Image via Complex Original
January is almost over and anyone still swilling wheatgrass shots and getting coffee enemas (unlike 90% of the population that gave up in the first week of January) is starting to fantasize about food. One friend even reported a girlfriend saying "Where are the cookies?" in her sleep.
Here's the thing: if you're still on a hardcore diet, stop torturing yourself. It's cool to have a cheat day and eat everything you've been keeping yourself from every one in awhile. Just balance it out with fresh foods and lots of vegan meals. And if you're already resigned to being flabby, you can find new inspiration to pack on the winter weight with these fifteen all-too-craveable foods. Happy binging!
RELATED: Delicious Things to Eat That Won't Make You Look Terrible Naked
RELATED: Frozen Desserts That Put Your Local Ice Cream Shop to Shame
RELATED: 10 Delicious Things You Can Make With Bacon
15. Cheeseburgers
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Le Tub
City: Hollywood, Fla.
Website: theletub.com
A real burger craving can only be satisfied by a thick massive mound of meat in the middle of two supple buns dripping with juices. Pause. That's where the 13 oz. brute of a burger at Hollywood's Le Tub comes in. It's not some $90 dollar Wagyu covered in caviar, but the line out the door for the burger can take up to 90 minutes, the approximate amount of time you could be sun saluting and downward facing dogging in a yoga class. Instead, spend that time salivating over a juicy 100% sirloin burger covered with cheese and sizzled up on an old-school, tiny grill in the back of a roadside shack. If anything's going to kill your diet (and maybe even you), it should be something that a wayward trucker can bench press.
14. Macaroni and Cheese
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Table Fifty-Two
City: Chicago
Website: tablefifty-two.com
Heaven is diving head first into a bubbling vat of molten cheese, grabbing onto an innertube made out of pasta, and floating through a buttery sauce into clouds of crusted cheese. That's also a common hunger dream we've had while wasting away on our pathetic paleo diet, so we tried to find the kind of macaroni and cheese that we'd be willing to sin for. Chicago's Table Fifty-Two mac and cheese is that dish. Different kinds of pasta are covered with three kinds of cheese that vary depending on chef Rey Villalobos' mood and the whole thing is covered with even more cheese, put into a cast-iron pan, and sizzled sweetly in a wood-burning oven to create a volcano of crunchy cheese over the side of the pan. Would we sell our soul for this? Yes. But something tells us the diet gods would understand.
13. Tacos
Easy to recover from?: Yes
Restaurant: Ricky's Fish Tacos
City: Los Angeles
Website: twitter.com/RickysFishTacos
Picking a favorite taco is like Sophie’s Choice. It’s really hard to mess up a taco and when we’re craving a plethora of different meat options tucked into a fragrant homemade tortilla and covered with an array of salsas, most places hit the spot, especially post tequila crawl. In a way, a taco might be the best “diet” non-diet food you can choose out of this bunch because the portions are so small; just don’t eat five at a time. Or do. Especially if you don’t really feel like fitting into that slim-fit suit you bought to impress your girl this Valentine’s Day. The freshest fish, shrimp, or (sometimes) lobster meat is fried up and tucked into between two corn tortillas, covered in salsa, cabbage, a peppery pico de gallo, and a savory crème. Yup, these mouth-watering fish tacos are worth being newly-single for.
12. Grilled Cheese
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Grilled Cheese Invitational
City: Los Angeles
Website: grilledcheeseinvitational.com
What’s gooey and guaranteed to give you heart palpitations? A good old-fashioned grilled cheese, doused in butter and fried up in a skillet, waiting to be dipped liberally in some creamy tomato soup. For all your cheese lovers, this year’s Grilled Cheese Invitational will be the last year. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get your grub on. Last year’s invitational included 125 different chefs competing for the prize of cheesiest, with over five-thousand devouring their lactose-laden creations. Past grilled cheeses include the famed grilled cheese from Campanile at LAX, a tallegio and short rib grilled cheese from celebrity chef Eric Greenspan from the Foundry, and the Grilled Cheese Truck’s macaroni and cheese grilled cheese sammich. There’s a reason this is called comfort food. Because eating it precedes you only wearing “comfortable” clothes that are kind to your ever-expanding waistline.
