The North Beach Diet® Est. Whenever Nonna Felt Like It
Volume I · A Lifestyle Protocol

Heal Your
Body With Sausage,
& Dough, &
a Third Thing:
More Sauce.

For decades, wellness culture has told you to eat less. We at The North Beach Diet® have conducted the research — on ourselves, mostly in the car — and discovered the truth: the body is a sauce-absorption organ wrapped in a protective crust of dough. Feed the sauce. Feed the crust. The rest is cardio.

Begin Protocol · Day One › Shop the Bodysuit
Clinically
Unbothered
Since '89
4.2 kgDaily Min.
0Vegetables
∞Sauce
The Doctrine

“They told us balance.
We told them bread bowl.”

— The North Beach Diet Council of Uncles, 2019
Pillar 01
α

The Sausage Principle

A sausage a day keeps the emotional availability away. Our protocol recommends beginning each morning with one (1) link the length of your forearm, broiled until regret is impossible.

Pillar 02
β

Dough is Identity

Dough is the vessel through which the soul metabolizes shame. Eat it cold from a bag. Eat it warm on a plate. Eat it as a weighted blanket. Eat it, in short, as yourself.

Pillar 03
γ

Sauce is Therapy

A proper sauce simmers for nine hours and judges no one. We believe sauce is the only known substance that can legally be considered both a meal, a hug, and a deposition.

Volume II · Daily Intake

The Recipes,
Such As They Are

Curated by
Uncle Sal, PhD*
*not verified
Protocol Staple
Sunday · Ritual · 9 hrs

The Ancestral
Nine-Hour Gravy
That Survives You

A pot of red sauce so large the neighbors file a noise complaint about its silence. Contains three cuts of pork, two cuts of beef, one bone of unknown origin, and the last words your grandfather ever said to you, which were: “don't touch the gravy.”

⏱ Simmer: 9 hours minimum
⌃ Serves: you, forever
✸ Difficulty: generational
◎ Vibe: unsmiling
▸ Recommended alongside:
dough, more dough, sausage
Daily Macro
Breakfast · 8 min

Forearm-Length
Breakfast Link

One sausage of the same length as the user's non-dominant forearm, broiled until it achieves a reflective mahogany sheen. Served on a napkin. The napkin is also optional.

1 link720 kcal4 g of joy
New
Lunch · 4 hrs rise

The Bread Bowl
Inside a Bread Bowl

We hollowed out a sourdough and filled it with chowder. Then we realized the real bowl had been dough all along, so we hollowed out a larger sourdough and filled it with the first sourdough.

Serves 1 crying2,140 kcalRecursive
Dinner

Meatballs the Size of a
Reasonable Tragedy

Three meatballs. Each one the exact volume of the feelings you've been avoiding since October.

3 pcs1,880 kcal
Chef's
Snack

A Mug of Hot Gravy,
Consumed Standing

No spoon. No bread. No witnesses. Just you, a mug, the gravy, and your own reflection in a window at 2:47 pm.

12 fl ozStanding
Liturgical
Anytime

Focaccia the Square
Footage of a Studio

Rosemary, flaky salt, olive oil to the ankle. May be folded in half to sleep on. Tax-deductible if you live in it.

1 unitZoned R-3
Dessert · Controversial

Sausage Tiramisù

Ladyfingers soaked in espresso, layered with mascarpone, finished with a single coin of sweet Italian sausage in the center. The sausage is not the joke. You are the joke, for expecting there not to be sausage.

Serves 8980 kcal ea.Ending debated
Hydration
Beverage · Morning

Marinara Latte
with Parmigiano Foam

The answer to the question, “what if oat milk had ancestors who fought in wars.” A double espresso pulled directly into a ramekin of marinara, topped with a microplane blizzard of Parmigiano-Reggiano 36-mo.

12 oz340 kcal⚠ Not a latte
Clinical Transparency

We believe in radical
macro honesty.

Unlike a certain leading cookbook empire we legally cannot name, we publish our nutritional information in full. Some people find the numbers distressing. Those people are not in our target demographic, which is our cousin Dominic.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size: 1 whole cousin
Calories 2,940
Total Fat 214 g
  Saturated Fat 88 g
  Trans Fat sure
Sodium ∞
Total Carbohydrate 302 g
  of which is bread all of it
Protein lots
Vitality unkillable
* % DV based on the feelings of a man who has not checked his blood pressure since 2004 and is, frankly, thriving.
Volume III · The Habiliments

Wear the Doctrine.
Also a Bodysuit.

