Richie Moriarty’s Grub Street Diet

Richie Moriarty has spent the last five years split between two lives. Most weekdays, he’s in Montreal filming CBS’s Ghosts, where he plays the spirit of Pete, a scout leader who died with an arrow through his neck. As soon as he wraps, he drives across the border to New Jersey to spend as much of the weekend as possible with his wife and kids. The food follows the same split: On set, it’s poutine, shepherd’s pie, and other “snacks” that make the whole cast wonder when their next vegetable will come. At home, his kids prefer yellowtail sashimi and raw oysters. “It feels so bougie and insane,” he says, “but they love it.” Moriarty spent the last week wrapping up the season in Montreal, indulging in snow crab and extra-mild butter chicken, before making the international trip south.

Thursday, April 23
My alarm wakes me up at 8 a.m. I’m filming in Montreal, away from my kids, who are my natural alarm clock. They usually crawl into our bed around 6:45 a.m. and wake us up with a combination of morning snuggles and bony knees and elbows to the groin. In lieu of tiny sharp elbows, today I’m woken up by the delightful new iPhone ringtone “Little Bird” (highly recommend).

I don’t need to be in until 10 a.m. I rarely have a free morning when I’m filming, so I decide to walk to my favorite bakery in Old Montreal, Olive et Gourmando. I know I’ll have to get there early to guarantee they haven’t yet sold out of their insanely delicious cinnamon buns. I consider myself a connoisseur of baked goods (i.e., soft in the tummy with dangerously high cholesterol), so I don’t say things like this lightly; their cinnamon bun is, without exaggeration, the best thing I’ve ever eaten. The brioche bun is cloud-like and topped with the most amazing cream cheese icing drizzle. We’ve filmed about 90 episodes over the last five years, so I’ve eaten approximately 5,000 of these cinnamon buns. I’m still blown away every time. I sit in the crowded cafe alone and have an English Breakfast tea (not a coffee guy) and a bowl of their homemade granola with yogurt before diving face-first into the cinnamon bun. I like to have a dessert course after breakfast to maintain my character actor physique. I decide to buy 8 more cinnamon buns and bring them to the set for the rest of the cast. This is overkill. I know that I’ll end up eating at least three over the course of the day.

When I arrive on set, a production assistant offers me breakfast. “No breakfast for me today!” I say casually without mentioning the fact that I’ve already far exceeded my recommended daily calorie intake for the day.

Before I know it, we’ve finished my first scene, and it’s time for lunch. The cast eats at a large communal dining room table in our “cast village,” and it’s the best. No one retreats to their trailers. We’ve become a tight-knit family over the last six years, and memories of sharing meals together on and off set are probably the things I will remember most fondly. I get a salad and jerk chicken. The jerk chicken is a risk. I can’t handle spicy food at all. It’s become a cast joke. Now, when I open a seltzer on set, Brandon Scott Jones will say, “Careful. Spicy.” My Hot Ones episode would be 15 seconds long. I’d see Sean Evans’s bald head, get a whiff of the wings on set, and fully pass away.

I can’t handle the chicken. I chug my seltzer (too spicy) and finish my salad. I’m fine with a light lunch because I know a few of us are getting off early enough to go to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Old Montreal, Garde Manger.  I try not to eat alone in Montreal because it gets lonely up there. I’m in my apartment by myself, away from my family. I’m always checking the call sheet to see who’s wrapped at the same time — Is Sheila off? Is Utkarsh off? Is Rose off?

I could write 3000 words about Garde Manger and how amazing their food is, but let me touch on some highlights instead. I start with a classic gin cocktail, The Bee’s Knees. Simple, light, touch of sweet, delish. Then, the raw bar: Oysters, razor clams, smoked mussels, shrimp! We also share a round loaf of sourdough focaccia baked in a round cast-iron skillet. The loaf is on a plate with a huge smear of salted butter. An incredible way to start a meal. Then it’s on to maybe the best appetizer I’ve ever eaten: snow crab on a lightly toasted slice of brioche with browned butter, a touch of citrus, and fresh dill. Truly perfect.

We usually share a number of dishes. Tonight, we pass around a thick-cut pork chop, baked carrots on ricotta with pistachio crumbles, a radicchio salad, a hanger steak, and a tartiflette with Yukon potatoes, bacon, caramelized onions, and sauvagine cheese. 10/10. Then, dessert. The table orders three to share, but I insist on ordering my own because I have a problem. My order: the coffee cake topped with streusel and malted milk ice cream. This dessert is, without exaggeration, the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten.

