Who are the chefs who cook for Beyoncé and Madonna – 07/22/2023 – Food

In Stockholm, it was the cookies that showed Beyoncé’s dancers, technical staff and roadies that chef Grant Bird was back. Black sesame, wasabi and white chocolate cookies, or maybe dark chocolate gluten-free ones with almonds and coconut.

Grant Bird is an English pastry chef and one of 14 kitchen professionals working on Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, now underway. The tour also employs a vegan chef and three personal chefs just for Queen B and her inner circle.

After contracting Covid during rehearsals in Paris, Bird had to take a week off, leaving two substitute chefs to prepare desserts for between 400 and 600 members of the technical team. By this time the staff had become accustomed to their sumptuous dessert menu, which often included a dozen different options at lunch and dinner.

The reduced dessert menu was a sign of its absence. So when people saw hundreds of different kinds of cookies again, they knew he was back.

“That was lunchtime, and the whole room applauded,” said Bird, who has cooked for Carrie Underwood, Justin Bieber and Motley Crue.

Beyoncé is one of the biggest stars in the world, but traveling with an entire team of chefs isn’t just an afterthought. Nowadays, in the name of efficiency, health, and troop morale, many entertainers go on tour with not only several professional cooks but also entire mobile kitchens.

Exotic or outlandish demands, such as the band Van Halen asking for M&Ms without the browns, have become folklore, but the suspension of live shows during the pandemic has led to an overhaul of industry norms, with a new emphasis on health. Today, for example, many tours include a vegan chef and prioritize physical and mental well-being, in addition to concern for reducing environmental impact.

“In the past, in the early ’80s and ’90s, the touring atmosphere was more of a party scene. There was cocaine and whatever artists wanted. Today it’s a business, that’s all,” said Gray Rolling, who has been chef for Linkin Park for years and has cooked for Prince, Madonna and Tori Amos on some of their tours. “We have a job to do: get those talents on stage. Make sure everything works perfectly. And do it again the next day.”

Alluding to the Linkin Park and Thirty Seconds to Mars tours in 2014, he commented: “The tour was called the Carnivores Tour, but of the 16 guys we cooked for, 14 were vegan.”

Dietary restrictions like these are nothing new for James Digby, a veteran tour manager who just finished working the European leg of Avril Lavigne’s tour.

“In catering for Paul McCartney’s tour, you don’t find a meal that isn’t vegetarian. It’s a challenge because most of the roadies I know are carnivores,” Digby said. “But if the artist is trying to transform the world one tour at a time by saying everyone is vegetarian, it’s up to me to echo that.”

Regardless of the type of cuisine, production demands are high. The industry standard for a large-scale tour calls for four meals to be served on pre-show days and on concert days: breakfast, lunch, dinner and a post-performance snack, often eaten on a bus.

“An army marches when its stomach is full. You have to feed the troops,” Digby said. When he talks about troops, he means the band, the backup vocalists, the dancers, the stage builders, the pyrotechnic effects crew, the security guards, the administrators, the bus drivers and everyone else involved in the high-end live entertainment business.

At a recent Lizzo show at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California, lunch included a vegetable and fruit juice station, with a basket of vegetables ready to go in the blender. There were breaded sausages on a stick (which Americans call “corn dog”), fried chicken sandwiches and plant-based burgers, as well as Moroccan couscous, squash, carrots and cookies.

Everything had been prepared in the local kitchen. But usually Latitude 45, the company in charge of culinary operations on Lizzo tours, works in a sophisticated mobile kitchen that flies from one city to another in specially made suitcases. At each new destination, they are disassembled and assembled again.

HSG Catering, a Chicago-based company that is currently touring with American country singer Eric Church, uses a 16-meter mobile kitchen that has a huge freezer and fridge, a 300-gallon water heater. The unit is also equipped with a meat smoker, a grill, convection ovens and a “sous vide” machine capable of preparing 300 steaks at the same time”, according to the company’s president, Bob Schnneberger.

Sometimes the chefs accompany the artists in private jets or armored cars, with a police escort, but the need to cook on the road can also lead them to work in makeshift kitchens, powered by generators, set up in fields or parking lots.

Mitchell says that to get the job done, professionals need to enjoy solving problems and constantly being on the road, as well as having the ability to sleep on tour buses for months at a time. Working conditions foster a kind of camaraderie with colleagues, and many chefs are proud to wear T-shirts from past tours. The job still has an “official taster of the king’s food taste” feel to it.

“All it takes is one case of food poisoning and you’d have to cancel shows for at least 48 hours,” Digby said. With concerts becoming bigger and bigger shows, and ticket prices reaching ever higher levels, such an incident could generate losses in the millions of dollars.

One thing that perhaps hasn’t changed much over time is the selectivity of the artists, who undoubtedly have their preferences in terms of what they want and what they flatly reject.

“Gene Simmons liked a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato and pickle served separately,” said Rollin, who cooked for the Kiss bassist in 2008 and 2009. “But he never had the lettuce, pickle and tomato — ever.” Jared Leto ordered organic purple popcorn with every meal.

When traveling, it is not always easy to have access to the foods that artists want. Digby said that in the 1990s Marilyn Manson insisted on Kraft Mac & Cheese, so boxes were shipped to him in England.

Bird, who last summer cooked for Chicago-based K-pop group Blackpink, says the band brought in a separate truck just to carry her favorite brand of ramen noodles. Like some other caterers who have worked on K-pop group tours, Bird was impressed by the emphasis placed on culinary operations, which always included a buffet of Korean food. “They have so many different food stations and stuff I’ve never seen before,” he commented.

For Beyoncé’s dressing room, Bird sent platters of fruit and cookies. And while he can’t say for sure what the pop star’s favorite choices are, he did note one thing: “As far as I’m aware, the most consumed options are cookies based on Reese Cups”—one of Bird’s specialties, which is vanilla-based with Belgian chocolate and bits of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups [feitos de manteiga de amendoim e chocolate] mixed.

In addition to the high demand for his creations, Bird was thrilled when he saw his name included in online Renaissance Tour credits.

“At the end of each show, they usually say thank you to the lighting people, the stage set up people and people who are very close to them,” said Bird, who is currently touring with country singer Sam Hunt. “But they never mention our touring, taking care of the catering.”