What Does Jerry 'Turtle' Ferrara Eat for Breakfast?

For Jerry Ferrara, a.k.a. Turtle on HBO's Entourage, mornings are all about coffee. The rest of the day is spent reminiscing about his mom's meatballs.

By Chrystal Parker

June 16, 2014

Image may contain Jerry Ferrara Couch Furniture Sitting Human Person and Cushion

Welcome to My Morning Routine, where we take a look at how people (i.e., celebrities) kickstart their days. We came to know Jerry Ferrara as Turtle on HBO’s Entourage, but since then he’s made some significant life changes. He dropped 55 pounds. He opened sandwich emporium Fat Sal’s. He moonlights as his girlfriend's sous-chef. He's starring in Think Like a Man, Too, *the June 20 sequel to 2012's sleeper hit. Ferrara may live in Los Angeles now, but the native New Yorker still does things the Brooklyn way. In this installment, he____ schools us on his morning essentials. A French press is involved. *So is cayenne pepper.

I’ve really changed the way I eat. I try to eat as healthy as possible because I went so many years without being conscious of it at all. When you’re in your teens and then your twenties, you could really get away with it. I’m 34 now and look, don’t get me wrong: I pig out and have weak moments where I eat pizza and pasta and potato chips and ice cream. I can’t live without it. But I’m more so trying to earn it now.

I usually try to [get] as healthy of a start as possible. It doesn’t always work out, but I do my best. Some people aren't breakfast people, they don't like eating as soon as they wake up. But I am a big breakfast guy. Like, the first thing I think of when I open my eyes is coffee and food.

I literally don’t even have my eyes fully open and I go make coffee. I’m a big coffee fanatic. I have a million different coffee pots. I’m always searching for the perfect cup of coffee, which I don't think actually exists. I'm big into the French press. So I usually go right to the electric tea kettle, boil some water in two minutes—which is amazing. [Goes] right into the French press. Pop that button… drinking coffee. And then I'm usually making an omelet.

Cayenne pepper goes a long way if you like a little spice with eggs. I was always a hot-sauce guy with eggs. But if you do a little cayenne pepper at the right time, you don't even need the hot sauce.

My girlfriend just walked in, she's laughing. She taught me the cayenne pepper thing. I mean, I don't really know anything. She taught me everything.

I come from a large Italian-American family, so food is very, very important. I was raised by a single mom. My mom could make pasta five times a week, five different ways, and you'd never get sick of it. And she was one of those women that came home from work, she made us do our homework, she cooked, then she cleaned up, put us to bed, and then did it all over again. She makes the best meatballs in the world.

See, I was a little bit of a, like, finicky eater when I was kid. There were just some things I would just not eat. I never liked meatballs in sauce when I was younger. But she would fry meatballs in a pan, and it was always the perfect level of crispy on the outside, moist on the inside. I think there were some breadcrumbs in there. She'd always give me the first one out of the pan, on a fork. And I always remember it being a meatball lollipop. To this day, [when] she'll cook for the whole family on a Sunday, she'll make a batch of fried meatballs only for me. I love the ones in the sauce now, but those fried meatballs—they're special. Now I watch my brother's kids scream for her meatballs. I'm like, Oh my God, it's hitting a new generation.

My first food memory—going back to the whole Italian family—it would be the meatballs. But it's bigger than that. It's the Sunday night dinner experience that is very, very typical in Brooklyn among Italian-Americans. All my mom's sisters and their kids and all my cousins at my grandmother's house. The bread, the meatballs, the salad, then the pasta course, then the meat in the sauce course, the dessert course.

My grandmother and her three daughters in the kitchen cooking [are] a force of nature. Combined with the fact that we were all together, I think those are some of the happier times that I've ever had. I look forward to that one day in my life. Where I can be the host of a big Sunday night family dinner, ya know?

I don't know how to make anything and I never had the patience for it. But now that I'm a little bit older, I actually enjoy it and I've been [cooking] with my girlfriend a little more. She's a great cook and is not afraid to tackle something that she doesn't know how to cook and just try it.

[Our] nights are usually just a bottle of wine, some form of a vegetable, and some kind of crazy new chicken dish that she’s cooking. I’m the sous-chef, as I like to call it. Going to the store and bringing all the stuff home. I'm great at chopping stuff. I'm great at seasoning stuff. And I've really come to enjoy it, even though I'm not actually the one cooking. Just assisting her as she’s attempting to make something.

Those are now similar to my big family dinners now. Those little one-on-one moments with her are my favorite thing to do. And I've finally learned how to make a damned good omelet. I would put my omelet up against anybody's.