Podcaster James Harris’s Grub Street Diet

A lifelong New Yorker, James Harris, co-host of the menswear-slash-everything podcast Throwing Fits, knows how to take advantage of the holiday week in New York. It’s a time when all the transplants return to their respective coasts and suburbs and, suddenly, Resy slots open up. On a weeklong seafood bender, he managed to squeeze into not one but two of the city’s most impossible tables: Bong and Bistrot Ha. He also hosted his parents for the first time this Christmas, improvising his way through a decadent seafood spread that left everyone happy (and functioned as a double-portion lunch the next day). His week of no-lines eating also produced two food predictions for 2026: Pomelo will be the citrus of the year, and the Cosmo will be the drink of the year. Pomelo Cosmo, anyone?

Wednesday, December 24
I wake up at 6:45 a.m. for no reason. I’ve decided that 2026 is going to be the year of sleep. I think I got pretty dialed in this past year on cooking for myself at home, and I realized that maybe the next big pillar of life and health that needs addressing is my sleep issues — waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to bed, waking up super-early and not being able to fall asleep again, not being able to fall asleep at all. I’m not a big resolutions guy, but maybe that’s a yearlong project.

I make a 20-ounce hot coffee at home, which I have every morning without fail. Same ceramic drip cone I’ve had for ten years, beans from Variety in Greenpoint. I kind of need it to function. I’m very jealous of people who can just get up and go. I need like an hour and a half in the morning to drink coffee, spend time with my Japanese toilet seat as a result of the coffee, do sudoku, read, scroll my phone.

I play tennis for an hour in the McCarren bubble. I picked up tennis seriously during COVID, and now it’s kind of my thing. With any tennis court in New York, getting court time is its own competitive sport, so I book a weekly lesson for the entire season. It guarantees me a spot but also lets me work on really small things — like if I can’t get past someone’s backhand, I’ll drill that and then try again next time I play them. It’s all incremental, infinitesimal improvements.

I’m rarely a breakfast person, but I’ve been trying to have at least a piece of toast, so I’m not running around with 20 ounces of coffee sloshing around my stomach. I don’t get to it this morning, and afterward I’m starving. The city is empty, which is honestly one of my favorite times of year. There’s a tamale cart on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint that always sells out immediately from commuters, and I’ve never been able to catch it while it still has inventory. But around 10 a.m., I finally do. I get a $3 chicken mole tamale. It’s phenomenal. After that, I have a Muscle Milk protein shake. I don’t know what the current science is, but a few years ago someone was like, “You should have one of these after you work out,” and I’ve just been doing that ever since.

Back home, I start making shrimp stock for shrimp cocktail and a crab-and-lobster pasta. This year, I’m hosting my parents for Christmas for the first time ever. After COVID and some family losses, there’s no longer a set holiday tradition, and instead of trying to find the perfect restaurant — the right location, noise level, cuisine — I just decided to host. Shrimp cocktail felt like a must, so I peel the shrimp and make stock from the shells early so it can cool. At the same time, I’m fully spiraling about seafood safety: Did I buy it too early? Was it packaged too long ago? Am I going to poison everyone? I’m on ChatGPT trying to figure out if I should’ve frozen the crab and lobster.

While I’m cooking, I order a grilled pork bánh mì and a Diet Coke from Bahnmigos and eat it while watching Industry screeners. It might be my favorite show on TV that’s not Bravo, but the screeners don’t have subtitles, and I can’t understand anything these British people are saying, especially with all the financial jargon.

Later, I drop off a gift for my friend Oliver at Bernie’s. I live two blocks away, and I’m there a lot. This year, I tried to be more intentional about gift giving. I got my barber a pound of Wagyu from a Japanese butcher. He tells me later that it kind of ruined steak for him, which I think might be the best gift feedback I’ve ever gotten.

I mix up a hydration powder drink — another thing someone once told me I should do — partly because I don’t want to get sick before Christmas and partly because I know I’m going to a Christmas Eve dinner party. Then comes a shrimp-stock disaster. I put the stock in a container, swirl it to mix the sediment, only to realize it’s not closed. Shrimp stock goes everywhere. It smells insanely bad. I ask Siri how to get the smell out of a rug and spray vinegar and water all over my apartment. Now the whole place smells like white vinegar, which I don’t hate but I do briefly consider throwing the rug out.

