Laura Gerrie, a former dancer and owner of catering company Big Little Get Together, has been Marc Jacobs’s private chef for two years. In an interview from Du Jour’s July issue, the woman who stocks the designer’s fridge and prepares his every meal discloses her culinary secrets. How can one ever ascend to an M.J. culinary lifestyle? Well, until he launches a Goop-style newsletter, here are a few instructions gleaned from the interview:
Have two kitchens: “One is a downstairs pantry that is fully stocked. I don’t really cook in that kitchen that much but do a lot of prep work in there. The main kitchen is a dream, you know, beautiful equipment and the counters are marble.”
No acidic foods; lots of steak: “I make Irish raw oats with honey and cinnamon, very simple, and he’s a big red meat eater. He eats a lot of filet mignon, a lot of hamburgers, chicken. I make pasta and homemade pasta sauces, marinara sauce or different olive oils. He doesn’t eat a lot of acidic foods, so like tomatoes on a small ratio.”
But make sure to indulge occasionally: “I make his favorite cookie — a homemade almond butter cookie with spelt flour — and I’ve become known for these cookies. He really loves almond butter, and so I adapted a snicker doodle recipe and used fresh-churned almond butter, which I get at Whole Foods or at Lifetime Market. The carrot cake — he loves having carrot cake. He loves sweets.”
What is she saying? NO FOOD, just have these customized juices: “I usually get him this thing called the Fourteen Hour — which is maca and fresh-pressed apple juice — he’ll have that in the afternoon instead of coffee. It’s a great source of energy. He also loves the cardamom milk there. Around show time he gets really, really run down and so I keep him on something called a Volcano — it’s lemon or lime juice, ginger, cayenne, and oil of oregano.”
Ugly chefs are not allowed in the kitchen: “I’m wearing now [laughs] high-waist denim shorts and a halter-top … I did not get into cooking so that we could wear ugly chef’s coats and stuff. We dress sexy in the kitchen. It was funny, last year I did a lot of barbeques for Marc on the roof. For one of them I was wearing African pants and this lace crop top.”
