Eat, Recover, Repeat…Like the Pros

Happy New Year from the team at Clean Plates!

Phew. We’ve survived the holidays, and if your festivities were anything like ours, chances are you ate and imbibed a little (or a lot) more than usual. Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to ease back into real life.

But where to begin? Re-calibrating our daily diets can feel overwhelming, we know. Which is why we turn to the pros. Not trainers or nutritionists—we’re talking the eating and drinking pros.

All year round, food pros are tempted by the tastiest stuff and must then face the consequences. So, we asked a chef, a sommelier, a restaurant manager, and a food editor to see if we could learn from how they cope after overindulging.

We think it’s safe to say that these are tips we’re going to be returning to every January—even The Meatball Shop Chef-Owner Daniel Holzman’s tip…and you’ll have to read to the very end for that one.

Here are the best tips we could find for New Year rebounding:

1. Gingery Green Juice

Make your own gingery green juice to get a boost on the New Year. The terrific folks over at The Kitchn have rounded up the web’s 5 best green juices—one for every day of the week.

Jordan Salcito, Beverage Director of the Momofuku Restaurant Group, avoids caving in to the morning-after croissant. She swears by spin class, green tea, green juices, and a Thomas Keller chicken soup recipe.

“First thing in the morning, I need some good green juice. I go to the Juice Press for their ‘Ginger Fireball’ or the Liquiteria for their ‘Killer X,’ depending on what neighborhood I’m in. After the Eater Awards, I drank green juice all day long, and [my husband] Robert [Bohr] and I made homemade chicken soup with a tough little bird from the Greenmarket plus leeks, onions, carrots, and herbs and served it piping hot! So, chicken soup with somebody that you care about.”

2. Super Salad

Salad is a classic way to add a little green to a meal. And with these 3 surprising dressings, your 2014 salads will be anything but simple.

Shiraz Noor, General Manager of Perry St, finds that after binges like a recent three-hour lunch at Del Posto on his rare day off, he craves the simple stuff.

“The more nice wine and cocktails and nice meat and butter and decadent things I’ve had, the more I’ve started to appreciate having my girlfriend make me a really simple salad and drinking sparkling water. Having that sharp contrast—grass can seem greener—things that are ‘lesser’ start to seem exciting again.”

3. Miso Soup

You can make your own delicious, restorative miso soup in just 10 minutes…seriously! And we’ve got just the recipe, from award-winning Japanese cookbook author  Hiroko Shimbo. See below for Hiroko’s recipe for 10-minute miso soup.

Matt Gross, Web Editor at Bon Appetit, sounds superhuman to us. Don’t know if it’s all the miso soup he sips or what.

“The first thing I do is I go running. Especially if I’m hungover or feeling like crap, five, six, seven miles makes me feel fantastic. I tend to run better when I feel hungover. I’m weirdly light on my feet and fast, and I don’t know where the energy comes from but I love it.

Miso soup is my morning drink now, and it’s actually better than a cup of coffee. You can make it from scratch or you can buy very good miso soup with dashi already in it. It comes in a tub in the refrigerator aisle at Sunrise Mart.”

4. Foresight

Daniel Holzman, Chef-Owner of The Meatball Shop, trains jiu jitsu five days a week, so it’s no wonder he calls himself “The Rebound King.” Still, he’s got no good cure when he’s really in trouble.

“Generally, I power through it, but if I’m truly down for the count, then only time will heal. A couple of weeks ago, I stayed up late drinking a bottle of Rebel Yell whiskey with a friend and got two hours of sleep. The next morning, I had to wake up early to get on a boat for a work fishing trip. The seas were really, really rough…we almost flipped the thing. I tried to drink a beer on the boat to get myself on track, but there was no going back.”

Want to know Holzman’s favorite jiu jitsu classes in the New York area? “Renzo Gracie is best,” he says. “And Clockwork and Brooklyn BJJ are good, too.”

What about YOU?

What’s your best tip or favorite way to getting your eating back on track after you’ve overindulged? We’d love to know!