When the Plate Has a Soundtrack
Chef Udo Belew, who works at Jason Scoppa’s Electric Jane in Nashville, has a very interesting and unique take on the marriage of music and food. That is to be expected, though, when your father is iconic guitarist Adrian Belew, best known as the guitarist for King Crimson.
Unsurprisingly, while Udo had five choices, he whittled his selection down to his final pick, which was an easy one.
“I really keep hitting on an album my dad wrote when I was a little kid, Mr. Music Head. It’s a great record, and it’s something I’ve had stuck in my head pretty much my whole life. It’s got this strange part of my soul just because I remember when he wrote it, I remember being in the studio, I remember him doing the cover artwork, and the songs are about my mom and us as kids,” he explains. “That album was the developmental stages of my life. I was trying to find out who I was. I didn’t obviously want to be a chef back then. I wanted to ride my bicycle off of big dirt jumps and stuff. But it definitely shaped something in my mind, and I think the process that he goes through as an artist is similar to what I go through trying to find something new to show people, and I just hope they like it. So I kind of attribute my culinary adventures to that part of my childhood, and that album really represents it.”
As one would imagine, the album and food are intertwined in his mind.
“We lived in this house. Actually, the album cover on the back has a picture of my dad on the piano in the house that we lived in at the time. And we had this big old antique table that we’d have dinner at. At the time, it felt more mandatory to have dinner with the family. But I know now that it really just brought us together,” he says. “I remember a lot of things that happened at that table, like eggs and toast. Every day we’d have toast with scrambled eggs. And we had cockatiels and parakeets that we’d let fly around the house. Sounds weird, but they would land on the table, and we could feed them eggs and whatnot. My mom would always cook spaghetti. And we had birthdays there. There are tons of memories. We would cook out and play volleyball. My dad’s friends would come over, and I didn’t know they were cool at the time. I thought they were dorks, but they were all really cool people.
This is the menu inspired by the album that was the soundtrack to my childhood: cooking out with the family and friends, riding BMX bikes off homemade death traps, eating wild berries, and drinking garden hose water.
Option I: Salad Days
Compressed watermelon & wild berries · ancho reyes verde · toasted cumin and pepita · sunflower sprout salad
Option II: Hot Zoo
Soda pop short ribs · guava demi · warm baby potato salad · mint and cilantro gremolata · charred cebollitas asadas.
Option III: The Simple Life is Complicated
Saffron liquor-soaked pound cake · macerated urban strawberries · sweet cardamom cream · orange zest.
