David Bowie's Favorite Food Was A Savory English Comfort Classic

David Bowie was known for being way ahead of the trend in both his music and fashion choices, but unlike many modern-day celebrities, he never authored a cookbook nor appeared on Food Network. That may be, perhaps, because his food preferences weren't quite as avant-garde as the rest of his persona. In fact, one of his favorite foods was said to be that stodgiest of British classics, shepherd's pie. It was featured at a 2013 Tokyo pop-up café  that was meant to promote his album "The New Day," although for some reason the Japanese version was made with chili beans. Shepherd's pie also appeared on the menu at Brooklyn Museum's Norm Cafe in conjunction with a 2018 exhibition entitled "David Bowie Is".

Bowie's wife Iman was said to have cooked shepherd's pie for him. There's no evidence that the recipe for David Bowie's shepherd's pie that was published by the Ironclad cookware company is the same one she used, but if so, it must have been a true shepherd's pie, not a cottage one, since it calls for ground lamb instead beef. This recipe also includes onions, carrots, and celery (but no beans) cooked in a red wine-tomato sauce. 

The best part, however, is the mashed potato topping flavored with butter, cream, mozzarella, and "tasty cheese." This leads me to speculate as to what Bowie's favorite could have been since just about any cheese could fit the bill — well, except for American cheese, which is even falling out of favor in its homeland. Somehow, I doubt Bowie was a fan, since he always seemed like more of a sharp cheddar kind of guy.

One of David Bowie's many sobriquets was the Thin White Duke, a persona he introduced on the 1976 album "Station to Station." While he'd divorced himself from that alter ego by 1980, he remained slim throughout his life despite his surprisingly starchy diet. In addition to his fondness for shepherd's pie, Bowie was also a sandwich connoisseur. When living in New York in the '90s, Bowie regularly dined on the croque monsieurs made at a 24-hour bistro called French Roast. Those sandwiches, consisting of ham smothered in beer-gruyere béchamel sauce on thick-cut sourdough, were rather rich and heavy. By the '00s, he'd switched up his sandwich routine to something lighter: Grilled chicken on focaccia, topped with tomato, watercress, and chipotle-spiked mayonnaise.

Bowie also had a go-to pasta dish in his rotation. It's unclear whether he ever cooked his pasta puttanesca himself, but he did contribute the recipe to the "WMMR Rock n' Roll Celebrity Cookbook" published in 1988. Actually, the recipe does seem like the kind of haphazard thing he may well have thrown together in between gigs — while he provided a list of ingredients (olive oil, garlic, anchovies, stewed tomatoes, black olives, red peppers, capers, and penne or ziti), he failed to specify any amounts. The directions, too, are a bit vague since after sauteing the garlic and squishing the anchovies, you pretty much toss everything into the pot and cook it until it's done. Come to think of it, this is pretty much the way I make pasta sauce, too, so I'm thrilled by this long-overdue revelation that Bowie was a fellow devotee of culinary anarchy (and carbs).