Gavin Rossdale’s consistent relevance over the last 30 years is a testament to his fearlessness and strangely, his love for food (we’ll get to that soon). He famously put his own spin on a genre of music that didn’t exactly embrace outsiders (ahem, grunge), and is still active, dropping a new Bush single, “60 Ways To Forget People,” this week, with a tenth studio album to soon follow. When he’s not rocking, he’s eating, especially on his new show “Dinner with Gavin Rossdale“, which airs on Vizio.
Bush’s brand of rock might be considered “classic” at this point but at 59, Rossdale still commands the stage and crowd with the energy and physique of a bloke 25 years his junior. Gavin credits his brood of restless sons for keeping him spry, but credit must also be given to the rock star’s obsession with good food, especially Korean cooking. An avid home chef and aspiring culinary personality, Rossdale exudes endless enthusiasm for food, cooking and the simple pleasures of a good meal, which is clear if you watch even one minute of his new show.
Whether it’s staging with celebrity chefs while on tour and canoodling via DM with amazingly talented folks like Grant Achatz when he’s in Chicago or Sean Brock while in Nashville, it’s clear that Rossdale is downright food-obsessed. In our recent chat, Rossdale revealed his long-standing fixation with chocolate that dates back to childhood, the joy in over-ordering, as well as his current feelings about eating vegan after flirting with veganism in the past. He also shared why he’d love to own a Japanese 7-Eleven, why he generally boycotts fast food and why night time is the time when all of his cravings hit.
What snacks are on your rider?
My rider’s tins of Sapporo, not bottles, small tins of Sapporo where possible and Julio Setenta, which I got into when I was in Cabo. I have tequila spritzers to give me a little pep in my step. I don’t like to be drunk. I’ve done a few shots (before) and I don’t like that feeling. I don’t mind if I’d smoked a joint, it doesn’t bother me. The idea of being drunk on stage starts feeling like a bar band. I don’t like that feeling. So, it’s just a little buzz and keeps the hydration, it’s better than water. I can’t stand water on stage. You’ll never see it ever. I’ve never had a bottle of water on stage.
It’s my macho caveman sensibilities that does not want to see that. It’s not the right look. I’d rather drink red wine out of principle.
No food, or you’re not generally eating before you perform?
No. No one asks me. So, I look around and sometimes I steal the M&M’s they have. I always think snacks on riders are a nightmare because how many cheeses do you really want? But they have them every day. I’ve lived through the years of deli trays. The best was the deli trays they used to have. They’d always put a fucking onion on there. So, it’d be like you walk in your dressing room and it’d smell like the worst deli in town. You’d go “What?” Open raw onions on a deli tray? So gross. And shiny, processed meat. Sweaty, sweaty meat. Oh, just not good.
I always travel with tin bottles of tuna, whoever does those nice Spanish ones. I get tuna, rice wine vinegar, and then we chop up a cucumber or chop up a tomato, and throw it in with the rice wine vinegar and that’s just such a great boost of energy. I do like boiled eggs all the time. I put them in soy sauce and rice wine vinegar and have that Japanese 7-Eleven thing where I have a bowl of four or five eggs and that’s all you need, that pure protein. It’s everything that I need. I live really, really simply. I go to catering and get a steak. Yesterday, they had a tri-tip that wasn’t really that good, but as soon as I put a spicy peppers and the kind of pickles, the spicy pickly thing, meat when I do a show feels really, really good. It’s very basic.
How about when you’re in the studio? Are there any sort of drinks or snacks or foods that you like to have around when you’re being creative?
It’s funny because there’s two stages of creativity for me. One is when I’m alone in the studio and I’m a good enough engineer that I can build tracks and record myself. I’ve never recorded my own vocals. I have an engineer. Once I get to that point of a song, I get three or four things ready. Then, I’ll get an engineer to come in. Suddenly the engineering looks way more complicated than when I do four tracks and it’s easy.
I’m obsessed with Korean food, literally obsessed. So I have different go-to places that will give you those lovely Korean bento boxes. It’s about clean, simple eating – the bulgogi, the rice, and the vegetable, and then the banchan. I love the fish cakes. I like very simple different textures, different tastes, and sort of an elevated simplicity, just like me.