Friday, April 24
It’s Friday, so that means poutine day on set. Even for breakfast. As I arrive on set, our PA shows me a breakfast menu for the day that includes a “poutine bar.” I explain to her that zero elements of poutine should be considered breakfast food. She curses at me under her breath in French with a smile. They think I don’t speak French and that they can get away with this crap. They’re right. I somehow speak less French than I did when the show started filming here five years ago. I smile back at the PA and ask for two hard-boiled eggs, some overnight oats, and a fruit salad, which we both know is just going to be poutine.

There are union rules that stipulate when actors must be fed. I haven’t looked into the specifics, but I’m pretty sure they are required to feed us a full meal every 18 minutes. I gain a minimum of 15 pounds every season. I then fight like hell to lose those 15 pounds during our five-month hiatus. As ghosts on screen, we aren’t supposed to age, so we all do our best to maintain our appearance from season to season. But the combination of the pandemic, raising two young kids, and a steady diet of Minute Maid Fruit Snacks from craft services has aged me dramatically. Looking back at photos of myself from season 1 is… humbling.

A perfect human named Gloria keeps the 10 series regulars fed and watered every day. She is the most important person on our set. I know what you’re thinking: What about the director or the director of photography? Well, as far as I can recall, our director of photography, Michel, hasn’t handed me even one oat milk hot chocolate over the course of 5 seasons, so… GFY Michel! Gloria is going in my will.

Gloria tells me we have poutine for lunch, or we could order sandwiches from La Scacciata near Atwater Market. Without a moment’s hesitation, I order “The Bologna,” which has mortadella, ricotta, pistachio cream/crumbles, and extra virgin olive oil. I wolf it down in 5 minutes and now have 55 minutes left of our lunch break to do interminable bits with Brandon Scott Jones.

Someone in the cast has a birthday today. I can’t remember who. Asher? Rose? Maximilian? It doesn’t matter. There is cake everywhere. I eat three pieces before someone tells me that it’s actually poutine. I feel lightheaded and gnaw on a fistful of chalky Tums before heading onto set to film another scene about being a dead guy.

Before I’ve had time to digest the mortadella and poutine cake fully, Gloria hands me a Shepherd’s Pie as our afternoon “snack.” I eat the whole thing despite not being the least bit hungry. In LA or New York, you’ll hit a point in the day where it’s smoothie time, and someone comes around with smoothies for everybody. In Montreal, it’s poutine and shepherd’s pie.

Toward the end of the day, as I’m finally coming out of my Shepherd’s Pie coma, we have a 10-minute break between lighting setups. Just enough time to polish off a handful of “OMG! Milk Chocolate Almond Toffee Clusters,” which are, without exaggeration, the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten. I think Costco sells them, and you can only get them in Canada. They’re insanely good, and Gloria will often sneak a bag of them into a to-go bag when she knows I’m making the long drive back to New Jersey. She’s a genius and a saint.

We wrap right at 6 p.m., which is just early enough to allow me to get home to NJ by midnight. I rip the arrow out of my neck, wipe off my makeup, and hit the road with the essentials: A bag of salted nuts, the OMG! bag from Gloria, and 9 individually wrapped bags of Mott’s Fruit Snacks.

Things have definitely changed at the border over the past year and a half. Much less traffic. Our crew says it all the time — “I’m just not going to the States anymore.” The immigration stuff, the raids, everything. Trump made life so awful in so many ways, and you really see it in the border traffic. Which, I guess, unfortunately, makes my border crossings easier. I’m across the border and back into the U.S. in about 45 minutes. I have about 5 hours left on the road, which is equivalent to roughly three Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcasts and two Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcasts. I stop once for gas somewhere around Saratoga Springs and treat myself to a Cookies and Creme Good Humor Ice Cream Bar and a bag of Chewy Spree. I’m a 45-year-old man.

Saturday, April 25
Sharp elbows wake my wife, Ciara, and me up in bed around 7 a.m., and I decide to let my wife sleep in and take my kids to Artie’s in Maplewood, NJ, to grab some of our favorite pastries for breakfast. We each get a ham and cheese croissant and we get a couple of morning buns to share (dessert course!), and a latte for Ciara. I’ve never been a coffee guy. I’ve tried it a handful of times in my life and just don’t fully understand the appeal. It tastes so bitter to me. But my favorite ice cream flavor since I was a kid? Coffee! I’m an enigma. I have a cup of Barry’s Gold Irish Breakfast tea at home with a little honey and oat milk. Respectfully, all other black tea is trash compared to Barry’s Gold.

