Adam Mazur Illustrates a Portrait with a Punchline for The Grub Street Diet

Every week, someone narrates seven days of meals for The Grub Street Diet, and what comes back is never really about the food. It is a journal surfacing career, family, heritage and anxiety through what someone reaches for at lunch. This week’s subject is comedian and Late Show writer Michael Cruz Kayne, and Adam Mazur’s portrait is in on the bit. Kayne holds a microphone at center, his week of eating swirling around him. The food tells the story. Mazur illustrates the person it reveals.

Kayne’s diet reveals plenty. Through his meals you see a grown man eating with his hands and frying last night’s rice every morning. A comedy writer missing the Famous Amos drawer at Colbert during his second-to-last week. A father cooking for kids who agree on nothing. Kayne is also mid-press run for a comedy special about his son’s death and between interviews, he stops into “a little bistro called CVS” for Nerds Gummy Clusters. The food is biographical and Mazur builds his portrait from what it tells him.

Mazur has been illustrating the Grub Street Diet monthly since 2022, building a visual vocabulary for a column that hands him a new subject and a new personality every month. His bright, dense composition matches Kayne’s restless energy without flattening the weight underneath.