (alternate location 25B: Joe’s Pizza)

1:00 AM 1:15 3:20 26.

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EMPLOYEES ONLY510 Hudson Street

Cocktails, including two Ginger Smashes With one of the coolest logos and bartenders I’d ever met (Bratislav from Serbia), this was the perfect place to cross the finish line.

Leftover olive cookie from Abraço

NYC FOOD MARATHON (CONTINUED)

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Crossing the finish line and polishing off the last 0.2 miles.

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