Singer Kelis Has Opened a Restaurant
Kelis isn’t just that singer of righteous anthems with excellent hair, she’s also a food-obsessed gourmand. The mononymous singer is more than capable of throwing together a milkshake, too – she studied at Le Cordon Bleu and her repertoire of Caribbean/American with a dash of Vietnamese and a squeeze of Colombian fills her debut cookbook My Life on a Plate: Recipes from Around the World.
Now, Kelis is swapping her stage costumes for starched chef’s whites to collaborate with cooking duo Andy Taylor and Tim Talbot of Le Bun on a pop-up that will feed hungry Londoners, before going on tour to music festivals around the UK.
The collab came about after the singer was announced as the headlining act at the Standon Calling festival in Hertfordshire. Le Bun had already been booked to run a food truck at the festival, so they reached out to Kelis to see if she wanted to perform in the kitchen, too. She most definitely did.
The three have devised a menu that is divided into Street and Savage themes and dishes include a bánh mi roll with roast pork, fig pâté and crackling; yucca oxtail poutine with aged gruyère; and purple corn arepa with spicy tuna and sour mango topped with creamy Scotch bonnet mayo. Cleverly, Kelis got the inevitable question out of the way with the gloriously pink Not Milkshake: a blended cocktail of Brazilian cachaça, condensed milk and a touch of beetroot.
It’s conceivable that Kelis has signalled her desire for a career change in the past with the 2003 album Tasty (which featured the ubiquitous Milkshake) and her 2014 offering Food, which includes tracks such Breakfast, Jerk Ribs, Cobbler and Biscuits and Gravy.
We’re really hungry now.
Kelis x Le Bun is serving at Leicester House (1 Leicester Street) in London until July 17 before setting up shop at the Standon Calling festival from 29 to 31 July.
