Less Cocaine, More Vegetables: Concert Tour Cooking Goes Healthy

In Stockholm, it was the cookies — the black sesame, wasabi and white chocolate, or perhaps the gluten-free coconut almond darkish chocolate — that signaled to Beyoncé’s dancers, crew and roadies that Grant Bird was again.

Mr. Bird is an English pastry chef and one in all 14 culinary professionals on Beyoncé’s present Renaissance World Tour, which has additionally employed a vegan chef and three private cooks only for Queen B and her internal circle.

After getting Covid throughout rehearsals in Paris, Mr. Bird needed to take a weeklong break, leaving the dessert duties for the 400 to 600 crew members to 2 substitute cooks. By then, the crew had gotten used to his lavish desserts, which frequently featured a dozen completely different choices at each lunch and dinner. A pared-down sweets menu spoke to his absence.

So when the crew as soon as once more noticed his signature unfold of a whole lot of cookies in a number of varieties, they knew he had returned. “That was lunch, and the whole dining room applauded,” mentioned Mr. Bird, who has additionally cooked for Carrie Underwood, Justin Bieber and Mötley Crüe. “They just thought, ‘He’s got to be back. Because they just knew from the style.’”

Yes, Beyoncé is without doubt one of the world’s largest stars, however touring with a cadre of cooks isn’t only a flex. Many touring artists now take a number of skilled cooks, to not point out complete cell kitchens, on the highway with them for effectivity, well being and morale.

While idiosyncrasies like Van Halen’s ban on brown M&Ms have grow to be acquainted lore, the suspension of concert events in the course of the Covid years has prompted an industrywide reset, with a give attention to wellness. Many excursions now embrace a vegan chef, for example, and place a precedence on bodily and psychological well-being in addition to lessening environmental influence.

“Before, back in the early ’80s and ’90s, it was more of a party — cocaine and whatever they wanted. And now it’s just a business,” mentioned Gray Rollin, Linkin Park’s longtime chef, who has additionally cooked on excursions for Prince, Madonna and Tori Amos. “We have one job to do, and that job is to put that talent onstage. Make sure that the show goes flawlessly. And then do it again the next day.”

Joking in regards to the 2014 tour by Linkin Park and Thirty Seconds to Mars, he added, “It was called the Carnivores Tour, but 14 of the 16 guys we cooked for were vegan.”

James Digby, a veteran tour supervisor who had simply completed working the European leg of Avril Lavigne’s tour, is acquainted with such calls for.

“You cannot get a nonvegetarian meal in catering on a Paul McCartney tour. That’s a challenge. Because most roadies I know are carnivores,” Mr. Digby mentioned. “If the artist is trying to change the world, one tour at a time, by saying everybody’s a vegetarian, my job is to echo that.”

Regardless of the delicacies, the manufacturing calls for are vital. The trade customary for a large tour requires 4 meals on setup and present days: breakfast, lunch, dinner and an after-concert meal, typically eaten on a bus.

“An army marches on its stomach, so you’ve got to feed the troops,” Mr. Digby mentioned. By troops, he meant the band, the backup singers and dancers, stage builders, the pyrotechnics crew, safety guards, managers, bus drivers and all the opposite individuals concerned within the high-stakes enterprise of stay leisure.

At a latest Lizzo present at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif., lunch featured a juicing station with a blender-ready basket of greens. There had been corn canine, fried hen sandwiches and plant-based Impossible sliders, in addition to couscous, squash, carrots and cookies.

It was all ready within the area’s kitchen. Normally, although, Latitude 45, the corporate accountable for culinary operations for the vegan artist’s Special tour, cooks in an elaborate cell kitchen that packs into specialised flight instances and is reassembled in every new metropolis.

The custom-built kitchens, together with cupboards, cabinets, ovens and workstations had been constructed to maximise house and effectivity, and supply an elusive sense of “sameness” on the highway, mentioned Chris Mitchell, the corporate’s proprietor.

“Everything has a place, and it goes back to that same place every single day,” he mentioned. “If somebody in the kitchen needs a stainless steel bowl — and without looking most of the time — they can just point and say, ‘Would you please give me the third bowl in that stack over there?’”

HSG Catering, the Chicago-based firm presently engaged on the Eric Church tour, makes use of a 53-foot cell kitchen containing a walk-in freezer, a walk-in cooler and an 80-gallon water heater. The unit can also be geared up with a meat smoker, a wood-fired grill, convection ovens and a machine that may “sous vide 300 steaks at once,” mentioned Bob Schneeberger, HSG’s president.

While the cooks typically accompany artists on non-public jets or in armored automobiles, with police escorts, cooking and baking on the highway may put them in generator-powered makeshift kitchens in fields or parking tons.

Mr. Mitchell says the job requires a selected sort of one who enjoys troubleshooting and being consistently on the transfer, and who can endure sleeping on tour buses for months at a time. The situations domesticate a fraternity of kinds — many cooks proudly put on T-shirts from earlier excursions.

There’s additionally a royal-food-tester side to the gig.

“One case of food poisoning, and you’re canceling shows for at least 48 hours,” Mr. Digby mentioned. As reveals grow to be larger spectacles and ticket costs soar ever increased, an incident like that may put thousands and thousands of {dollars} in danger.

One factor that will not have modified a lot over time is the pickiness of the artists, who definitely have their idiosyncratic likes and dislikes.

“Gene Simmons used to like a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato and pickles on the side,” mentioned Mr. Rollin, who cooked for the Kiss bassist in 2008 and 2009. “But then he would never touch the lettuce, pickles and tomatoes, ever.” Jared Leto would need natural purple popcorn with each meal.

Travel may make the specified meals laborious to return by. In the Nineteen Nineties, Marilyn Manson insisted on Kraft Mac & Cheese, so bins had been shipped to England, Mr. Digby mentioned. “Guess what? Kraft manufactures a different variety of Kraft macaroni and cheese for English consumers.”

Mr. Bird, who cooked for the Okay-pop group Blackpink in Chicago final summer season, mentioned the band introduced a separate truck simply to move its favored manufacturers of instantaneous ramen noodles. Like another caterers who’ve labored Okay-pop excursions, Mr. Bird was impressed with the emphasis placed on the culinary operations, which at all times included a Korean buffet. “They have so many different food stations and stuff. I’ve never seen that before,” he mentioned.

As for Beyoncé, Mr. Bird despatched fruit platters and cookies to her dressing room. And whereas he couldn’t say for certain what the pop star’s favorites are, he did word: “As far as I’m aware, the ones that are particularly eaten are the Reese’s cups cookies” — a specialty of Mr. Bird’s which have a vanilla base with Belgian milk chocolate and bits of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups folded all through.

In addition to having his confections in excessive demand, Mr. Bird was touched to see his identify within the on-line credit for the Renaissance tour.

“At the end of the show, they normally give recognition to the lighting, the staging and people a lot closer to them,” mentioned Mr. Bird, who’s presently touring with the nation singer Sam Hunt. “But they never mention that they travel with us catering.”

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