Eat to the Beat: Music Lovers, Foodies Mourn DJ Mehdi’s Death

by Kathleen Willcox

Check, please. DJ Mehdi Faveris-Essadi spun his last tune on the dance floor last week, and music and food geeks everywhere are in mourning.

The French-Tunisian hip-hop electro wunderkind was the single most significant and influential French multi-culti instrument of unification since the Treaty of Versailles. DJ Mehdi was always true to his underground roots, while managing to also flourish in headier climates, producing Chromeo and Example, among others. The 34-year-old Mehdi died as he lived: dancing on a roof.

The legendary Le Fooding festival held a performance in his honor at NYC’s Elizabeth Street Gallery. (Mehdi was scheduled to perform at the festival’s kickoff concert). Mehdi, like all stylish French men, was BFF with foodies.

Below, the slap-happy booty shaker with the Ed Banger Crew perfectly captures Mehdi in his trademark silly-serious style:

New Fishbone Documentary and Forthcoming Album

by Emily Youssef

A documentary on the beloved punk rock band Fishbone, “Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, ” opens next month in New York and LA. Laurence Fishburne narrates the film that traces their history, influence and inner turmoil, with commentary from Gwen Stefani,  Ice-T and more. For more on the rock doc, head to the official website.

Also, to celebrate their 25th anniversary, Fishbone will release a new EP, Crazy Glue, out October 11th on DC Jam Records.

Check out the trailer for a taste of how just how far the band stretched across divides:

Eat to the Beat: Massimo Bottura, All Things to Every Eater

by Kathleen Willcox

Have you heard of Massimo Bottura yet? He’s about to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

Massimo, the culinary equivalent of Greg Graffin, has already rocked Europe. He has not only managed to drag your Nonna’s Italian classics into the post-space age, tricking out his Modena restaurant and the two-Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana with all manners of culinary rocket science (he literally spins Parmigiano into air), he’s also deeply committed to the fleeting, visceral joy found in the superficial.

Bottura is avant garde, real where it counts, fake when it’s fun and obsessed with random cultural references (there’s a dish on his menu that refers to Joseph Beuys, everyone’s fave underdog conceptual artist). The music of Thelonius Monk, Bob Dylan and Edith Piaf have been cited as the inspirations that have led Massimo to new levels of cookery creation; he often compares the creation of music and food, saying there are two ways to be a chef today:

“[F]ollow the score as a musician would; being respectful, buying the right ingredients and following the recipe to produce a good cover version. Others are trying to create their own way, their own music.”

Check out a new film he made that’s causing a ruckus in the food geek blogosphere over at Eater, or check out why he chose to sleep next to a sous vide tank of reindeer tongue, below:

Architecture in Helsinki Announce Dates with DOM

by Emily Youssef

Architecture in Helsinki have teamed up with DOM for a late fall tour across the U.S throughout November and early December. The crew is joined on select dates with LO-FI FNK and The Sandwitches. See full dates on the Architecture in Helsinki website, and check out their video for “Contact High.”

For a taste of what life on the road offers, DOM tells the tale of the “interesting” nights that lie ahead.

Eat to the Beat: Madame Wong’s New (Pop-Up) Digs

by Kathleen Willcox

Club pop-ups are the new foodie pop-ups.

Pop-ups, in theory, should be everything the brick-and-mortar model is, sans the bricks and mortar and the expense (less overhead = smaller check, right)? In theory, yes. In practice, not so much.

Madame Wong’s, a fried-rice-aluminum-pan takeout joint that magically transformed into a sinister disco joint on Howard Street in Chinatown, had its brief, jittery, expensive, rapid heartbeat moment on the dance floor, and although, according to one Yelper, it makes you “feel OK about skipping a shower” (which may or may not be a selling point), the heat from the NYPD became just a little too hot.

Word is, the party has moved on to the Red Egg in Soho.

Curious what all this pop-up jazz is? Get an eyeful of magic from the network created to explain the world to people too young, too old or too oblivious to participate, CBS:

Eat to the Beat: David Lynch Explores New Role as Lounge Lizard

by Kathleen Willcox

Consciousness-raising, neo-noir oddball David Lynch has opened a nightclub in Paris called Silencio.

The club is inspired by the eponymous venue from “Mulholland Drive,” and sports Buddhist cocktail bars, a dream forest and a library, among other bizarre curios. Refusing to play to type, it doesn’t feature fuming canines or anthropomorphized industrial wastelands.

The maestro reportedly micromanaged everything, from the level of sodium in the bar snacks, to the style of the furniture, designed to compel sitters to be alert and open to the unknown.

“Silencio is something dear to me,” he told the Guardian. “I wanted to create an intimate space where all the arts could come together. There won’t be a Warhol-like guru, but it will be open to celebrated artists of all disciplines to come here to program or create what they want.”

If you can’t make it to Paris just yet, get your creepy film fix with this short, vintage collaboration David worked on with Interpol. And see what many a musician has to say about the man himself.

Eat to the Beat: Zac Brown Dishes it Out on the Road

by Kathleen Willcox

Zac Brown is as enthusiastic about his heirloom tomatoes and agave-fig butter, and he wants to spread the love.

Last year, the musician decided that pre-concert meet and greets were lame. So he infused the pre-show glad-handing with some foodie magic, turning them into “Eat and Greets” (or meet and meats). They’re sprawling affairs, created for a few lucky fans before shows, though they have to swift enough to snatch the sought-after tickets released on his site.

Rusty Hamlin, a trained chef, mans the grills and works his magic, to drooling acclaim. (Moonshine vinaigrette, creamy polenta with gouda and wild mushrooms, grilled okra with saffron-chardonnay butter, slabs of beef and pork tenderloin). He sources as locally as possible, with a new menu planned for each stop on the tour.

The next meet and eat takes place Oct. 21-23 at Riley Park in South Carolina. If you’re curious, see what you’d be getting yourself into, below:

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