11. Burrito
Easy to recover from?: Maybe
Restaurant: La Taqueria
City: San Francisco
Website: N/A
Chewing diligently on celery sticks and something called "tempeh" that tastes like dirty cardboard? Not filling you up? The only way to silence your gurgling stomach is to fill yourself up with an entrée the size of a small baby. Enter: the burrito. For a great taco, you go to Los Angeles. But for an amazing burrito, you go to where hippies like to get stuffed: San Francisco. The Mission is teaming with savory Mexican goodness but we like the carnitas at La Taqueria. Fresh meats are charred to perfection, and smothered in beans, pico de gallo, and queso fresco for an added creamy, tangy bite.
10. Cupcakes
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Sweetness Bake Shop
City: Miami
Website: sweetnessbakeshop.net
Those cutesy capsules of sugar might seem like trifle little treats, but when your body is maxed out on kettle bells and egg white omlettes, homemade cupcakes in your office will look like heroin to a junkie. The Maple Bacon from Sweetness Bakeshop and Café in Miami gives you that a satisfying hunk of protein to support muscle building in the gym in the form of a piece of bacon and complex sugars in the form of maple buttercream. That helps with muscle recovery. Or at least that's what we want to believe.
9. Bacon
Easy to recover from?: Yes
Restaurant: Brookeville Restaurant
City: Charlottesville, Va.
Website: brookvillerestaurant.com
Bacon, bacon, bacon. We love bacon in every form and that nitrate-filled pig candy would be the best departure from all of our boring diet foods. Instead of breaking your diet for a mere slice or two, do something ridiculous, like orderibg a Bacon Root Beer Float from Brooksville in Charlottesville. Creamy vanilla ice cream and the earthy bitterness of the root beer are a heat-quelling, craving-solving way to get all your meals in one. Breakfast, lunch, and bacon.
8. Peanut Butter and Jelly
Easy to recover from?: Yes
Restaurant: PBJ's Grilled
City: Portland
Website: pbjsgrilled.com
All of PBJ's gourmet sandwiches are incredible, but the salty-sweet decadence of the Betty, which includes challah bread covered in cave aged gruyere cheese, bread and butter pickles, peanut butter, and sea salt—is where it's at. The Good Morning, stuffed with apple wood smoked bacon, maple syrup, and blueberry ham, is also incredible. Who wants to trade their PB & J on the playground now?
7. Beer
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Diablo Taco
City: Los Angeles
Website: diablotaco.com
They might have upwards of 40 beers ranging from G’Night Imperial Red on tap, “Large Format” Judgement Day Ale, and “Small Format” Lucky Buddhas, but the shining star at Diablo is their mouth-watering Michaeladas, perfect for a hot summer day or a quick post-gym guzzle of inappropriate electrolytes. Instead of all the ingredients being thrown into a mediocre beer, you get to choose from their extensive list of suds and insert a tomato or Japanese yuzu flavored popsicle into your beer. The salty, tangy ice treat keeps your Michelada ice cold as the flavors melt together in perfect belly-busting harmony.
6. Potato Chips
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Potatopia
City: New York
Website: potatopia.com
Potatopia is a study in the crude elegance and multifaceted flavors that the humble potato can take on. They have every variance of potato known to the average American diet: curly fries, shoestring, au gratin, baked potatoes, and skin chips. But what we’re craving are the homemade potato chips. These crispy, saly little wonders can be doused with toppings of your choice, including five kinds of cheeses like asiago and pepperjack, five kinds of protein like bacon and sausage, and dipped in sauces like garlic aioli and truffle. Their most enticing signature meal is the “Comatoser,” which are skin chips over in four kinds of cheeses, bacon, brocollo, salsa components, ranch, and just the right amount of fat to help you regain the ten pounds you lost this month in a one hour span of time.
5. Chocolate Chip Cookies
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Sugar Bake
City: Charleston, S.C.