Before leaving for a family friend’s Christmas Eve dinner, I order veggie nachos from Homemade Taqueria as a snack, so I am not starving.

It’s very Italian — loud, joyful, and extremely well-fed. There’s a ton of caviar, a giant ham, piles of langoustines, and enough crab for about 20 people. I mostly eat crab. There’s also foie gras on some kind of potato with crab on top, which is honestly a lot but very good.

The food is mostly brought in from different places and then assembled by a chef, but then, at some point, the chef quits in the middle of dinner. No one really knows why; it becomes the main plot twist of the night. But by then, everything is already close enough to being done that it doesn’t really derail anything. The energy stays boisterous and happy.

After dinner, everyone just sits around digesting. For dessert, there’s panettone with zabaglione, that traditional eggy Marsala wine sauce, which I think is fantastic. We don’t leave until around 1 a.m. It’s late, but it’s festive in a way I’m not always used to on Christmas anymore. It feels like a reminder that the holidays can still be fun.

Thursday, December 25
I have my giant coffee at home and toast with fresh-ground almond butter. One with raspberry jam, and one with Sky High Farm honey and salt.

I play Christmas tennis in the McCarren bubble with a buddy. After tennis, I basically make the most decadent lunch I can manage with what’s in the house: a baguette with lobster, pickle, mustard, and mayo. I’ll be honest: I kind of find lobster overrated. I made it more for the aesthetics, the festivity, the decadence. The crab and the shrimp stock are the workhorses of this dinner. If I had to rank shellfish, I would say crab may be my No. 1. I love soft-shell crab season: Fry them up in a pan, throw them on a sandwich with tomato, onion, and tartar sauce. This lobster is technically supposed to be for dinner, but I also convince myself I have to test it to make sure it’s still good. It is.

I have a small coffee at home because I’m trying to stay on my p’s and q’s. Normally, I love an afternoon nap, but today I don’t want to be sleepy when my parents come over, and I’ve got to pull off this whole dinner. My dad ends up drinking half the coffee anyway.

I don’t start actually cooking until they arrive, except for the shrimp cocktail, which, in hindsight, I wish I’d made fresh — it’s a little rubbery. They’re watching me finish everything, and my mom is trying to help, and I’m like, “No, sit. You’ve cooked for me my whole life. Let me do this for you.”

I’m kind of winging it — especially with the pasta — and they’re basically watching me operate in my own home, which I think my mom loves. I have this analogy that cooking is actually really similar to developing your personal style: When you’re first starting out, it’s helpful to follow a “recipe,” like literally being told what to do. With style, it’s like: “Oh, I want to dress like that” or “I need to get those exact clothes to build my wardrobe.” And eventually you learn what you like, you can eyeball it, you understand the basic science, and you can just figure it out on your own.

We eat the pasta, a radicchio and endive salad, and roasted fennel. They are pleased. We’re kind of trying to figure out new traditions. We used to celebrate with our whole family, but now my brother has a 1-year-old, almost 2-year-old, and there’s no set thing anymore. So I’m like, “Gifts before dessert?” And they’re like, “Well, is that what you want to do?”

They don’t really give me fashion gifts. I’ve told them: “Please, I don’t need more clothes.” My mom gets me books. My dad went to a Japanese ceramics store near where they live and bought me a beautiful dish. I got my dad pants from Our Legacy, and he’s really stoked. I think through osmosis of the podcast, he’s picked up fashion cues. When I give him the pants, he’s cheering, “Oh yeah! Our Legacy! Let’s go!” I got my mom a scarf from Stoffa. It’s a beautiful textile, and I’m like, “If you don’t want it, I’ll keep it for myself. Say the word.”

My mom used to listen to every episode early on, and she would text me her thoughts every week — usually something like, “That Jonah Hill guy sounds nice. Please stop cursing so much.” But they were most excited about our episode with Zohran Mamdani. Some Mamdani people knocked on their door, canvassing, and my dad was like, “Hey, do you know the podcast Throwing Fits?”

