Gavin Rossdale has a bone to pick with angel hair pasta.
“Angel hair pasta can f— right off,” the rocker, 59, reveals in his My Life in Food feature in the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now. “Angel hair pasta is literally the sign of a restaurant desperately trying to cater for clientele that doesn’t care about food. … Oh man, it annoys me.”
Rossdale — who shows off his skills in the kitchen on his new cooking show, Dinner With Gavin Rossdale, which premieres on Thursday, February 13, via Vizio on WatchFree+ — does have one food item he can’t get enough of, though: chocolate.
“I’m trying to sort my life out because me and chocolate need to sit down and figure this out between us because it’s too obsessive,” he tells Us. “Our relationship is too obsessive. We need to just lighten it up. We’re trying to take a moment apart, but it’s hard.”
The Bush frontman had one particular obsessive moment over the holiday season where his love of chocolate got the better of him.
“I’ll sit at night, and the kids are asleep, and I’ll be online,” he recalls. “I went ahead and I spent $750 on English candy.”
For more details on his sweet shopping spree and additional stories from his Life in Food, keep scrolling:
If you had to pick a last meal on Earth, what would it be?
A really long, slow meal. I’m a sucker for bacon and eggs and french fries — long thin potatoes in oil. Chips, we call them. And then I really love white truffle, so a white truffle tagliolini with a poached egg. Then I’ve got a really crazy sweet tooth. What else could I have in there? Nothing beats a really great steak, but I don’t know. I don’t plan to be on death row.
Do you remember what you ordered on your very first date?
Well, my first partner was a really sophisticated girl called Lindsay, and so she probably would have ordered for me. She was doing well, I had no money. She was doing well modeling, and she was always so generous, and she always liked French food. So probably going out to eat some French food.
Did you have a special dinner you would have for your birthday growing up?
Not really. England’s a bit more austere. I mean, I definitely had a couple parties when I was a kid, once at a hotel that was really fancy in London. I don’t have many pictures of my childhood, but I do have a picture of me in a really great silk shirt, and I was ready to rock. I think it was the Westbury Hotel, a super nice hotel. So that was intense, but I think we kind of peaked at that point through childhood.
Do you have a comfort food that you eat when no one is watching?
I’m trying to sort my life out because me and chocolate need to sit down and figure this out between us because it’s too obsessive. Our relationship is too obsessive. We need to just lighten it up. We’re trying to take a moment apart, but it’s hard.
[My favorite is] chocolate candy as in bars of chocolate: Galaxies, or Swiss chocolate. The English are the worst because the candy’s so good. You just want to punch yourself in the face or the stomach. It’s really weird.
I’ll sit at night, and the kids are asleep, and I’ll be online. I went ahead and I spent $750 on English candy. I was like, “You should get mindful chocolate,” and then I got a bunch of healthy chocolate. Then I was like, “Come on, we’ve got to get the Indian sweets.” I love Indian sweets, [which] are made with condensed milk. So I went on a spree of three or four Indian companies. And then I was thinking, just calm down.
Are there any foods that you didn’t like as a kid that you like now?
I didn’t like marzipan as a kid. It shut me out of a lot of candy. There was a chocolate shop right near me and I was like, “you’ve got to try the candy. It looks so good.” But I’d be like, this is the worst thing because then you eat Christmas cake and you have to take the bit and separate it. So I tried to get into that — I didn’t, but I can do it now.
Sun-dried tomatoes are a no-go. Don’t care about them. Angel hair pasta can f— right off. Terrible. Can’t hold any sauces. The worst. I love spaghetti. Angel hair pasta is literally the sign of a restaurant desperately trying to cater for clientele that doesn’t care about food. … Angel hair pasta, oh man, it annoys me.
Do you have a favorite meal or dish you made while filming ‘Dinner With Gavin Rossdale’?
I didn’t have any kind of crazy mishaps. They all went pretty well. They all came out good. So I really enjoyed the simplicity of the flavor of the basque cheesecake because I liked grilling a cheesecake. But equally, there’s much more work.
There was loads of work that went into making Common’s meal because he’s a vegan, so that was one of the first ones we did. I did almost like a Korean mountain food tasting menu for vegans. But last minute, we found out that the jewel of the meal, which was tempura mushrooms, he didn’t like fried stuff, so we cut that last minute. And then this rice dish, but he didn’t like rice. And I was like, oh no, we had to change it to quinoa.
But I think he was too busy having a good time and stuff. I hope I fed him well enough because I was adjusting at the last minute. I don’t know if it’s quite as sexy, the quinoa, as the rice, but let’s hope so.
Dinner With Gavin Rossdale premieres on Vizio on WatchFree+ Thursday, February 13.