It’s so funny because I was looking on the E.A.T. With Gavin Rossdale Instagram and I saw you had a bunch of Korean dishes on there. I recently interviewed a K-pop group and you have some of the same dishes on there that they said that they missed from Korea. And I was like “How’s Gavin into all this Korean food?”
I make the soybean kimchi soybean soups, like when you have a gochujang, which is the fermented soybean paste, and the kimchi, you put the tofu in, you can either make a kimchi and they make fantastic kimchi to buy. I got a legit soup. I could make soups that people would be like “Hot dang. That is Korean,” It’s not rocket science, I love soup. Soup’s so hearty. You see from that page, I love to cook.
Do you have a go-to spot that you get takeout or Korean food from that you could tell us?
There’s Chosun Galbee which is my favorite place to go to. There’s Bulgogi Hut. We set up there, but I like Gyakaku, it’s a chain and it has the nice soup. What I like about it’s that I’m like a serial over orderer if I go a restaurant because I love food so much and I like the lubrication of over ordering and it makes fun dinners to have loads of plates in the middle. I don’t finish everything, but I like to taste everything.
I’m a budding home cook and so when I go to a restaurant I really appreciate what they do. Any restaurant wants you to try six things they do. They don’t want you to have one thing, so I’m good fun in a restaurant. I suppose Korean, what’s lovely about it, they have that whole quality with the banchan. I’m not about a massive portion of things. I like a few bites of this change of texture, change of temperature, change everything, flavors, and Korea does that the best. I really am obsessed. I could eat Korean food every day.
Are you taking home that food for leftovers?
The leftovers can be good, but have you noticed our life now? They’d been lying to us our whole lives about everything. Everything. We grew up loving French fries from McDonald’s because they were best french fries. Now, we find out they’re 16 ingredients and any more, we’re going to die. It’s all these things that you find out now are so sad.
Who knew that rice gets so dangerous to eat a day later? You may make fried rice from day old rice. By the time it’s a day old, you start to get some serious fungus in there and serious bacteria. So, I do have leftovers, but suddenly now the new school is everything gets dangerously full of bacteria, way quicker than you think and all it does, it makes you feel unwell. You don’t know why, but you’re eating all this bacteria. I do like leftovers, but you’ve got to be super careful what is good for that. All the kind of best stews in the world or the Bolognese, those things are best the next day.
I think everyone lied to us. Have you noticed that? Apparently everything is bad for us. Everything that we thought wasn’t bad for us is bad for us and everyone’s doing it to the name of their profit. We’re suckers. People are suckers.
When you’re traveling and you’re on the road and you get to a hotel, are there any foods that you like to have in your room? Are you hitting up the minibar or not because it’s all packaged food with GMOs in it? Or are you going to shop at the local Whole Foods?
On the road, it’s a combination. First off, like anyone else who’s human, I don’t think I’ve ever resisted a bag of Pringles. Those little box, those little fuckers. I don’t know if I’ve ever resisted it. It doesn’t take long for any of those. Post-pandemic, the standard of mini bars has plummeted.
People are not putting things in hotel rooms anymore. That was such always a fun thing – me and Cory, who’s the bass player, we’re the worst. We clean out our food. He cleans out the minibar as well, but it’s hard to avoid those M&M’s, hard to avoid the Pringles. Pretty standard, normal human behavior with the minibar. I go to Whole Foods for the tour, being on the tour bus now I get tuna, beans, eggs, simple things I can put together that don’t take time, and I feel really sated because you shouldn’t rely on tour catering for your stomach to be happy. It’s not the time – It’s hardcore.
When you’re on the road, obviously you’re going to a lot of different cities either in the U.S. or globally. Are there any cities that you’re really looking forward to get to because you love their food or you love the restaurants there?
Oh, fuck yeah. That’s the best thing, absolutely. Nashville, I’m out of my mind. I’m going to Sean Brock’s restaurant, to Audrey and I’m going to go in the day and see him and harass him about fire cooking because I’m obsessed about cooking in a fire and how to understand it. He’s the king of that.
