Jamie Bissonnette Now Designing Foodie Concert Shirts

Photo by Flavour Gallery

For years we’ve been calling chefs the new rock stars, and now it seems they even have the merch table to back it up. Working in conjunction with Flavour Gallery, a Los Angeles-based apparel company that produces chef’s aprons, reusable market bags, and various foodie-related sundries, Coppa chef Jamie Bissonnette has created a line of t-shirts that celebrate his love of punk, ska, and offal. For $30, you can purchase Bissonnette’s “Eat Brains” shirt, an homage to Bad Brains’ eponymous debut album, or an “English Beets” tank, a nod to the British band behind “Mirror in the Bathroom.”

“I’ve known them [Flavour Gallery] for years, but we just got serious about going creating these shirts over the last couple months,” Bissonnette says. “The owner, Alfredo [Malatesta], is into the same kind of punk bands that I grew up on. So I thought it would be fun to do some sort shirt that pays tribute to that—a little Bad Brains and English Beat. And actually they come up to New York a lot and love the deviled eggs here at Toro, so they came up with the ‘Wicked Chickens Lay Deviled Eggs,’ because whenever we hang out they make fun of the fact that I say ‘Wicked’ like every other word.”

One Easter Egg on the back of every shirt? A caricature of Bissonnette’s bespectacled mug, which was modeled after the Descendents’ mascot on “Milo Goes to College” and “Everything Sucks.”

Other chefs who have also produced a line of shirts through Flavour Gallery include Andrew Zimmern, Anne Burrell, Chris Cosentino, Ludo Lefebvre, Marc Murphy, and Boston’s own Matthew Jennings.

Photo by Flavour Gallery