Private Chef Reveals One Of Lady Gaga's Favorite On-Tour Meals
Chef Jumoké Jackson, AKA Mr. Foodtastic, has been all over the world with Lady Gaga's 'The Monster Ball Tour'. Because of this, not only does he know every Gaga song by heart, but he also knows what she wants to eat when she's on the go! So, he knows that this classic chopped cheese is the perfect taste of home that Gaga needs after a sold-out show.
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00:00 Take a look at this gorgeous concoction of meat and cheese, lettuce, tomato on a
00:08 hero roll. Elbows at 10 and 2 when you eat.
00:13 I just want to be alone with me and my sandwich. It's that good. Hi my name is
00:22 Mr. Foodtastic, Chef Jamoke Jackson, former chef for J. Cole, Lady Gaga, and
00:28 Gayle King and today I'm going to be making a New York style chopped cheese
00:32 sandwich. This is something that I would make for Lady Gaga and crew all the time
00:37 on tour. We all know that Lady Gaga's a New Yorker and so whether we were
00:48 traveling in London or Tokyo this was one of those dishes that gave her and
00:52 crew a little taste of home. It all starts with the bread and that is a hero
00:57 roll. Now you might call it different things where you're from but in New York
01:00 it's called a hero roll. Why? Because it comes to the rescue for all of your
01:06 sandwich needs. We're gonna slit this open so we're not gonna cut it all the
01:13 way through because we want to load this sandwich up so that you can eat it like
01:17 this. All right let's add our butter in to a heated skillet. The more butter the
01:22 better. More butter, more fat, more flavor. Now I'm gonna take it I'm just gonna
01:27 press it down here and you don't need to bother with it just let it work. Let it
01:31 toast, let it brown, give it about three four minutes. Working for Lady Gaga was
01:36 probably one of the most exciting experiences that I've ever had. I got to
01:41 travel around the world. I got to see all parts of the world from Tokyo to
01:46 Australia to Poland. It was a full-on life experience. It's something that I'll
01:51 never forget from sourcing ingredients in Amsterdam to having to figure out
01:58 language translations in Tokyo. It was really an experience that I'll never
02:04 forget from a chef standpoint and from a cultural standpoint. I'm gonna turn this
02:08 butter around a little bit just so we get a nice kind of even toast. So let's
02:12 take a peek and see what we got. Nice. We've got our bread nice and toasted.
02:18 We're gonna start with our lettuce. I like to take the lettuce cut it right
02:22 down the middle. Makes it easy to cut and manage. I turn it on the side and to get
02:28 a nice chop you always want to grip down make sure that we're not cutting our
02:32 fingers. Get a nice shred on it. Turn it back and honestly that's all you need.
02:42 You can use the rest for a salad. So I like to use a serrated knife for my
02:47 tomatoes. It makes for a nice clean cutting and the serrated knives gives a
02:52 nice fluid simple cuts to the tomato. Take about half of a tomato. That should
03:00 fill up one sandwich. This is so therapeutic. Lastly we're going to cut up
03:05 our onion which is going to be cooked with our meat. Take the end off the top
03:10 part and we want to keep the bottom intact because we are going to be dicing
03:14 this onion. So we either if you're doing half you can definitely cut it down the
03:19 middle but keep that core part on. It's gonna be make it easy for our dicing. I'm
03:24 gonna run my knife along the back and pull off the outer skin before I start
03:29 to dice. I remember the first time I met Lady Gaga. She's so humble and she is so
03:35 friendly. Like I really I was kind of nervous to meet her. I don't get nervous
03:40 meeting celebrities very often but she was one of those people that you know
03:44 you kind of love the music and you really you wanted to be as cool as
03:49 possible when you met her. She was very gracious. She greeted me with a hug which
03:54 is wonderful and then she was she was very talkative. She you know asked where
04:00 I was from, what I like to do, why I was a chef. She asked me all these things and
04:05 we probably talked for a good 10-15 minutes when I first met her. Now that
04:09 we've prepped our vegetables we're gonna move over to the star of the show, the
04:14 meat. First we're gonna preheat our pan and then add our butter in. Then we're
04:20 going to form our meat into kind of like a dome shape. We're gonna season it
04:24 generously with salt and pepper. We're gonna put it in. We're gonna press it
04:28 down to get a nice crisp bottom to our meat. I remember one time we were in
04:34 Amsterdam, one of my favorite places that we went on the tour and we had a
04:39 shortage. We would ship in ingredients that we needed sometimes and this
04:44 particular day we didn't have everything that we needed so it was a scavenger
04:48 hunt and this was before you could simply order things on a cell phone. So
04:53 we probably spent a good couple of hours scrambling around much like we were in a
04:58 competition to get food to get back in time because we had an early show that
05:03 day. I happened to finish everything kind of right on time. Gaga got her food.