Website: sugarbake.com
Screw that grown-up palate (and that grown-up metabolism). One of the best diet cheats are old-school childhood necessities, like a mid-afternoon chocolate chip cookies and milk while watching cartoons. There was something about dipping a warm chocolate chip cookie, straight from the oven, into an ice-cold glass of milk. Kids these days are dunking their gluten-free Oreos into almond milk, but the concept is the same. It's that dunking sensation that makes cookies and milk one of the most pleasurable bad-for-your-body, good-for-the-soul snacks ever. The best chocolate chip cookies are the simple ones that are just pure, wholesome-ish ingredients like local flour, eggs, and chocolate, a concept realized in the cookies from Sugar Bakeshop.
4. Steak
Easy to recover from?: Yes
Restaurant: Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse
City: New Orleans
Website: dickiebrennanssteakhouse.com
Yes, according to the Caveman diet, steak isn't that bad for you, but it's still fat and cholesterol and animal product. If you're doing a vegan cleanse post-NYE, you might be craving iron and protein and the only thing that will satiate your primal desires is a steak—almost bloody. Steak isn't really something to be messed with, but you might as well live it up if you're going to go for the juicy, meaty gold. Dickie Brennan's Steak House in New Orleans will do some voodoo on your willpower with a gigantic filet or rib-eye served with your choice fried oysters, beer-barbecued shrimp, crabmeat, or a stinky blue cheese.
3. French Fries
Easy to recover from?: Yes
Restaurant: Boise Fry Company
City: Boise, Idaho
Website: boisefrycompany.com
Size counts when it comes to fries. Thick or thin, everyone loves their fries a different way. Some like curly, some like potato strings, and if you're on a diet, you love every single version of fried potato that innovative chefs around the country can whip up. Trust us when we say everyone craves French fries when they're on a diet. It's the smell of them as you drive past any fast food joint that gets you. But if you're going to indulge, you might as well do it right. The best place for fries? Well, the state that's most infamous for potatoes, of course: Idaho. The Boise Fry Company serves up fries with such intensity that their motto says something like "burgers on the side." Handcut fries come in russet, gold, laura, yam, sweet, or purple and you can have them homestyle, shoestring, regular, curly, or covered in bison and garlic aioli. Either way, after gorging yourself on these, you won't be a small fry.
2. Chicken and waffles
Easy to recover from?: No
Restaurant: Bacon Bros. Public House
City: Greenville, S.C.
Website: baconbrospublichouse.com
If you're craving both savory and sweet in your diet, just cave and get both in the form of crispy fried chicken and a waffle soaked with butter and drizzled with maple syrup. Diner-style chicken and waffles are man's greatest gift to the culinary world and are the undisputed champions of Sunday brunch fare. Just add a Bloody Mary and you now owe yourself 53 spin classes and a Forrest Gump style jogging sesh. Where's the best chicken and waffles? Some say Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Los Angeles, but we're fans of our Southern-style treats being served in an authentic home. Bacon Bros. Public House not only soaks the meat in a brine of buttermilk and sweet tea, but balances out the sweetness of the waffle with country ham and sage. When that chicken is fried in a cast-iron skillet, it becomes a crunchy nugget of delicious cholesterol that will make cheating on your diet totally worth it.
1. Chicken wings
Easy to recover from?: Yes
Restaurant: NOLA
City: New Orleans
Website: emerilsrestaurants.com
Sports bars attract us with wall-to-wall flat screens, but they make us fat with their fried pickles, free bar peanuts, and, the greatest accompaniment to beer ever created: chicken wings. There's fried, buffalo, spicy, and every possible variation, but we're craving Miss Hay's Stuffed Chicken Wings created by television chef and rockstar kitchen king, Emeril Lagasse. Inspired by a Vietnamese cook at this New Orleans restaurant NOLA, these wings are slathered in flour and fried in peanut oil after their stuffed with a tasty mixture of Asian-inspired innards like shrimp, pork, cilantro, mushrooms, onions, celery and fish sauce. They're also served with dipping sauce made with hoisin and jalapenos. At least something will keep your metabolism semi-functioning.