I let them bring dessert even though I wanted to make everything for them, and I think they forgot because they definitely just bought ice cream and cupcakes from the bodega before driving over here. Honestly, it’s kind of refreshing. I’m sick of artisanal baked goods, handmade cupcakes made from hand-ground flour and icing from someone’s Polish great-grandmother. These are just ultraprocessed cupcakes: synthetic red velvet cake, the thickest vanilla icing you’ve ever tasted.

After they leave, I make myself a little mini-martini to decompress. I don’t make them a ton at home, but it’s a special occasion. I use a really briny gin called Fundy, from Nova Scotia. I do a decent amount of vermouth, and then a little dirty. Super-chilled glass. I guess the term is “make it skate.”

Friday, December 26
I have my same 20-ounce coffee at home, then go to the Good Morning Café pop-up at Strange Delight. I love Strange Delight, and they’ve got a new dinner menu — I’m actually going to start my New Year’s there. I’m supposed to meet a friend, but he bails last minute. Even still, I’m like, “Fuck it. I’m going to take the train 25 minutes, eat by myself, and take the train back.” They’re sold out of the breakfast sandwich. They’ve got pastries that people love, but I’m not big on pastries — I’m more of a savory-breakfast guy, even though I’m not really a breakfast guy. So, I’m having lunch at 11 a.m. I get the grits with shrimp gravy and the pimento-cheese sandwich with Cajun-spiced cucumbers, iceberg lettuce, all on milk bread.

Then, I run to the hardware store to buy a 1/2-inch drill bit — I’m putting up some shelving. This week I’m catching up on home projects, trying to hit my goal of a book a month (I do!), and doing nothing and everything at the same time. It’s a weird week where you get these random bursts of activity.

I stop at the Japanese market and buy Yakult. It’s like a peachy-pink juice that my brother and I loved to drink when we spent summers in Japan as kids; we called it “peach juice.” It’s kind of like a Proustian rush back to my childhood. Now, with the English branding on the packaging, it’s being sold to people as this live-probiotic yogurt drink, and I’m like … what?

Later, I attempt to have a small bowl of Christmas-pasta leftovers — the crab-and-lobster pasta. It’s supposed to be a snack. And then I’m like, “Wait, I should just eat it all now, for safety?” The 25th feels like the last day the seafood is “good.” So I eat, like, two-and-a-half servings of this pasta. A full second lunch.

It’s risky because I’m going to Bong at 7:30 with a friend. I am stressed because I can’t break my appetite for Bong. Bong is usually impossibly busy, but I’m taking advantage of this week — reservations are easy, and everything feels more spontaneous than it usually does.

It’s freezing and snowing — blizzard vibes — and as I am in the Uber there, I’m genuinely wondering if I should’ve canceled. Looking out the car window, I worry there’s a chance we’ll come out to a foot of snow and won’t be able to get home. But I’m also like, Fuck it. By the time we’re there, I’m thankfully starving.

We get the salt-and-pepper head-on shrimp; pomelo salad with dried shrimp and fried peanuts and mint; somlor machu clams with eggplant and watercress in a sour tamarind broth; plea sach ko, which is kind of like a beef carpaccio; and an unreal whole fried fish with a ton of herbs and pickled things. That salad is amazing. I’m calling it right now: Pomelo is going to be the citrus of 2026.

After, we go to Bernie’s for a nightcap. I order a Cosmo. It’s actually my second Cosmo of the week. Cosmos are one of those drinks where you order it kind of ironically, but also, it’s fucking delicious. Tart, sour, bright, fruity, icy. And for some reason, bartenders love it. When I had one at Blue Ribbon Brasserie earlier in the week, the bartender was like, “Hell yeah,” and told us the secret is some kind of orange liqueur. At Bernie’s, they make a round of Cosmo shots for the staff.

Saturday, December 27
I have my same 20-ounce coffee at home. Then I play tennis — court availability is wide open. I’m trying to put together a small tennis tournament in mid-January with around ten people, just a bunch of friends. The plan is to go out to Long Island for the day. My barber recommended this super old-school place in Long Beach called Clay Time — everything’s cash, verbal contracts. After tennis, I have a piece of toast with jam.

I head out to run errands in the part of Greenpoint that’s kind of far from me — near all the TikTok restaurants: Taku Sando, Kettl Matcha. I actually do try to go to Radio thinking my good-luck streak of getting into places that are impossible this week will continue. But I’m too late. They’re sold out of basically all the sandwiches except tuna salad, which is overrated.