05:09 Which was probably about 10 minutes late but it was still on time and we they
05:15 proceeded to have I think one of the better shows that they've ever had. It
05:18 was a, this was right around Thanksgiving so we're kind of ending the year
05:23 because we took a nice little break around the holidays. It was one of my
05:27 most memorable and challenging experiences as chef. I often call chefs
05:32 problem solvers and to solve that problem and to keep the tour running
05:36 is one of my favorite experiences. So next we're gonna flip the meat over.
05:40 We're gonna dump the onions in and we're going to start chopping. This is one of
05:46 the most fun parts, the chopping. This absolutely comes together very fast. One
05:51 of the things you don't want to do is overcook the meat. This is why I actually
05:54 use butter because I want to keep it nice and rich, full of fat and I like to
05:59 go until it's just starting to be completely brown. A little drop of pink
06:04 in it is totally fine but you bring your onions together until they're
06:08 translucent, give it three or four minutes and then you're done and ready
06:12 to add the cheese. Also often on tour after the show they would have these
06:18 kind of meetups. This is where the band and the back of the house got to kind of
06:22 mingle together. The only times that they kind of interacted the most was either
06:27 after the show or when they were eating. So this was like a great opportunity for
06:33 everybody to kind of come together. You either have your favorite people that
06:37 you hang out with. Gaga would also join, come to the after parties when she had the
06:42 energies. We'd go all over to different places. This is where they're kind of red
06:47 carpet treatment would come out because all you had to say was you were part of
06:50 the Monster Bar Tour and you would get kind of the VIP treatment. It's a very
06:54 fun experience. You got to see a lot of kind of local spots or even spots that I
06:59 think the local people didn't have access to because they would set it up
07:03 special for her and the crew. So now it's time to add the cheese and get the
07:08 melty magic going. I'm gonna add the cheese right on top, turn the heat off
07:12 and let it melt down. Then we're going to add it to our hero roll. So first we're
07:17 going to add our mayo. We're going to slather both sides of the hero roll.
07:22 After that we're going to add our ketchup same way on both sides. After our
07:28 ketchup we are going to add in our meat with our cheese. Then we're going to add
07:33 our lettuce. Finally we're going to top it with our tomatoes. As we wrap up one
07:38 of the things that I love so much about the tour was just kind of the access
07:43 that it gave me. I remember having this pass that I would flash in front of all
07:48 the security people and just be able to watch the tour after a long day of
07:53 cooking. I saw the tour everywhere. I saw it expand. I saw the set go from 45
08:00 minutes to over an hour and a half. It was kind of one of the most magical
08:04 things ever from a concert standpoint and having an appreciation for music and
08:09 food. This was an all-encompassing event and I loved it.
08:14 This thing is huge. I can't eat it all so I'm going to cut off a little piece to
08:22 enjoy now. Take a look at this gorgeous concoction of meat and cheese, lettuce,
08:30 tomato on a hero roll. Elbows at 10 and 2 when you eat.
08:37 I just want to be alone with me and my sandwich. It's that good. The cheese, the
08:46 meat, everything is perfect. Perfectly balanced. The sauce complements it well.
08:51 I'm happy. And you could see why after being on Lady Gaga's tour, the Monster
08:56 Ball tour, after months of traveling to have this dish, meat, cheese, the
09:01 quintessential New York dish, how this is the perfect taste of home. I love this
09:07 sandwich. I really hope you guys give this a shot at home. It's a super simple
09:11 sandwich to make. You can find recipes like this and others at delish.com. You
09:17 can find me at Mr. Foodtastic on all social media. I hope to catch you in the
09:21 kitchen again soon.
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