I’ll be in Chicago. I’ve got Alinea with Grant Achatz. My chefs, I’m very friendly with. Grant is a very close friend of mine. Sean Brock, I’m trying to be good friends with and forcing my way in, sliding into his DMs. I’m going to get to see him in Nashville. I’ve already hooked that up.
“Can I come and see?” (Sean Brock) goes, “Yeah.” I love that. Eater saved my life. Everywhere I go it’s Eater, and I do for the city and that’s the funnest thing for me to experience that because we play everywhere. We’re in Iowa today, so I don’t know what Eater has in store today, but I have been here a few times staying at this hotel. I think in this area I know where to go for coffees.
Getting to go to Audrey is a real treat, I’ve been there before. I don’t even like barbecue that much. Barbecue is always a bit of an anti-climax for me. People say this barbecue’s great, then you line up and it’s not that great. Sometimes it can smell like gasoline and it’s okay, but the idea is better, like the salivation. Audrey is the place where barbecue is something else. It’s an out-of-world experience.
What do you order there?
The cornbread. I’ve never had cornbread that good. Ordering everything as much as we can.
My sixteen-year-old boy Zuma loves barbecue. I’m taking him to what I think is one of the real barbecue spots, the best you can go to I’ve come across in America.
What is something that people may find gross or weird that you really like to eat?
Going back to my Korean obsession, I will really happily eat an entire bowl of garlic and jalapeño, taking a bite of meat and then crunch on the garlic. I grew up scared of garlic thinking people would never talk to you ever again and now I’m trying to get people to never talk to me ever again. I love that. Eating raw garlic, it’s a super Korean tradition. It’s great. It’s not as gross as you think.
You put a mouthful inside the leaf. You put meat and sauce, a bit of garlic, bit of jalapeños, and kimchi. When you bite into that it’s revelatory.
I suck heads of shrimps because that’s the European way. Suck head where all the flavor is, that’s pretty unusual if people aren’t used to that.
What’s something that the kids are eating or you’ve seen people eating nowadays that you are like, “That’s really weird. I wouldn’t even try that.”
What I do like and I’m impressed with is the Sour Patch stuff. I like it. Sour things are kind of fun if you like, but my kids obviously like all that bullshit. I totally relate to it all. I’ve got a crazy sweet tooth, but weirdly enough not in the day. I need the nighttime to eat my chocolate, eat my bullshit stuff. In the daytime, I’m all good. I don’t need any of it. I’m really keeping away from food the lot of the day, but come nighttime.
If all else failed, I do believe I could do eating competitions from chocolate. I always thought when I was a kid, when I had fillings in my teeth. Doctor dentist said to my mom, “He’s got an obsession with chocolate. Take him to the sweet shop, take him to the candy store, get him as much as he wants, then get him extra, sit him down.” This is what they did in I guess the ’70s, ’80s “Make him puke, give him so much chocolate, he will puke and he’ll never eat.” My mom sat me down and I just had all this chocolate in front of me. She made me eat it.
I think it must have been when I was six or seven. I ate it, and then ate some more. Finished it, drank a bit of milk, finished everything. She waited to be sick, sat there, I sort of burped a bit and said “Thank you. Can I go upstairs now and watch TV?” She’s like “Okay.” And that was it. Nothing happened there. I was champion. At that point, I knew they couldn’t break me. They tried to fucking break me and they couldn’t.
What are some of your favorite chocolate bars or chocolates or sweets in general?
I didn’t realize how great English candy was. I took it for granted. Looking back, I miss all the Cadburys, the dairy milk, Cadbury’s fruit and nut and dairy milk. I’ve all this tied up with great memories of my life being a skateboarder, going to a place called Skate City and you get the tube back from London Bridge. If you had 50 pence piece, you get a little vending machine and you get a little bar of chocolate, bit smaller than about the size of your iPhone, Cadbury’s dairy milk.
Having that felt like sort of pre Willy Wonka before he buys a ticket when he’s eating the chocolate bars. I was that kid. Those bars of chocolate pressing against roof of your mouth and it just dissipates. Has to be warm. None of that cold bullshit. Beer cold. Cold Sapporo, very cold.
