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Canberra Table - August 2007

the myth of celebrity catering requests part 1

August 19th 2007 01:03
good luck getting this Bjork!
good luck getting this Bjork!
I have often thought that it would be great to cook for someone famous, especially a musician and hopefully one whose music I liked. I have had little experiencein this of the two times I recall once was when I was twelve and working at the Kuranda amphitheatre in the kitchen, before the show I was drawing up one of the chalk boards when Tex Perkins of the Cruel Sea came looking for something to eat, there was nothing yet, we’d barely started but he managed to step on my hand with his ostentatious cowboy boots during his enquiries. Another time as a chef we had Dame Edna (Barry Humphries) staying at the hotel I worked in, his only request was that we had Barilla pasta bowties on hand, most of the time he ate out or had take away in his room, consequently nearly all the pasta was still in the stock room three months later when I left the job.

I stumbled across a site (the smoking gun), which listed the riders of hundreds of acts, and to be frank most of what they listed was pre-packaged crap! There were a few surprising inclusions such as Ozzy Osbournes need for gummi bears, Emmems lust for pop tarts (I didn’t even know they existed anymore) and Bjorks very wierd requests in the picture above, but mostly it was all comfort food, boring and simple. The most straight forward ones were artists like Marylon Manson and Metallica I though Manson would ask for food prepared by virgins or Metallica might insist on a spit roast prepared by Charlie Trotter but alas, the myth of bands asking for crazy back stage stuff isn’t based on many facts. The first rock stars to do get attention for unusual riders was Van Halen who requested no brown m&ms backstage, on pain of forfeiture of the show, (according to Aussie website “the blurb”) but as bizarre as it seems, this was just a tool to make sure promoters read the contract properly. though the riders are “boring” there is no lack of extravagance, but if I wanted to out “rock star” Pharrel Williams for instance I’d just have to order more alcohol and dancers, which is easy, expensive yes, but easy, no thought or style is displayed by this request. Having discovered that most bands seem to like hotel style, convenience, eat with one hand and full fat/sugar/salt crap to eat, there’s little wonder they die younger, and I thought it was always the drugs.

my search for a worthy client turns briefly to movie stars, I find that equally pedestrian, though at least some of them eat real food, just less of it. Next post I will look at politicians and diplomats I have heard they eat a bit better lets sees if the research proves me right.
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