It’s another freezing day — lots of snow on the ground — and I would love some pozole right now. I think about going to Mariscos El Submarino, but that’s more of a seafood aguachile place. So, I go to Frijoleros. This is probably the third time I’ve been there, and it hits every time. I also order chorizo tacos, and unfortunately, I don’t realize the pozole comes with two tostadas; the tacos come first, and by the time the pozole shows up, I’m stuffed. I have to bring half home.

Between lunch and dinner, I work on the shelving, do sudoku, and read. I’m reading a book called The Director, by Daniel Kehlmann. I’m trying to finish this one before New Year’s. It’s about a Jewish director who goes back to Germany during the rise of the Third Reich to take care of his mother and gets trapped there — basically about creating art under fascism. It’s good, and also scary because it feels very … applicable.

The main event of my day is my reservation at Bistrot Ha — my second time there. I’ve become friends with the co-owner Sadie through going to her other restaurant Snack Bar a bunch and loving it. I first came to Bistrot Ha during their opening week, and I was blown away. Now it’s gotten even better. The menu’s updated. Opening week was super-cramped and crowded because everyone was trying to get in; this time, it’s more settled. It seems like they’ve reworked the interior to be more accommodating. The lighting is so insane that I asked Sadie about it, and she told me about this lighting designer James Cherry. I actually bought one of his lights as a gift for someone; it’s beautiful, made with real cucumber — like, if you’re hungry, you can eat the light.

We get the beef tataki, Ha’s salad, leeks vinaigrette with mussels and egg salad, trout crudo with pomelo, leg of lamb, lobster and sweetbreads vol-au-vent, and the passion-fruit meringue. The leeks vinaigrette is insane. The lamb is so good. The trout crudo with pomelo is fucking fire. We also get a bottle of Matassa, plus a lychee Cosmo. I’m calling it: The Cosmo is the drink of 2026.

I was there with a friend, but it turned into one of those nights where you’re also running into people. It’s that slow week in New York thing. The table next to us is friends. We see a friend sitting at the bar with his mom who’s visiting for the holidays. Another friend comes in — they just had a baby, so it’s one of their first date nights out. It feels warm and New York–y and kind of like I’m in a Nancy Meyers movie.

Sunday, December 29
Coffee at home. I have half a bialy with tomato and goat cheese and head to Lore Bathing Club. My friend Cam works there, and they’re doing single sessions right now before they open open. I love a shvitz. It feels right after this week of documented hedonism — the true Christmas-holiday decadence is behind us, the New Year’s Eve decadence is ahead of us, so let’s take a moment to flush everything out of us. Detox before we retox.

After that, I spontaneously get veggie tempura udon at Raku — extra-grated daikon, plus shiso tempura, and then I decide to go see No Other Choice at the Angelika. It’s usually too busy to do the “let’s go to the Angelika and see a movie” thing, but the holiday week makes it possible. I grab a macchiato. I really like the movie. It feels like Korean dad Marty Supreme. I thought it was going to be violent and action packed, but it’s more of a roller coaster — funny, thrilling, scary, a little gory, a bit of everything.

I go grocery shopping for the first time in what feels like a month. I have to go to a few different places: Maison Jar for produce/healthy stuff, Mr. Plum for produce/pantry, Prospect Butcher (new near me), and Greenpoint Fish and Lobster. It’s kind of nuts, but also growing up in New York, it feels normal. I grew up near Gristedes and never liked it. Big supermarkets freak me out when I’m outside the city. I don’t mind bouncing around, even if it’s a fucking pain in the ass — but it is maybe why I look up sometimes and have absolutely no food in my house.

At home, I make an artisanal slop bowl. I roast sweet potatoes with what I think is the holy trinity of seasoning: garlic powder, smoked paprika, and cinnamon. Cinnamon in ground pork, ground beef, and on a roast tuber is incredible. I do the whole thing: quick-pickle some things, keep some things raw, roast some kale, pan-fry some trout, and throw it all together. It’s an easy-ish weeknight meal for me. I bought the fish at an insane time to buy raw fish: 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday night. Once again, I am worried the seafood will go bad on me. End the week gambling, I guess.

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