Luke warm chocolate. There’s a sweet shop near me, a real sweet shop, confectioners. They used to have fudge. They had fudge that I used to get on the bus going to play tennis, and that was also 50 p. Get a bag of this fudge and it’s very hard to find. I found it in an Indian sweet shop recently back in Los Feliz because they make it all with the condensed milk. Not the fudge that’s sobbing, the one that crumbles when you push. It breaks in your mouth.
That was me going to play tennis, sucking on that and it would all break in my mouth. Great sensory experience. That’s why it’s so tied up with making yourself feel good and it’s soothing. Some people like a pacifier, I get the same feeling out of pushing a piece of chocolate in my mouth. The same effect of security.
I was obviously a really insecure kid and my connection to food and texture of food and the calming nature of it, it’s obviously not good. I’m lucky I’m not 400 pounds because I love to eat. It’s the best thing. It feels so good. It feels so great to eat.
Do you have a number one chocolate Cadbury bar or something that if you live in LA you get shipped out to you or anything like that, or it’s not really that much of a commitment?
I used to have my assistant from London, the only thing he was good at was sending big boxes of chocolate out. I think that’s 2017. I look at pictures of myself in 2017, it’s my year of porky. I did look heavier than I’d ever looked. There’s this fucking delivery of so much chocolate, but Galaxy bars. Galaxy Bars, KitKats, Snickers, Star Bars. I haven’t had chocolate since last night.
When I wake up, I do the wake up recall of shame.
Oh, the Double Decker’s great. I know it. I know the wrapper, I know the feeling. I know the give. The actual biscuit bit is the bit that you have to the bite a little bit harder to get through that and then that one bit through is tremendous. Star Bar does the same bite.
If you could be an ambassador for any food brand, do you have anyone in mind? I know you’ve said that you drink Illy coffee every morning. Would that be the one for you?
I would be great for Illy. I also think Vital Farms.
Vital Farms is a really interesting egg place, what I like about them the most is they’ve been spending millions into research to save lots of eggs from being sorted when you see the male chicks finding out they’re male or female. Vital Farms I would be very happy to represent.
How about if you were an owner of a franchise of, I don’t know, a restaurant, a fast-food place, or something, a convenience store. Is there any that you would want to own?
Well, I think the 7-Elevens, all the 7-Elevens in Japan are so amazing for the food. You can legit get really good food. I got to be honest, I don’t know if I’d go to 7-Eleven in Iowa for lunch, but I would go to 7-Eleven in Japan for lunch. A hundred percent. They have these huge vats for all those eggs I was talking about, in the soy sauce, the rice wine vinegar. They have great food and really, really good fried chicken. In another universe I’d be like, “Yeah. That’s a pretty good spot.” I like the idea of utilitarian where it’s elevated food, really, really good food. I think everyone deserves great food.
I cook a lot. You’ve got to almost work hard to make something taste like crap. You’ve got to be doing something to it. If you get out of the way of it, it is not rocket science. It’s very basic: temperature time, a little bit of awareness, and timing. It’s not coding. It’s just care and concern. It doesn’t take that much of imagination to make food good. It really doesn’t.
I know you’ve had your own cooking show. I’m just curious what other culinary aspirations you may have. It seems like with all your knowledge it wouldn’t be surprising for you to have your own cookbook or anything like that.
My plan is to go and do a stag at Alinea, do the three days cooking at Alinea. I’ve got a few chef friends, Dominique Crenn who has Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.
My dream would be to go do stags at those restaurants. I love cooking, I’ve cooked with Grant quite a bit. I cook with Dominique quite a bit, being a sous chef to those guys just being on hand. Chef Daniel Pizza, I helped recently I went to a party and he was cooking for 35 people alone. Nothing more fun for me than playing sous chef or “How can I help? What can I clean?” I like that. It’s really good fun.
On “Everything Zen,” you have the famous lyric, “Million dollars a steak.” It’s 2024. We’re almost 30 years later. Are we getting close to the million dollar steak?
