Food & Culture

Alan Cumming: ''I'm kind of a peasant – I like one bowl of food that's all the same and that I can eat with a spoon''

The gregarious star of stage and screen on his love affair with Adelaide, veganism and why his nickname is "Soup".

By As told to Georgie Meredith
My first overseas trip was when I was about 12 or 13. It was a school trip to Germany. Bizarrely, we stayed in an industrial town in the Rhine Valley called Koblenz. I'm not quite sure why we went there, I guess it was a good spot to base ourselves. We travelled from there to Heidelberg. I had a few school trips to places in Europe. The following year I spent a summer doing an exchange in Lyon in France, but Germany was my first trip. Although I guess going to London was my first time travelling abroad if you count going to Scotland from England as going to another country, which I do.
I love coming to Australia. I first visited Adelaide in 1989. I stayed in a little apartment down in Glenelg and I loved it. I quite like an underdog. People see Adelaide differently to Sydney or Melbourne, but I just love that it has so many festivals. It reminds me of Edinburgh, this kind of quiet city and then for a month every year it becomes this sort of hub of the arts and the whole world. I always had a great time in Adelaide. I like its spirit. So I thought being able to curate the Adelaide Cabaret Festival this year, and being the artistic director, the whole idea really appealed to me. I'm always open to doing new, weird things.
I moved to New York to be in the Broadway musical of Cabaret playing the Master of Ceremonies. I moved there right at the end of 1997 and I knew immediately that I was going to stay. I loved the energy, the diversity and how vocal everybody is. I love the compassion and the kindness and the wit and the humour. But mostly, every time I leave my apartment, it's an adventure.
I live in the East Village so I tend to eat around there. It's my 'hood and where I hang out mostly. There are a lot of good vegan places there. There's a lot of very diverse cultures and so there's great, different kinds of foods. I love going to 6th Street, which is nicknamed Curry Row because there are so many Indian and Asian restaurants.
I became a vegan for a few reasons. I was so bored of everything, as a vegetarian, being drenched in cheese. I was really becoming more cognisant of the negative effects on the environment and also the whole animal cruelty aspect. It was a variety of things becoming the perfect storm. I also started to do concerts, like the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and I realised that when I had cheese my voice suffered. Then when Mike Tyson became the face of Vegan magazine, that just pushed me over the edge and I thought: if he can do it, I can do it.
Comfort foods for me are things like potatoes. I'm kind of a peasant – I like one bowl of food that's all the same and that I can eat with a spoon. That's really my favourite thing. I made a lot of rhubarb crumble during lockdown, I suppose because it was rhubarb season but it's also one of the easiest things to make and it's delicious. I love a vegetable or a fruit that just sort of disintegrates in the oven and you don't really have to do anything to it, it just goes all gooey. I also just go nuts for a bowl of peanuts. I'm very simple. I also made lots of stews and bean-based things during that time.
I love having lots of little meals very often. When I'm on set, my go-to snack is soup. When I did Instinct on CBS, the showrunner called me "soup". It was my nickname because I just had soup all the time. It's a great, nutritious, delicious, healthy snack and easy to make, and everybody likes soup. I also love nuts, like almonds. I keep peanuts as a treat.
Alan Cumming is the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, which takes place in June. Tickets on sale now from adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
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  • undefined: As told to Georgie Meredith