Robert Downey Jr. Dreams of Domino’s — But His Real Diet Is a Whole Different Story

Robert Downey Jr. is a man of genuine contradictions when it comes to food. He co-wrote a New York Times bestselling book on climate-friendly eating, adapts recipes to accommodate his vegan wife, and prefers cooking at home over going out.

He is also the man who once described his fantasy daily diet as Domino’s pizza with pasta carbonara stuffed inside every slice, followed by Neapolitan ice cream until he felt “absolutely toxic.”

The Dream Meal He’d Eat Every Day

RDJ has never been shy about the foods he would eat without restraint if real life and consequences were not part of the equation. In a now-iconic Vanity Fair interview, he described his ideal cheeseburger in precise detail: bacon, a lot of cheese, Thousand Island dressing, and pizza oil from New York’s Mulberry Street.

He added that if he could eat whatever he wanted every day, he would have Domino’s pizza with pasta carbonara baked inside every single slice. Neapolitan ice cream would close out the night. He described drifting off after this imaginary feast, telling himself it was going to be okay and that he would train in the morning.

The Snacks That Ended Up in the Movies

That passionate relationship with food has followed him onto every set he has ever worked on. According to co-stars and crew, Downey had a habit of hiding snacks around Marvel sets during ‘The Avengers’ productions, and those snacks inevitably ended up being caught on camera during otherwise dramatic scenes.

Rather than reshoot, the production team kept the footage, reasoning that a man casually eating in the middle of a superhero crisis was perfectly in character for Tony Stark.

Fellow actor Vincent D’Onofrio confirmed the same behavior carried over to their film ‘The Judge’, calling it something that “makes perfect sense” in the context of how Downey operates.

What He Actually Eats

The dream meal, of course, stays largely a dream. In his 2024 book Cool Food, which became an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller, RDJ revealed that the reality of his diet is considerably more considered. He tried going fully vegetarian and even vegan, but was candid about why it did not work for him.

“The rumours are true: I’m a pescatarian,” he wrote in the book, explaining that without some animal protein he found himself deficient in vitamin B12, calcium, iodine, and iron. He eats fish occasionally, and otherwise keeps to a largely plant-forward diet that reflects both his health needs and his genuine interest in sustainable eating.

His Vegan Wife and the Calamari Compromise

The most revealing detail about RDJ’s kitchen life is how significantly his wife Susan has shaped it. Susan Downey is a vegan, which has pushed the couple toward finding creative substitutions for dishes they used to share, including one of their mutual favorites.

When speaking to Good Morning America about ‘Cool Food’, he recalled that he and Susan used to love calamari. To accommodate her diet, they developed a hearts of palm version he calls “hearts of calipalmy,” which their kids eat without knowing the difference. It is a tidy summary of how food works in the Downey household: playful, practical, and mostly sustainable.

He Does Cook, and He Takes It Seriously

At home in Malibu, RDJ is the kind of person who actually uses his kitchen. Reports consistently note that he prefers cooking at home at his Malibu estate when in Los Angeles, reserving restaurants for trips to New York, where the family gravitates toward ABC Kitchen, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s farm-to-table landmark. The Malibu property itself was designed with a gourmet kitchen built for real cooking and gathering, not decoration.

‘Cool Food’ is the fullest expression of how seriously he thinks about what ends up on his plate. He told Good Morning America that making informed food choices, whether grabbing snacks for the kids or planning a meal, is something he thinks about daily. The cheeseburger fantasy has not gone anywhere. It has just learned to share space with a considerably more thoughtful reality.