Bill Cowher’s New Normal

This is the last place you’d expect Bill Cowher to pick for lunch: August, a fancy Upper East Side spot with a marble-topped bar, $495 bottles of Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande on the wine list and a French-speaking hostess up front. This is not to say that Bill Cowher isn’t or can’t be fancy, but well, it’s Bill Cowher. Surely, he’d rather go to the Burger Heaven right across the street. There are lavender sprigs in mason jars on the tables, for goodness’ sake.

He says he’s been here before, likes the food, the atmosphere. Likes talking with the head chef, Josh Eden. “It’s a nice place to have in the neighborhood,” he says as he settles into a booth in the back corner.

OK, but maybe it has a good burger. There’s one on the menu, along with a turkey club and a Reuben. All of those are perfectly fine selections for an ex-football coach from western Pennsylvania. Instead, he orders the Caesar salad. With chicken. No croutons.

“You should’ve seen me earlier,” Cowher says with a laugh. “My wife likes hot yoga. So at 10 o’clock, we have a woman who comes to our apartment and it’s just awesome. I do yoga for about an hour, a lot of stretching, which is really good. Because after my SoulCycle class on Mondays, I need it.”

Monday afternoons also consist of a walk downtown to Grace’s Marketplace, where he buys a bunch of fruit (watermelon and cantaloupe, usually) for the week. Cowher is not doing these things because he’s having a midlife crisis or trying to while away his days of semi-retirement. He is not trying to prove some larger point about how your life opens up when you’re not surrounded by football 24/7. No, Bill Cowher is doing these things because he likes doing them.

And because he can.

“It’s like living in a fishbowl,” he says of his previous life as an NFL head coach. “Honestly, it’s what it is. I look at what I have now, and it’s living normal. I guess the biggest difference from coaching to now is that I can be out here – in this restaurant – and no one is going to bother us. I can walk up and down New York, go shopping, go to Food Emporium, Grace’s. I get my cart out and I enjoy shopping. I like walking around and doing things here. There’s normality.”