What Rudy Giuliani Eats In A Day
Rudy Giuliani is...well, a man with a knack for making headlines, let's say. Just Google him and he's bound to have done something newsworthy within the past few days, if not hours. No matter how you feel about Mr. G, whether you find him lovable or laughable, sensible or scary, your opinion is your own, and this is a politics-free zone.
Instead, we're all about food here, and this is something that each and every one of us does have in common with Giuliani. We all love to eat, and to think about food, talk about food, share our feelings about food. Plus, for those of us not among the movers and shakers of this world, it's always fun to see just what the famous folks like to eat. So what, exactly, will be on tonight's table in the Giuliani household? While we're not privy to his daily menu, we did sniff out some inside info about what he does (and does not) like to eat.
He's a red meat Republican
Early on in the 2008 presidential campaign, the Associated Press (via Cleveland 19 News) interviewed all 14 candidates on the ever-fascinating topic of their favorite foods to cook. If you are what you eat, well, we can tell that the Democratic candidates were an eclectic bunch. Winner-to-be Barack Obama picked chili, while Joe Biden, the man who'd win the presidency some three election cycles later, went with pasta. Each and every Republican candidate, however, went with good ol' all-American red meat. Hopping back over to the other side of the aisle for a second, John Edwards, was the only Dem to do so, choosing hamburgers as his go-to dish.
Rudy Giuliani, who, according to The Guardian, was actually the leading Republican vote-getter at the time, also picked hamburgers as well as steak. Of course he favored preparing them in best pater familias style, cooked on a backyard grill. He's not a fan of all types of meat, however. On another occasion, when the Associated Press (via the Lincoln Journal-Star) were asking about each candidate's most-hated food, most picked some type of vegetable, except for Giuliani. He offered no particular opinion on vegetables one way or the other, but he did say that he absolutely loathers liver.
Italian food is a favorite
Yet another Giuliani favorite is — no surprise — Italian food. Giuliani, himself Brooklyn born and raised, has ancestors on both ends of Italy's boot. Ethnicity of Celebs says his paternal grandparents emigrated from Tuscany in the north, while his maternal ones came from Campania in the south.
In 2004, Giuliani put together a list of his favorite restaurants to be distributed to delegates at that year's RNC, which was held in NYC. On the list were several high-end steakhouses including Peter Luger's, Palm West, and Del Frisco's as well as the more-or-less French restaurant Le Cirque 2000 (alma mater of Top Chef judge Gail Simmons), but the rest were all Italian: Da Nico, Fresco, Frank's, Gargiulo's, F & J Pine Tavern — plus (of course) one pizza joint, Goodfellas Brick Oven Pizza on Staten island. As the New York Post reported, there was some controversy around the time the list came out. Not because it was so Italian food-heavy (what's not to love about that?), but because of several other known Giuliani family favorites that didn't get a shout-out: Café Nosidam, Osso Bucco, and Tony's DiNapoli. While Giuliani never revealed his reasoning behind which restaurants made the cut and which did not, we can tell one thing: paesano's pretty passionate about pasta.
He likes diners, drive-ins and dives
Dinner in a diner, nothing could be finer, at least as far as Giuliani's concerned when he's on the campaign trail doing his "man of the people" shtick. (Every single candidate who's ever run for office does this, unless they're a "woman of the people" or "non-binary person of the people," instead.) While Giuliani hasn't gone on record as a fan of Guy Fieri's, he does tend to favor the same sorts of eateries.
The Denver Post reported in 2007 (a year when Giuliani got a lot of ink due to his front-runner status) that, unlike most of the other candidates, Giuliani preferred to meet with voters in popular eateries. He campaigned at a lobster shack in New Hampshire, a cheesesteak stand in Philadelphia (they didn't say whether it was Pat's or Geno's) a barbecue joint in Oklahoma City, and a diner on the Jersey Shore where he scarfed down a cheeseburger (with tomato and lettuce, so he at least got in some veggies).
He's a bagel heretic
It was on one of Giuliani's 2007 campaign stops where he issued a shocking statement that may have lost him a few votes, at least within the five boroughs of New York City. Giuliani, who was once the mayor of the undisputed bagel capital of the world, nevertheless claimed that he "got a great New York bagel here" at a diner located not within the city itself and no, not even in Jersey, but in (gasp!) Portsmouth, N.H., a city better known for...umm, nothing that springs to mind immediately. It's undoubtedly a lovely place full of wonderful people, but wonderful bagels? We remain skeptical. Although who knows, maybe it's true — after all, on a visit to a bagel shop in Irvine, Calif., Redlands Daily Facts reported that Giuliani passed on the chance to try a west coast version of his favorite breakfast treat.
Giuliani, perhaps mindful of his earlier gaffe, didn't weigh in during a more recent controversy when New Jersey tried to claim the bagel crown. At least he didn't embarrass himself like his successor in NYC mayor-dom, Bill de Blasio, who will forever be known as the New Yorker who eats whole wheat bagels. Which is weird, even for a non-New Yorker native — who would ever pick whole wheat in a world where there's such a thing as the everything bagel?
He'd consider eating a bat (maybe)
Poor Rudy G, he's had a pretty rough time lately, what with being hospitalized with COVID-19. Before his firsthand experience with coronavirus, however, he was caught on camera discussing it with a young lady who — unbeknownst to him — turned out to be an actress playing the daughter of Sacha Baron Cohen's character in Borat 2.
Not knowing he was on candid camera, much less starring in a movie scene he never agreed to film, Giuliani discussed the pandemic's origins with the pseudo-Borat daughter. While NBC News reports that Giuliani did say he thought China had "deliberately spread it all over the world," he also added that "I don't think anybody was eating bats." Giuliani then asked the actress if she had ever or would ever eat a bat, and seemingly agreed to try this exotic meat himself if she would do so, too. Well, Giuliani's certainly off the hook for that promise, now, since the young lady herself was hardly being upfront with him. Should he still feel the urge to sample bat meat, though, he may still wish to wait until after both he and the bat have been vaccinated against COVID-19. While it's possible that recovering from the virus grants a certain degree of immunity, reinfection has been known to occur in some patients so he'd be better off sticking with bagels.