He tastes 30 dishes in an afternoon. Travels between Manchester, London, Dubai, Rabat and Miami. Runs 35 restaurants across three continents. And he’s in the best shape of his life.
Marcello Distefano doesn’t have a simple job.
As CEO of San Carlo Restaurant Group – one of the UK’s most iconic Italian dining brands – his office is often wherever the next flight lands. His desk is a restaurant table. His work requires him to eat, constantly, professionally, and with a critical eye honed over decades in the industry.
And yet, somewhere between the pasta tastings, the boardroom calls, and the back-to-back international launches, Marcello found a way to get healthier, leaner, and sharper than he’s ever been.
The answer wasn’t a crash diet or a gruelling training regime squeezed into his already-hectic schedule. It was something more counterintuitive – and far more effective.
He stopped trying to manage his health and fitness for himself.
In the interview below, Marcello opens up about the reality of staying healthy when food is your business, why high achievers are often the worst at looking after themselves, and how handing the thinking to someone else became the decision that changed everything.
Marcello, can you tell us a little about your role and the business you run?
“I’m Marcello Distefano, CEO of San Carlo Restaurant Group in the UK. At the moment we’re running 25 across the UK, and then internationally, we’ve got another 10 with a further six to be opened over the next 18 months.
You know, it’s not pressure, it’s exciting. It’s probably the most exciting thing that we do.
I think coming up with and creating the ideas for the new sites and then seeing those come to fruition and open them is quite exciting, especially in different countries where we’ve never operated before.”
San Carlo is also a family business. What does that legacy mean to you?
“My father is 82 now, but you’ll still find him in the restaurants most days.
He lives and breathes it 100%.
The restaurant was started now is I grew up in pretty much in terms of my learning experience of the industry. I used to work as a waiter in this section here.
But it’s still very much a family business, and it feels like that.
And it still feels strange sometimes when we’re in far-flung places around the world, and we’re seeing the San Carlo name.”
Your father founded the business. What was the vision behind San Carlo?
“Originally, my father had this idea that he wanted to create these aspirational spaces that were accessible to everybody.
So it wasn’t just for a fine dining customer. It’s an Italian trattoria. It should be somewhere that’s welcoming to families, to everybody.
You can come in and have a tagliatelle bolognese and a glass of Coke, or you can come in and have a £300 bottle of wine with Dover sole and lobster.
But the idea was that everybody would feel comfortable in the same environment. And that’s still probably at the centre of what we do now.
Italian food is really simple. It’s all about quality ingredients.
If you don’t focus on the ingredients, you’ll never have a great product. It’s as simple as that.
And so those two things have been at the heart of it.
And I think finally the key to all the restaurants was to create a great atmosphere.
When you’re out, we’re here to make people feel good. It doesn’t matter if it’s been a hard day, a long day, whatever. You come into the restaurant, and you enjoy yourself.”
With restaurants across the UK and internationally, what does a typical week look like for you?
“My day, I’d arrive probably around 8 a.m. Adam and I trained for an hour.
“I grab a coffee on the way to the office, and then pretty much meetings all the way through till around 12:30.
If I’m in Manchester, I’ll have lunch with my father. Um, give him an update on there, on where we’re up to in the business
And then meetings in the afternoon and then I tend to probably leave around 5:30 or 6:00 from the office.
If I’m not here, I’ll probably be in London or Birmingham or Liverpool, and that’s quite a different day. So up early on the train down to London, meetings all day and then train back.”
‘I’ve been in quite a lot of cities in the last few months. We’ve just opened in Morocco, so I was over in Rabat. I’ve been over in Miami. I’ve been in Dubai.
“A lot of travelling. The most demanding part is trying to keep a consistency of quality. So it doesn’t matter what you do in any business when you’ve got multi-site, it’s keeping that consistency and keeping the standards high every single day. So I think that’s probably the most demanding part.”
You’re constantly surrounded by food and hospitality. Did that make staying healthy difficult?
“My weakness is ice cream. Ice cream and pasta. So those are my two weaknesses.
Especially when you’re trying to have quite a controlled diet in the week, those two are quite hard.
“Obviously, in my life around restaurants all the time, yes I can eat healthy, but it’s all the other stuff that comes around it.