Our Saturday morning is busy with kids’ stuff. Soccer games, playgrounds, and bike riding. By 11 a.m., the kids have already gotten their 10,000 steps in, and Ciara and I can tell that if we don’t get them lunch in the next 45 minutes, they will spontaneously combust. We cobble together a “snack lunch” for them, which usually consists of salami, sugar snap peas, mini cucumbers/carrots, a sliced-up honey crisp apple, and some cheese (my oldest will only eat Colby Jack right now). They finish their meals right as Ciara and I realize that we, too, are human people and need food to eat. We grab a couple of tins of Fishwife smoked trout and make a little impromptu salad with bibb lettuce, pickled onions (no onions for me… too spicy), and chopped cucumber. It’s delicious, but the whole time I’m wondering if I have any gas station Chewy Spree left over from my car ride the night before to top this off. I do. And I do.

My eight-year-old son’s number one question every night is, “Can we order sushi?” It started when we took them to Liverpool House in Montreal. My wife and I love oysters, so we went for oysters, and our kids wanted to try one. He was four, she was maybe one, and we were like, He’s going to make a gag sound and never eat an oyster again. He chucked it back and said, “That’s delicious” — and had six more. Then my daughter, who’s four, saw me order yellowtail sashimi about a year ago and said, “Can I try that?” And now her dinner is mostly yellowtail sashimi.

So, tonight, we order dinner from this place called Ariyoshi in South Orange. Really outstanding sushi. We get pork gyoza and edamame as a family, an avocado salad, and I have three pieces of yellowtail sushi and a rainbow roll — yellowtail, tuna, and salmon on top, cucumber and avocado, and some other fish in the middle.

After dinner, we watch The Great British Baking Show. My wife and I have loved it for years, but now the kids are at an age where they’ll sit and get really into the drama — you know, an overbaked Baked Alaska or something.

Sunday, April 26
I exhale in pain as I’m awoken by a gentle kick to the groin by my daughter, who then takes one whiff of my breath and says, “You smell stale, Daddy!” I get up, brush my teeth, and then immediately think about how to get protein into my children. “What are we having for breakfast?” my son asks. I can sense my wife’s weariness at having to constantly come up with answers to this question while I’m away, so I jump in quickly, “I’m making eggs!” “Can I have square eggs?” my son asks. “I want snake eggs!” my daughter exclaims.

These requests make zero sense to anyone outside our house, but I know immediately what they want and get to work. A “square egg” is a fried egg, lightly scrambled, over hard, and cut into rough squares with a pizza cutter. A “snake egg” is the same, but cut into squiggly lines with a pizza cutter. I have no idea how we ended up here.

I’m reminded by my son that we promised the kids doughnuts this weekend for staying in their rooms for 10 nights in a row. We’re not above bribing them if it means a greater chance of uninterrupted sleep. We head to Palmers Bakehouse in Maplewood. Every Sunday morning, they make at least a couple of kinds of homemade donuts, and they’re always incredible. We opt for the cinnamon sugar and passionfruit creme pie. They are fresh fresh, and the four of us are in heaven as we eat them.

After lunch, I have to say goodbye to my family for the next five days to go film another episode. I’m in the first scene in the morning, so I’ll try to get back relatively early. At this point, you’re probably wondering if I’m aware that humans have invented air travel. I am aware, but the drive from our place in New Jersey to Montreal is a little under six hours, and a flight only saves about 90 minutes door to door with airport security, customs, immigration, etc. And that’s if everything goes perfectly. The few times that I have flown instead of driving my flight has either been delayed or cancelled. I also don’t have a big heads up with my filming schedule so buying last-minute flights to fly home cost me approximately $37,025. (The $25 is the charge to print out my boarding pass.)

I start the drive with a full bottle of water, a Polar Lime seltzer, some pistachio nuts, a Honey Crisp apple, and some raided snacks from the kids’ school stash. Shout out “That’s It” strawberry and blueberry fruit bars! The highway rest stops between New Jersey and Montreal have limited options, including: Chick-fil-A, Shake Shack, Starbucks, Panera, and some faux healthy options with names like “Fresh and Feisty,” “Organique Greenway,” and “You’ve Got Kale.”

I get to Montreal around 6 p.m. after stopping only once, and I’m starving for real food. I almost never cook in the apartment. We’re fed so much on set, and if I have more than 36 hours off, I head home. My fridge consists of eggs, some oat milk or milk for tea and coffee, and that’s about it. So, I go to Le 409, an incredible Indian place near my apartment in Old Montreal. I order the butter chicken and garlic naan. Thus begins another week in Montreal with nary a vegetable in sight. The butter chicken is, without exaggeration, the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten. Not spicy at all!

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