Special Sauce: Brooks Headley Wants You to Call Your Mom. Really. Right Now.

[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

Brooks Headley, the punk-rocking, vegetable-whispering owner of Superiority Burger in NYC, says he's "almost insistent upon only being in bands with extremely volatile characters, myself included." In this week's episode of Special Sauce, I talk with Headley, the author of Fancy Desserts, about food and music—the connection between the two obsessions goes way back for him, though he doesn't allow any music in his restaurant kitchen. (Prepping with music in the background drives him "completely nuts," he explains.)

"Because we were all vegetarian, we were all obsessed with food constantly," says Brooks about his bandmates over the years. "Once you go on tour, you're not at home anymore, and you can't cook for yourself, so you're reliant on whatever's around." After years on the road, Headley worked a desk job; it took a hard nudge from his girlfriend for him to pursue his second passion: desserts. Upon taking his first gig in a professional kitchen, at DC's famous Galileo, Headley immediately fell in love with the work and began thinking about dessert in a whole new way.

In this episode, we discuss one of the only rules he has in his kitchen—"Call your mom. Often"—and why he left behind a job at the age of 32 to sleep on the floor in California. He also tells me about his lifelong affair with vegetables, his minimal encounters with meat, and the worst possible thing you could eat in place of either of them.

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