It’s like everything – do it in moderation, but sometimes you just allow it to get out of hand, which is what I did.
I think for me now it’s about maintaining. I’ve normalised now a structure and eating habits to make sure that, of course, I still have to enjoy. Because my business is food and drink.
“The other day, I had a pasta-tasting afternoon. Sometimes we’ll have a dessert tasting, whatever. You know, there are times when I’ve had to do 30 dishes or when I’m travelling abroad, each restaurant we go to, I’ve got to try lots of the dishes to make sure that it’s up to standard.
So it’s just making sure that you don’t overdo it in those periods. And it’s understanding as well how much food you actually need compared to in the past, how much I’ve actually eaten. There are two very different things.”
How would you describe your relationship with health and fitness before working with Ultimate Performance?
“I’ve always had this weird relationship with health over the years.
I’ve always been sporty, but when I actually thought I was fit and healthy, I wasn’t necessarily.
I always used to give myself events to focus on. So it wasn’t necessarily about health; I was using an event.
So I did the Marathon des Sables years ago, or I was doing triathlons.
I was using those events to keep me in shape, to give me a reason to train.
But I wasn’t necessarily being healthy.”
What changed that made you focus more seriously on your health?
“I think what’s changed in the last few years, maybe because I’ve got older and a bit more aware now, and in terms of the pressures of work and family life, my focus has not been about an event.
Actually, the focus was about being healthy and being at the right weight.
“And I think what’s great with it is that it’s like a lot of people, like myself, were very well disciplined when it comes to work and things like that.
But when it comes to looking after yourself and food and drink, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of stress, you refer back to food and drink as your comfort, as your safe place.
I think having my trainer, Adam, sort of just tracking me, and having that person, someone I have to answer to, has really helped me get into the shape that I needed to get into.”
What difference did having a trainer and structured support make?
“I think it’s structure, and it’s motivation.
I think for me personally, it really helps someone being on my back with it, and I think without that, I’d quite easily fall off the wagon and find excuses not to do something.
“It’s like you kind of weirdly, you want to make fewer decisions outside because I’m making decisions all day long in my job.
So when I’m doing other stuff, I just want someone else to take control of that.
I even say to my wife sometimes I say to her, I don’t want to make any decision. You make the decisions.
And I think it’s the same when it comes to that training aspect.
Having somebody just on you all the time, to me, makes a massive difference.”
You’ve worked with trainers before. What felt different about Ultimate Performance?
“For a lot of people, they won’t necessarily understand what the difference is between normal PT and U.P.
And I think with U.P. it’s the whole package.
It’s that feeling when you walk in there, you can see that everybody’s really focused on transforming you.
It’s not just my trainer, Adam, it’s the whole team there.
“The way that they track you, the way that you have to weigh yourself every day – there are no excuses.
It stops all those excuses we’ve all used for years to not get where we want to be.
Adam is always reminding me, ‘this is what you want’. He didn’t force me to come to him. You chose to come to U.P. You chose to come and do it for a reason.
It is your decision to do this, so don’t let yourself down. Make yourself accountable to yourself, not just to other people.
“And I think that’s the bit that’s switched probably in the last 12 months, which has really allowed me to get a much bigger transformation.”
You travel internationally for work. How do you stay consistent with your routine?
“It’s great every time I travel to Dubai, quite a few times a year.
I always pre-plan ahead, and I’ll book in however many sessions I need at U.P. whilst I’m there.
They follow the same routine that I’m on already, which is great, and it just keeps me motivated and also keeps me in the right mindset for my eating when I’m out there.”
How do you feel now compared to before you started?
“I think just generally, in life, you feel much better. You’ve got so much more energy. You’ve got more clarity and a better thought process, especially on a day when I could have six or seven different meetings in a day on very different things – design, finance, operations, people issues.
So I think just having energy and being able to get through that day allows you to focus a lot better and have better clarity of thought.”
What does success look like for you with your goals at U.P.?
“I think success is… I think I’ve already achieved it.
I wanted to be down to a certain weight that I’ve never achieved in my life.
So we’ve achieved that. I feel great. I feel 15 years younger.”
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