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Hours: 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m. daily

Typical entrée prices: $10-$15 lunch; $18-$25 dinner

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www.mccormickandschmicks.com

Anthony Marciante knows how to face a challenge head on.

After realizing his weight was threatening his health, the executive chef at McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant in Bethesda set a goal: to lose 135 pounds. Within six months, he dropped 96, and lost an additional 19 by the end of the first year. Impressive numbers on their own, his achievement is even more inspiring considering all the temptations in a large and bustling restaurant kitchen.

One thing working in Marciante’s favor is his ability to control portion size and reduce or eliminate some of the heavier ingredients in popular dishes. To ease up on the fat and calories at lunchtime, Marciante makes sure his favorite salmon is prepared sauce-free. As for the spinach salad on the side, he asks the food prep staff to hold the dressing and pecans. Rice and salsa complete his typical lunch.

Marciante wants customers to know that anyone can eat at McCormick & Schmick in the same health-minded manner that he does.

‘‘There’s always a way to eat out healthy if you know what you’re doing,” he says. ‘‘Restaurants will make accommodations. They want to keep you as a client.”

When Marciante dines out, for example, he immediately asks his server to wrap half his entrée. And customers visiting McCormick & Schmick’s should not hesitate to do the same.

‘‘I don’t have a problem with it, especially given my personal experience,” Marciante says. ‘‘We get lots of requests for modifications,” such as sauces on the side, he adds.

One benefit of holding the sauce in a restaurant that specializes in fresh seafood is that it brings out a cleaner taste in the food, rather than coating the mouth with a heavy flavor, the chef points out.

‘‘It helps showcase the fish, which is our focus,” he says.

Marciante selects fresh fish for his restaurant twice a day, and says he ‘‘throws back” anything that doesn’t meet his high standards. He rewrites the menu twice a day, for lunch and dinner, focusing the dishes around whatever variety of fish passes the test upon delivery.

Although it’s part of a nationwide chain, the Bethesda McCormick & Schmick’s branch is run under Marciante’s distinctive supervision. He says his menu might feature more of an Italian or European flair than the D.C. branch, for example.

‘‘We really run the restaurants one by one,” he says. Executive chefs are hired ‘‘because we know what we’re doing, and we can inject something unique.”

Marciante grew up in Bethesda, but was born in Milan, Italy, where his father was working on a construction project for a Barilla pasta factory. Both places influenced his love of cooking. He says he’s grateful for being raised in a multicultural environment where he learned to enjoy food from all over the world.

That such an upbringing might be unusual didn’t occur to him until his mid-20s, when he moved to North Carolina to become co-owner of a restaurant called The Fuzion Café.

Marciante, now 38, returned to Maryland in 1999 to rekindle an ‘‘old, smoky fire,” and the two married ‘‘four and a pinch” years ago. They live in Kensington. His wife runs an Italian restaurant that her family opened in 1980.

Moving back to Maryland, getting married and the stress of 12- to 15-hour workdays all contributed to putting on the extra pounds.

‘‘As a chef, it’s hard,” Marciante says. ‘‘You work all kinds of crazy hours, then get out at 7, 8, 9 o’clock or later, and you’re hungry.”

But he has changed his diet, doesn’t eat after 7 p.m. and tries to find time to work out — even if it has to be after midnight.

‘‘My energy level is three times what it was before,” he boasts.

On Saturdays, Marciante had been in the habit of celebrating with a couple of co-workers over a big meal late at night after they’d finished working. Once he started his diet and exercise program, though, he had to resist their calls for him to partake in foods that no longer fit into his diet.

‘‘There are a lot of social pressures to be part of a group,” the chef observes.

Those influences can work both ways. Marciante joined an organized online weight loss program, beachbody.com, following the example of one of the restaurant’s regional coordinators, who had lost 80 pounds on the program.

‘‘He’s a guy you wouldn’t expect to do Pilates,” Marciante says.

Not content to rest on his own weight-loss results, Marciante hopes to spread the gospel to others. Through his Web site, www.cheflifeonline.com, he writes about the world of restaurants. And he plans to expand his blogs and podcasts to include weight loss topics as well.

Now that’s facing a challenge and then some.