alex suarez can grill me a sandwich ANY time

Yo, folks, Anna here. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Alex Suarez, the bassist/hotass (hey, I like a dude who can multi-task) for the dance-rock band Cobra Starship, who plays The Picador tomorrow night. (Hopefully. Damn you, flood!)

Despite my fear that I would get cut off prematurely by the really!cheery! PR rep who had given me a 10-15 minutes time limit—10 to 15 minutes, seriously? I can't ask my friends enough questions to figure out anything in that time, what the hell—she must have forgotten or whatever, and I actually got to chat with Mr. Suarez about non-Starship related things. Namely:



This. The dude, before picking up a bass for his actual job, went to cooking school! How sick is that?! So, we talked about how someone who subsists on a little more than Pokey Stix survives on a bus where the chef's area has the suffix "-ette" tacked onto the end.

"Alex, I've also read that you are a trained chef—correct?"
"Yes, I am—certified."

"Certifed, huh?"
"Certified by the, oh, what's it called? I forgot—I'm already out of the loop. National Culinary Federation? I believe it is? American Culinary Federation. I'm a certified culinarian."

"So, how have you been surviving on a bus with only a little kitchenette?"
"No, it's really hard to cook. We have a George Foreman Grill on the bus that we use to press sandwiches and make grilled cheeses, but. I get really creative on the bus, like, I make pasta dishes, stuff like that. Touring has actually changed my diet quite a bit. I stopped eating meat because I kept getting sick from like, deli meat that we kept getting on the last tour for like sandwiches and stuff, and I was just kind of repulsed by the whole thing so I just quit eating meat a few months ago."

"Really?"
"Yeah, it's been a lot more interesting, actually. I don't do anything with chicken— I was never really a steak kind of guy, and I think chicken is kind of nasty as it is, so. I'll still cook meat, I'll still eat it...I'm not like a crazy vegetarian who like, if there's a pasta dish with chicken in it I'm like, 'Oh, I can't taste that, there's chicken in it.' As long as I don't get any chicken, I don't really care. But yeah, I don't really have a problem with eating meat, I think there are healthier alternatives and stuff, it's made me a little more creative when it comes to cooking. I've had to cook with a lot of things I don't normally cook with, like vegetarian substitutes tempe and tofu"

"I actually just recently lost the use of my car, so..."
"Bummer!"

"I know! I miss driving, really, a lot. But the point is I haven't gotten to go the grocery store in a long time, so my own cooking has been uber-restricted as well."
"Yeah, one thing I do miss a lot is fish. I miss fish like crazy. That's one of my favorite things to eat and cook. Actually, grocery shopping is one of my favorite things to do in the world. I love that. It's so fun to me—I don't know why. Whenever we have a day off on tour, we go to Trader Joe's and just stock up on stuff."

"Yeah? What's your favorite bus recipe?"
"Let me see...I don't get too intense with cooking. I tend to get pasta like orzo, because it cooks the fastest, or like, angel hair, and boil it in the microwave. I'll make some cous-cous on the bus. I think what I really get into on the bus, is I'll make really fancy cheese sandwiches on the Foreman grill with tomatoes, and like, all different kinds of cheese, and really good mustard and all sorts of things like that. It sounds pretty boring, but when you bite into it, you just like 'Oh, Mylanta, this is amazing!' and it's over."

"Well, hey, as someone whose roommate just moved out and took the George Foreman Grill with her, that sounds pretty good to me!"
"Oh, yeah!"

And, just for good measure:




Shut your mouth and get down on the floor,
Anna