Sharleen Spiteri: ‘Two slices of bread, proper butter, a pack of crisps and squeeze it down’
Every time I come off stage, I always have a piece and crisps and a cup of tea. I call it a piece and crisps because I’m Scottish, so basically for your readers that’s a crisp sandwich. Two slices of bread, proper butter – you can’t have crappy butter – and a pack of crisps and squeeze it down. I have that everywhere apart from when we get to France. Then it’s baguettes. Because then you’re getting the good shit.
Anybody who’s good at what they do is unbelievably sexy. When I met my husband [chef Bryn Williams] it wasn’t that he was a chef, it was that he loved what he did. And loves what he does. That focus and having his thing [means] he understands what it is for me when I’m like: “This is everything: writing a song or making my music.” So that, to me, was appealing.
Everybody in my family cooks; it has just gone generation after generation. One of my grandmothers was French and the other one was Irish, so it was all about food and sitting down at a table. And both sets of grandparents were like: “If you don’t try it, you can’t have an opinion on it.” That sounds silly, but it has really moulded me in my life: I will not have an opinion on something unless I know about it.
My mum’s father had an allotment within the bowling green, across the road from my grandparents’ house. We used to grow peas, beans, cabbages and potatoes – it was such an adventure when you’re a kid. And we would have lunch there: me, my sister and my cousin Mark, who’s in music as well. It’s really funny that two out of three of us became songwriters because there was a bus stop through the gate and we would eat a sandwich and my grandad would say: “OK, tell me that person’s story.” So we used to have to take turns at looking at someone and you had to tell a story about the person or where they were going.
Bryn and I have a garden in Wales that supplies the fruit and veg to our restaurants. We have a gardener, Gareth, who looks after it, but we get up there when we can and I absolutely love it. We were there a couple of weeks ago and we kept finding these rogue potatoes, the seedlings that were trying to reseed themselves from last year’s potatoes. So you find loads of them and, I’m not kidding you, I feel like David Attenborough or an archaeologist. They are nuggets of gold: honest to God, they taste so good. I told my brother-in-law about it and he was like: “Yeah, that’s because you don’t need to do it every day.” And I went: “The story of my life, mate!”
A set menu is my idea of hell, mainly because I don’t like lamb or pork. Pork tastes to me like fag ash. And lamb … I’m married to a Welshman so it’s a scandal in our house, but lamb to me tastes like halitosis. It’s so pungent and strong, I’m like: “Oh my God, bleurgh, no.”
There’s a lot of similarities between what Bryn and I do: there’s prep and then there’s showtime. Prep is like us doing a soundcheck, there’s a minute you can go in and say: “Oh, what are you doing?” But showtime, when you go into a kitchen, when there’s customers in the restaurant, it’s like: “Get out my way, I’m coming through!”
My favourite things
Food
Probably Indian and there’s a little place in Euston that does takeaway samosa chaats that are just off the charts. If I’m getting the train up to north Wales, I’ll buy two to have for dinner when I get there with my husband.
Drink
I love a glass of milk. There’s a little farm just beside us in north Wales where they literally milk the cows, so it’s non-homogenised and you put the money in a little honesty box. It’s the best milk you’ve ever tasted in your life.
Place to eat
Roti Chai near Selfridges in London is unbelievable. It does Indian street food: sit upstairs not downstairs and get the pani puri.
Dish to make
I love making big pots of chicken, garlic, onion, peppers and tomatoes. Cook it all really slowly and then add a whole tub of mascarpone at the end.
The Very Best of Texas UK tour starts on 5 September. Buy tickets at texas.uk.com/live
