The Restaurant Diet is the first book I have read that actually encourages and offers delicious tips for people looking to dine out when they want to lose weight and get healthier. This is a timely and necessary concept for diners, especially in places like New York where the culture is health-savvy and there is so much good food that dining out is often preferable to dining in.
When I made the decision to come to the United States, I knew that I wanted to share my passion for the Alsatian cuisine that I grew up with, which was not well-known here. What surprised me most was how differently people eat here. The size of portions was most striking, and in many cases the servings were far more than the average person needs to satisfy their dietary requirements. Not only were portions much larger than in France, people also seemed to eat the majority of the food that was on their plates. In France, people typically eat at a much more relaxed pace; meals are spread out for enjoyment. When people eat in a hurry, they tend to overorder and eat more than they need, resulting in feeling uncomfortably stuffed or bloated. In my world, you can eat practically anything on a menu, provided the food is high quality, balanced, and in appropriate portions. It is also about food pairings. I typically avoid or limit eating sugar and fat together, the same goes for fat and gluten.
We want our guests to be able to enjoy every part of their experience without the stress of going off of their diets. When a guest informs us they are on a diet or have an allergy or are gluten-insensitive or vegetarian, for instance, we are delighted to accommodate their needs. I encourage my guests to be honest with me and our staff and express their needs. We have developed a menu that offers something for everyone, including classic examples of my native Alsatian delicacies, as well as fresh, light, clean foods. We go a long way to educate and expose our clients to the best, most nutritionally balanced foods. Spacing out the courses, and offering abundant, yet not extravagant, portions affords diners the ability to enjoy anything on our menu they may desire, without the guilt. Eating out and being healthier, just like eating healthier at home, involves making informed choices.
I applaud Fred Bollaci for empowering diners who are looking to lose weight to learn to embrace restaurant dining and to enjoy the flavors and social environment of their favorite restaurants without feeling guilty. As a society, we can improve the quality of our lives by learning more about nutrition and educating yourself on what’s good for you. Know what you eat, where it’s from, and who’s behind it. You look the way you eat, so eat slowly and eat well!
The Restaurant Diet is a healthy gourmet Guide for Life that gives a dieter permission to enjoy dining out and losing weight, whether you are in a Michelin-Starred restaurant, or your favorite neighborhood bistro!
To Your Good Health and Bon Appetit! G’sundheit es Gilt!
I look forward to welcoming you to my namesake restaurant.
—Gabriel Kreuther, Michelin Two-Star Chef, James Beard Award-Winning “Best Chef New York City,” culinary director of New York’s Baccarat Hotel, and restaurant owner of Gabriel Kreuther and Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate in New York
If you’ve read the first edition of The Restaurant Diet or attended one of my lectures, you will know that I didn’t just go out and decide to lose a lot of weight one day, and it magically happened to work. Yes, it is true that anyone can go on a diet and lose weight, even a lot of weight. I had gained, lost, and gained back hundreds of pounds over the course of my life, up thirty, down twenty, etc. I thought I knew how to lose weight: go on a diet (eat less, and mostly foods I didn’t like) and exercise. The problem is, after losing weight, how do you keep it off? We don’t want to “diet” the rest of our lives, do we? All the diets I had tried before were essentially short-term means to an end: drop the weight, but good luck doing it for life! The weight would inevitably come back, as the routines were too extreme and unpleasant to continue long-term. Eventually, old habits would set in, and I never felt good about myself or was confident that the extraordinary sacrifices I had to make to lose a lot of weight were worth it.
I would learn the hard way that there is a lot more to successful and lasting weight loss than simply what we eat and how much we exercise. After years of struggling with my weight and countless miserable diets that left me feeling deprived and ultimately defeated, I was basking in the misery of being well over three hundred pounds with little hope for ever getting my weight—or my life—under control. The reality was, I was headed for an untimely death. Frankly, I didn’t care. That was the old Fred.
As you will read in this second edition, it took what one might call an “intervention from beyond”—a near-death experience at age thirty of being “sent back” into my aching, overweight body—to bring about monumental and seemingly impossible physical, emotional, and spiritual changes. Something many would call a “spiritual awakening” sparked the changes that would lead to my initial weight loss. These changes continue to this day and have enabled me to remain at a healthy weight and improve all areas of my life in ways I never before could have imagined. As you will read, this experience shook me to my core and showed me that we are indeed immortal, eternal souls living as people on earth. This newfound awareness led me to rededicate myself to living a better life. I would embark on a lifelong quest to improve my experience by working to become a better version of myself and finding my purpose in this life, which clearly wasn’t to die at age thirty or continue waddling around in my morbidly obese body, feeling sorry for myself and not living up to my God-given potential. My soul and God had other plans.
I was one of those lucky ones who almost died but didn’t. I got the chance to go back and do better. I was given a second chance at life. It was like being born again, except this time with a vivid awareness of who/what I am really made of. When we are born into the physical world, most of us forget our divine legacy and eternal nature. This is how it is supposed to be for us to learn to have faith and develop our character—or at least try our best to do so in a world that can be extremely challenging, to say the least. In my case, I was “fortunate” that (by not living up to my God-given potential) my body nearly gave out, and I got to have an awe-inspiring glimpse of “The Other Side” and who we really are. I was spiritually awakened. Realizing that God chose to “save me” and offer me a second chance to go back and be Fred Bollaci, but to do it better, is an awesome experience that has taken me years to try to wrap my human mind around.
When I began to grasp the reality that I am a soul having a human experience, it became easier to be grateful for this second chance and never take life for granted again. I had a monumental task in front of me—losing 150 pounds—but there was and remains so much more to do with this life than that. I had to learn to love myself as an imperfect (and at the time, a very overweight and unhappy) man. Not only did I have to accept my flawed humanity, but also my divinity. I needed to appreciate the gift of our eternal soul, which is the magical spark and driving force within each of us that is constantly looking out for our greater good.
Growing up, I hated when my parents or grandparents would tell me “it’s for your own good” when I got punished for doing something wrong or when something didn’t go as I would have liked. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that expression. Just like the people who raise us and seemingly know better about a lot of things, our souls know better than our human minds could ever comprehend. Our souls are our ultimate guides and teachers, bringing us into situations that test us and teach us lessons on how to become better people “for our own good,” for the growth and evolution of our souls and the evolution of mankind.
After visiting “The Other Side,” I got lectured by some of my now-deceased loved ones about how I needed to change my life and take responsibility, lose weight, and get healthier. The prize? I would be rewarded beyond my wildest dreams. Yes, it was the gift of life. I “came back,” this time with a new outlook. I was determined to do whatever it would take to realize my full God-given potential. At first, an overwhelming sense of gratitude and peace washed over me. I was at the lowest point in my life, but I knew instinctively everything I needed to know—that I was being guided, that