Chef and three-time Chopped champion Andre Fowles’s debut cookbook, My Jamaican Table, is out now. His boss, Bruce Springsteen, penned the foreword. Photo: Courtesy of Artisan Books/Michael Condran
A burger “straight-up”—no condiments, extra-crispy french fries, perhaps a Coke—and Bruce Springsteen is “in heaven.” If you subscribe to the centuries-old adage, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” then Andre Fowles can reveal quite a bit about New Jersey’s most famous son.
As the primary personal chef for Springsteen and his wife, singer/songwriter Patti Scialfa, Fowles cooks lunch and dinner at the musicians’ Colts Neck ranch several times a week. His gig runs the gastronomical gamut, from meals with such high-profile guests as Sting or the Obamas (for the latter, in Spain, he whipped up tapas and seafood paella) to family feasts each Sunday in Jersey (where his veggie-laden lasagna is in heavy rotation). Fowles bakes all pastries from scratch, save for the cinnamon buns and powdered donuts Springsteen fancies from the nearby family-run market Delicious Orchards. “Even when Bruce is on tour, we’ll package up some of [those treats] for him,” Fowles says. “It’s like a taste of home—made in New Jersey, stuff that he grew up on.”
Fowles, 37, a Culinary Institute of America alum and three-time champion on the Food Network’s Chopped, published his first cookbook, My Jamaican Table, this year. A passionate homage to the vibrant flavors of his Caribbean homeland and to the women who raised him and taught him to cook, it comprises recipes he says have swirled in his head for years. He guides readers through Jamaican classics like jerk chicken, curry goat, and rice and peas, as well as reimagined fusion dishes like Guinness-braised short ribs, a jerk smash-burger with bacon jam, and rum-cake tiramisu. Springsteen penned the book’s foreword, writing, “We both believe in bringing people together, whether it’s around a table or a stage.”
Fowles’s approach in the Springsteen kitchen, he explains, is “as healthy as possible without compromising on the flavors.” Rather than relying on, say, gobs of butter to attain peak tastiness, he layers spices, mixes marinades, and spotlights produce at its peak. Garden-fresh salads, salsas and chimichurris accompany grilled steak and seafood. (The fridge is always stocked with homemade hot sauce for Scialfa, whose spice tolerance is higher than Bruce’s, Fowles confirms with a hearty chuckle.) For lunch on the April afternoon when we spoke, he’d fixed a roast chicken, broccoli with garlic confit and baby potatoes, and an herby frisée salad with a lemon vinaigrette.
Of course, some delicacies you “let be,” Fowles says. He makes a mean fried chicken (bathed in buttermilk, impeccably seasoned and cooked to crunchy perfection) that Bruce “absolutely loves.” He’s also a fan of Fowles’s kicky mac and cheese, and cacio e pepe is “one of his favorite pasta dishes in the world.”
Fowles lauds the Springsteens as “grounded…incredibly humble, beautiful people….They see you for who you are. They shake your hand and give you a hug: ‘What’s going on? How is the family? How is your day going? Come sit; come talk with me…’ Their home becomes your home.”