Ships from
the back of a van
in 2–11 weeks
Product Render · Adult Unisex · Sizes XS–MAMMA MIA
THE
FLAGSHIP

The Official
Calzone Bodysuit™

$488

A full-body garment that zips you, lovingly, inside a structurally-accurate calzone. Handsewn in Daly City from food-grade fleece and genuine semolina-colored velour. Features: internal ricotta-style insulation, hidden pocket for a second calzone, and a crimped seam along the sagittal plane for both elegance and hiding.

★ As worn to three weddings and one custody hearing.

Add to Basket · Size Up For Sauce
Fits 2
Links

Sausage Bandolier

$94

Saddle leather, six brass rings, sized to carry cured sausages across the chest in the historic Abruzzese manner. Or snacks. Or chapstick.

Add to Basket

Dough Turtleneck

$128

A merino turtleneck in a colorway called “proofed.” Conceals the neck area completely, should you have been at the lasagna.

Add to Basket
New
Vintage

Eau de Sunday Gravy

$210

A unisex perfume with top notes of garlic confit, heart notes of tomato paste, and a base note of a kitchen you were not allowed into until you were twelve.

Add to Basket

Meatball Worry Orb

$64

A hand-poured silicone orb, weighted and scented, for when the feelings come. Not edible. Not legally.

Add to Basket

“Al Dente” Mouthguard

$38

A nightguard shaped like a single piece of rigatoni. Structurally compromised on purpose. You'll bite through it. That is the journey.

Add to Basket

Crying Nonna Tote

$52

14 oz canvas tote, screen printed with the single phrase: YOU'RE TOO SKINNY. Holds three loaves of bread or one emotionally regulated adult.

Add to Basket
Volume IV-½ · Enrollment

Subscribe to
The Protocol.

Auto-renewing
Spiritually binding
Cancel any Tuesday*
*you won't

Every plan includes a new weekly recipe — delivered by email, by post, or by a cousin standing at your door holding a paper bag — and an extra-large tape measure, because the standard ones, frankly, run out.

Tier I · Starter

Il Novizio

For the curious. The dabbler. The person still, regrettably, owning a blender.

$29/MO
  • ✦ One (1) weekly recipe, emailed on a Sunday
  • ✦ Extra-large cloth tape measure (2.4 m)
  • ✦ A welcome packet of dried oregano, stapled shut
  • ✦ Access to the Dogma Hotline (voicemail only)
Subscribe · Starter
MOST SUBSCRIBED BY A COUSIN
Tier II · Flagship

Il Compagno

The committed. The garnished. The one who, deep down, already lives this way.

$79/MO
  • ✦ Two weekly recipes, one of them wildly unreasonable
  • ✦ Extra-extra-large reinforced tape measure (3.6 m · 12 ft)
  • ✦ A monthly sausage, vacuum-sealed, shipped overnight
  • ✦ Quarterly hardcover: Mangia, or Else
  • ✦ Priority access to the Sunday Gravy Line
  • ✦ Early access to new merchandise, incl. tape-measure re-stock
Subscribe · Flagship ›
Tier III · Unhinged

Il Patriarca

For people who have, at least once, considered being buried in focaccia.

$199/MO
  • ✦ Daily recipe (yes, daily; yes, we're worried too)
  • ✦ The Tape Measure of Accepting Yourself™ (5 m · surveyor's grade · cloth-wrapped brass)
  • ✦ One (1) annual house-call from Uncle Sal, PhD*
  • ✦ Your name engraved inside a wheel of Parmigiano we keep for you
  • ✦ The Calzone Bodysuit at 30% off, every year, forever
  • ✦ A standing invitation to Sunday dinner, any Sunday, any city
Subscribe · Patriarca
Included With Every Plan

The Extra-Large
Tape Measure.

Standard tape measures end, cowardly, at 1.5 meters — as if people simply stop there. Ours begin, confidently, at zero and continue as long as they need to. Cloth-wrapped, brass-tipped, and etched with reassuring marginalia where the inches used to be: “STILL YOU. STILL BEAUTIFUL. KEEP GOING.”