Nazrat was the guy, the famous guy, and he’s got those terrible restaurants and he throws the salt off — the Salt Bae. Then, he was ruling the world with this. To me it’s really gross off a man’s forearm. Then he fucked it with trying to harass Messi at the World Cup and getting all his pictures of Messi and suddenly this restaurant seems to be in trouble.
Nearly had a million dollar steak. It was all gold leaf and he’s cutting it. It’s just bullshit cutting steak with gold leaf all over it. My kids see there’s a YouTuber who does million dollar meals, a hundred grand pizzas, all that stuff. Is it worth it? I would say no. Nothing’s worth that.
A few years ago you made a vegan bolognese and you said that that was the future of cooking and food. Obviously, you’re not a vegan. Are you still in the plant-based kind of mode? Or are you past that now?
It’s pretty tricky. The truth of that is around that time I was dating a vegan for six months. For her, I was cooking only vegan stuff. Sometimes when she would leave, I may have the odd bacon sandwich.
I am a hypocrite because I’m not a hunter. If I had to go shoot my dinner, I’d be like, “I’ll have salad tonight.” I’m a bit of a pussy like that. I don’t like it. I don’t like suffering. I hate the industrialization of the industrial age.
Like I was saying, how we’ve been by fucked things, we’ve been fucked by that. It wasn’t right to take all these animals and kill them every 12 seconds to kill in abattoirs, to desensitize ourselves to animals like that. I prefer small abattoirs, great organic life. It’s difficult because I can afford that. Costco is really wonderful for bringing meat prices down. I have to be careful not to be elitist. I think it’s really fucked up how fast food is subsidized. I think in urban areas where you don’t have any access to fresh food, all these huge geopolitical socio-economic town plannings, I think it’s incredibly cynical.
I thought lab-grown meat was the future. I guess that didn’t quite take off. They found out Beyond Meat, Impossible Burgers had more sodium and more problems than eating just the original meat. The terrible truth is I’m really basic and I worked best off of Korean medicine for a long time, based on a Korean way of life. Dr. Kwon. I was told to eat beef, pork, and sugar, no vegetables, no fish for my life. That’s basically what I eat. Not much lamb, not much chicken. I do better when I eat meat, I’m good to go. I’m primal.
I don’t eat fast food – it’s a small protest, I don’t want to be part of that. I don’t want to be part of the suffering. A dollar burger means somebody suffered. There’s that line I have in my solo record. “Happy Meals means something died,” which I always thought it was a great lyric and no one ever picked up on it. Happy Meals mean something died. I don’t like it when my kids eat fast food. It’s a lot of suffering in between those buns.
If vegan bolognese is not the future, what would you say is the future of food in your mind?
As organic as possible, as small, small farms as possible. Basically, if and when you eat meat that that meat has lived a good life and has been dispatched in a humane way, free of stress, free of fear. No meat that’s traveled 600 miles to be slaughtered. It’s an idealistic way of living. That to me is the future. It’s the opposite of the industrial age unfortunately. The industrial age was invented without any awareness or cognizance of the effect it would have on the animals themselves. It’s just heartbreaking.
I can’t sit and have any winning argument with a vegan. Any vegan can beat me in an argument and say I live and I don’t kill anything to eat. I could eat beans every day. I could do it, but I’m a terrible person, so I don’t. So, I’m susceptible to any vegan. There’s still arguments against vegans here, like the production of avocados, they kill all the wildlife around avocados. So, vegan farming has a lot to answer for as well, because they kill a lot of wildlife.
That’s the problem. That’s the thing. What do you do? I’m lucky enough to eat organic, but I can’t be stuck up and tell other people to be organic because some people just can’t straight up afford it so I can get fucked. It’s not fair. It’s very cynical. The whole lack of fresh food in the poorer downtown areas. We often stay in downtown areas and depressed areas. That’s where the venues are, often where the hotels will be, and there’s not a lot of Whole Foods.
I would have a Whole Foods and I would have a program where they were in inner cities because you should be able to afford a plate of vegetables, should be the same price as a burger. It shouldn’t be the vegetables (are) more expensive or you have to travel further to get them. It’s so cynical. Talk about systemic racism, that is systemic racism, that planning.
