GALLOPING GOURMETS
Top chefs take marathon carbloading to a tasty new level
They’re not fueling up on stale PowerBars. On Sunday, 20 employees from Make It Nice, the restaurant group that includes top-ranked Eleven Madison Park and the NoMad, will run the NYC Marathon, and they’re eating extra helpings of gourmet fare to prepare.
Make It Nice chef and coowner Daniel Humm, who’s run the marathon twice, saw running as a bonding experience for his staff.
“There are a lot of similarities between cooking and running. I see both as endurance sports that require discipline and drive,” says Humm, who plans to eat pasta pomodoro and “a ton of Eleven Madison Park granola” on Saturday night. “You can’t wake up one day and decide to run a marathon, just like you can’t wake up one day and decide to have a successful restaurant.”
Humm’s executive sous chef at Eleven Madison, Brian Lockwood, is set to carb-load on home-cooked pasta with classic red sauce, ricotta and honeyParmesan garlic bread.
Others plan to eat out. Alex Pfaffenbach, assistant General Manager at the NoMad, has a “pre-race ritual” of spicy miso ramen at Momofuku Noodle Bar, while Nicolas Mouchel, a former NoMad manager, will fill up on yakitori for lunch at Ootoya Green- wich Village (“Pro tip,” he says, “You can get your rice refilled if you ask”) and head to Lupa for dinner.
Another NoMad manager, Ciprian Tecsa, has different plans. “Since I’m a bow hunter, another way I get my energy up before the race is with an all-day hunting trip on Saturday,” he says. “If the hunt goes well, I’ll be grilling deer tenderloins with mushrooms and vegetables for recovery on Sunday after the race, along with a well-deserved magnum of syrah.”