Gavin Rossdale isn’t just the lead singer and guitarist in the rock band Bush. He also has a passion for cooking and making dinner for friends… A-list celebrity friends. On Flavour Network’s Dinner With Gavin Rossdale series, he invites celebrity guests like Serena Williams, Selma Blair, Sir Tom Jones, Brooke Shields, Common and Jack McBrayer to have a meal with him in his home.
In the show, the rockstar with a passion for cooking prepares a four-course meal in his Hollywood Hills home, while guests wind down and chat with him over dinner. We spoke with Gavin to learn more about his life and love for cooking.
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Related: Meet the Celebrities Having Dinner With Gavin Rossdale
Coming from a musical background, so do you see any similarities between writing a song and preparing a meal?
“Yes, one of the earliest quotes that inspired me was when I heard Miles Davis say, ‘Every musician should be able to cook.’ And I took that meaning, that it’s the understanding of the alchemy of things and the consequence of blending counterpoint things together, whether it’s flavours or whether it’s notes. And I see a huge similarity. When I write words for songs as my main job, I think of every line. Are there other fireworks in the lines? The sort of things that really connect to me, magnetize me, jump out at me, and it’s no different in a meal. Whether it’s the flavour profile, moments of things, or how you want to present it. It’s all connected. It’s all about sensory pleasures.”
A Gavin Rossdale Dish
As a self-taught cook, can you talk about your journey with cooking, how it started and how you found this inspiration?
“When I left home, I was looking after myself. I could cook a shrimp stir fry in a tomato sauce. And lived off the big $5 bag of pasta wheels. I had no money, like every self-respecting kid and my friend moved in with me. He grew up in a restaurant, and he could bash out a few dishes, and I was impressed with them, which inspired me. So I started to do things myself and just built my repertoire.
When I was a kid, I didn’t have a big culinary history. Around the age of 9 to 13, I went to Spain every year for two weeks on a package holiday. But the food at that time, when I was a kid in England, was from a fish and chip shop down the road and I didn’t really care about it. But, [on holiday] there was this food cooked locally. So you had these rotisserie chickens at this beach restaurant. They would cover it in so much salt and pepper, there’s so much dried rosemary and thyme, that when you took that bite, it just felt like the world exploded. I never tasted chicken like that.
So when I began to cook in my mid-20s, my flavour profile was always connected to the pleasure and the extremism of those flavours.”
Gavin Rossdale and Brooke Shields
The people on the show were very vulnerable with you. Did you find it easier to open up or get others to talk over food? What’s the power of sharing a meal?
“I think that [having them open up is] obviously completely different with me, because I’m not a journalist… It’s very hard if you’re interviewed [by a journalist to open up, but with me,] there’s always a sense of vulnerability because [if someone is interviewing them] on a TV show or in print, the edit can really dictate a lot of things.
So, the thing that I feel good about is that I’m always going to get something different from the people on my show, because they look at me in a different way than how they look at a journalist talking to them. Also, I’m not getting anything from this. I want everyone’s best to come across in that. I like the show not to be a fluff piece, and that’s not who they are, but just show them their best side, which is possibly a bit more vulnerable, more open, and I think that’s what people connect to the most.”
You just wrapped up the Canadian leg of your tour. What are your favourite restaurants?
“I didn’t get to Joe Beef, which is probably one of my faves in Quebec. So that was a low point of being in Quebec and not being able to have the time to eat there.
But, I’d like to take this opportunity to give my thanks to OEB Breakfast. That place saved me because every day I’d wake up in a city that I’d never been to before, like Kelowna, British Columbia. I would look up a place to eat at about 12 o’clock, when I’m stuck and I’m hungry. I would just find out where the closest OEB Breakfast is and go. I’d order three scrambled eggs, two orders of bacon and coffee and some grilled tomatoes every day.”
Who would you love to have over for dinner in the second season?
“There are a ton of people. Anyone who’s gotten there through their ingenuity and creativity. Anyone who, for lack of a better word, found some degree of success, some degree of notoriety for what they do, for their craft. And I think that we’re all interested in those journeys and what people are like in those journeys.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.