Ships in a canvas pouch · Lifetime warranty on the affirmations

0∞YOUSTILLYOUKEEPGOING
NBD 5 M
FIG. 4 — The Tape Measure of Accepting Yourself™
★ All subscriptions auto-renew until you personally apologize to Nonna. Recipes delivered on Sundays, Feast Days, and whenever the mood strikes. The tape measure is not a medical device. It is a mood.
Volume IV · The Converts

People Who Were
Doing Pilates,
Now Doing This

Unsolicited
Unverified
Uncensored
★★★★★
I was a juice cleanse person. Now I'm a gravy cleanse person. My skin has never been more. Than ever.
Margaux D.Former yoga instructor, current focaccia heiress
★★★★★
The Calzone Bodysuit got me through my divorce. It also got me through customs. I cannot explain.
Aldo V.Contractor / survivor
★★★★★
My doctor said I had the arteries of a man in his thirties. I'm sixty-one. She was furious. I was vindicated.
Fr. TheobaldRetired priest, active eater
Volume V · Letters From the Garnished

Poetry of the Kilo

A Living Anthology
Submissions open · Inbox full of grease
Currently accepting:
sonnets, threnodies, shopping lists
Poem № 001 · Featured

Ode to Four Kilos of Sausage, on a Tuesday, in Autumn

O thou cylinder, thou tubular truth, dressed in thy casing like a saint in linen — I have known thee in the pan, I have known thee on the board, I have known thee between the two halves of a roll and I have known thee, briefly, in my pocket. Four kilograms, the weight of a newborn and the weight of what I carry with me. When the doctor asks what I had for lunch, I lie. But to thee, sausage, I have never lied.
By Giancarlo Vespucci-Pesto · Poet Laureate of the Inner Sunset
Poem № 002

A Dough Sonnet, XIV Lines, All About Dough

Shall I compare thee to a ciabatta? Thou art more porous, more forgiving. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May — but thou hast proofed on the radiator since 6 a.m. I do not care what April does. I have bread. I have bread, and it is enough.
By Annette di Semola · Berkeley Adjacent
Poem № 003

Small Eulogy for a Garlic Clove

He gave all of himself to the oil. He did not complain. He simply turned gold and said nothing. May we all be as quiet and as finished.
By Marcello P. · Haight, pre-gentrification
Poem № 004

I Am in Love With a Man Who Orders It Well-Done

He is wrong about the steak. He is wrong about the pasta. He dips his pizza in ranch. And yet — when he carries the grocery bags with the bread sticking up out of the top, I know I will marry him, for he has, at least, chosen bread.
By a Woman From Novato Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous
Poem № 005

Haiku Cycle: On Parmigiano

Thirty-six months aged. My therapist is younger. Cheese wins, every time. A rind in the soup — we do not discard the rind. We do not discard. My grandmother's knife. My grandmother's hand. My hand. Parmigiano falls.
By Lucia Otranto · Mission / North Beach / wherever
Poem № 006

A Complaint in the Form of a Prayer

They have replaced the bread basket with a single sourdough cracker. Father, I do not ask for miracles. I ask only for the basket, and the butter, and the second basket they bring when you finish the first, and the third basket they deny you but which exists, Father, we both know it exists.
By Vincenzo “Vinny Two Sauces” Maggiore
Submissions · Rolling

Wax eloquently about kilos of sausage.

We read every submission aloud, at dinner, to our dogs, and to the one uncle who doesn't get it. Accepted works are published in the forthcoming anthology “Wet, Beautiful, Heavy: The North Beach Canon.”

Volume VI · The Journal

Long Reads,
Short Arteries

Updated
Whenever
Uncle Sal Feels Like It
01
Longform · 14 min read

I Gave Up Kale for 90 Days and Accidentally Became the Mayor of Petaluma

→
02
Science · 6 min

Your Gut Microbiome Is Just a Tiny Room Full of Tiny Uncles

→
03
Investigation · 22 min

Inside the Shadowy Cabal of Almond-Milk Lobbyists (Spoiler: it's three men in vests)

→
04
Essay

A Defense of Carbonara at 11:42 a.m.

→
05
Interview

A Candid Conversation With a Woman Who Calls Olive Oil “Liquid Therapy” and Means It

→
06
Dispatch

Field Notes From the Last Remaining Deli in the Financial District

→
Enrollment · Currently Open

Begin the Protocol.
Your doctor is,
respectfully, not invited.

Start Day One Wear the Bodysuit Write Us a Poem

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× Daily Dogma A vegetable is just a sausage that gave up.