Did Michael Voltaggio Just Discover a Brilliant New Signature Menu Item?
The Season 6 winner of Bravo's Top Chef opens up about getting his start and staying on top in Beats + Bites.
Michael Voltaggio is one of the biggest celebrity chefs today. But if you ask hip hop artist Smino, he's a bona fide rock star.
Smino bestowed that title upon the winner of Season 6 of Bravo's Top Chef in Bravotv.com's new digital series Beats + Bites with the Potash Twins. "You got rock star vibes, bro," the up-and-coming rapper said.
And Smino isn't exactly wrong about that. Not only does Voltaggio look and act like a rock star in the kitchen, but also, as we learned when jazz musicians the Potash Twins brought him together with Smino, there are actually a lot of similarities between the music and culinary worlds, from getting your start to the creative process to staying on top. See what we mean by checking out the full episode of Beats + Bites, above.
Voltaggio praised the Potash Twins for highlighting the hard work that goes into creating food and tunes during a recent interview with The Feast. "Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the industry today, and music and food are very similar for a lot of reasons. One being that we all entertain and reach a lot of different people very quickly. But two, there's a certain percentage of people that make it at a certain level, and then there's the whole rest of the industry," Voltaggio told The Feast. "I think what the Potash Twins are doing [in] taking newly-discovered artists and [taking] them into restaurants and telling the stories about making it, like, it's not just about music, and it's not just about food; it's a story about having discipline and drive and focus on trying to achieve something, whether it's quit smoking or whatever it is. It's having the need to achieve something and not giving up on that need or that goal."
In addition to discovering this common ground, Voltaggio has also come away with a new recipe for Henny Slushies, thanks to Smino's suggestion in Beats + Bites. Voltaggio made Smino's dreams come true during the episode when he served up the boozy treat made with Hennessy and soda that's chilled using liquid nitrogen. "It's gonna be in his rider," the chef joked on Beats + Bites. "Voltaggio has to come in and make him Henny Slushies, that's it."
So could Henny Slushies make its way onto a future menu of Voltaggio's? "You never know," he said.
We certainly hope so.
