Full disclosure – Tom Rowlands and I have known each other for over 30 years, since the summer of 1994, back when the Chemical Brothers were still called The Dust Brothers, when they were making their bones at the Heavenly Social, DJing to 100 people in a sweat-drenched basement off Great Portland Street. We both moved to Notting Hill in the early 90s and stayed in the area for much of the decade. Within three years of us meeting, Tom and his musical partner Ed Simons would have a Gold album in America and be headlining festivals. Tom remains utterly unchanged: a laidback exterior conceals the kind of steely focus you need to write Gold albums and become a superstar DJ. This year, with the Chemical Brothers on hiatus, he embarked on a new project, TOMORA, a partnership with Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora Aksnes.
Early in the millennium, Tom and his wife Vanessa moved down to East Sussex to raise their three children, all now in their twenties. We meet for lunch in the courtyard garden of The Star hotel in Alfriston, a few minutes’ cycle from the Rowlands’ family home. It is a beautiful afternoon in the first week of June. Our starters arrive swiftly: beetroot carpaccio with goat’s cheese and candied walnuts for Tom. Grilled mackerel with beetroot and horseradish remoulade for me. We’re both drinking very cold Gavi. We get down to it.
You grew up in the country, didn’t you? Was food a thing when you were young?
I grew up in Henley-on-Thames. We’d go to Henley’s one Chinese restaurant – a George Harrison favourite of course! You’d often see George about in Henley back in the day. But a real formative food memory was when our parents took us to Veeraswamy, the oldest curry house in London, on Piccadilly. It was quite grand. A Sikh guard with turban on the door. You’d get the lift up there and I remember being like ‘Woah! This is cool. This is something very exciting.’
A lifelong love of Indian food was born?
Pretty much, yeah. My mum would make a nice curry. You know, 70s style. Sultanas. I still like a cooked sultana!
You left home in 1989, to study history at the University of Manchester, where you met Ed. Was the city an expansion of your food horizons?
Ha! Not really. Abdul’s Kebabs! Or there was a takeaway near us that would do you a huge bowl of noodles for, like, 37pence. Gregg’s was a favourite.
I always forget Gregg’s has been going so long. Liam Gallagher talks about going there in the early 90s in Supersonic.
Probably the same branch! Early Greggs. I like the early stuff, as they say.
What was your go-to order?
Cheese and onion pasty, Ribena and a packet of bacon fries. I mean, back then, we didn’t really cook. We’d occasionally do something like rice with peas and bacon and lots of powerful chili sauce. But the push to cook wasn’t strong in the university days, put it that way.
Pretty soon after that, things started happening with the band, didn’t they? You’d have been into the era of expense account dining.
Yeah. Well. It was like, on trips, to DJ somewhere, or to do press, you’d go to New York, and you’d get taken out to dinner at Balthazar or somewhere like that. But, early on with the Chems, we were quite [adopts angry student voice] ‘I don’t want to go out to dinner with a load of people from the record company!’ It would just be uncomfortable, you know? Why put yourself through that? And that’s a good way to be when you’re young, I think. Also, we had Robert [Linney, long-time Chemical Brothers manager, northern, drier than a martini], who wasn’t exactly a schmoozer manager either. But I guess you get over that as you get to know people. In Japan we discovered ramen. The record company would be like, ‘We will go for the finest sashimi!’ and we’d say, ‘Can we go for ramen?’ They’d be astonished. Like – ‘why do you want to go here? This is a salaryman place!’ I remember we did a whole day of press in Tokyo once, going around various ramen places and rating them.
Like a proto-YouTube channel?
Exactly! We wanted to open a ramen chain back here. We could have been super early adopters: YouTubers and our own ramen chain! Tom and Edamama!
Where did we used to eat in Notting Hill back in the day?
Maggie Jones’s! They’d measure the amount of wine you’d drunk with the ruler! Oh – Sugar Club! On All Saints Road, back when All Saints Road was still a choice to go there if you know what I mean. 192 we’d go to. Kensington Place. Alastair Little’s off Ladbroke Grove…
I loved Alastair Little.
Yeah, brilliant. Him and his wife then opened that fantastic deli on Westbourne Park Road, didn’t they? Tavola. Long gone now, sadly. Oh oh – Osteria Bascilico! That was big for me and Vanessa back in the day. Sunday nights. It’s still there, but I think a bit faded glory nowadays.
Now you’ve got Dorian. God it’s good but so expensive!
Ha. I mean, the food there is excellent, but yeah – not cheap. My eldest daughter and I went recently, and we had this pork chop. It was so tasty. So good. I ate every bit of the fat, and our server was like, ‘Oh! Most people don’t eat all that!’ You know, you’ve got Victoria Beckham over there having her one raw scallop on a bed of crushed ice or whatever.
I remember you never being big on sushi…
Well, there’s a story there. See, as a young man, I fished myself out. I used to love fishing and eating fish. Every meal I had up until the age of about ten, I would just want to eat fish. I remember going on holiday to Cornwall and catching a pollock and the hotel cooking it for me. I just loved it. I’d eat the eyeball and everything!
Young Tom went full fucking Bourdain mode?
Yeah! But something happened around the age of ten – I genuinely can’t remember what – and that was the end of the joy of fish!
Same thing happened with me and vinegar.
We’ve both buried something deep there…
What have you got there, Tom?
Sea bass! [laughs] Yeah… there has been progress on the fish front recently. Oh, I was in Los Angeles earlier this year. TOMORA were playing Coachella, and we all went out for sushi. I was thinking, ‘Oh, it’ll be the usual. There’ll be a tempura option or whatever. But no. It was a really militant place! No non-raw fish options! Everyone else was so excited about eating there, so I just thought OK. And they had this salmon nigiri type thing with toasted sesame in the middle and I thought, I don’t mind this at all!
One of the joys of touring. Discovering new things.
Even now! After however long. Ed and I were DJing in Buenos Aires last year and, you know how everyone goes, ‘Oh the steak there is amazing!’ Well, we went to this place called Don Julio. You wouldn’t believe it, John. I mean – off the scale good. Every steak has a name. I don’t mean the cut, I mean they know which animal it came from! The farm is connected to the restaurant. Just unbelievable.
Would that rank high on your Desert Island Meals list?
You know what I really love, rather than any specific place? As I get older, I just love going for a real smash-up meal with my family. With Vanessa and the kids. We went to Noble Rot in Soho for my birthday. It was January, cold and dark, but it was so much fun just having a proper boozy lunch with the kids! We had the lot – Champagne through to dessert wines. All hammered. We came staggering out of there and Vanessa and I went wandering off down Greek Street and I remember thinking, ‘new parenting level unlocked! We’ve done our bit!’
