Back in 2013, the pop star was disillusioned and ready to quit. How did her hit foodie podcast Table Manners put her back in the groove?
You can tell a true-born foodie by their urgency around a menu, and when the musician Jessie Ware meets me for lunch it is at a Middle Eastern restaurant with kitchen smells so good that she visibly quivers with impatience to order. “I’ve always been this way,” says Ware, who was Mercury-nominated for her debut album ‘Devotion’ back in 2012, and has an as-yet-untitled fourth on the way. “I’ve always been controlling in food situations,” she says. “Basically a greedy cow.”
Ware, 35, has strict instructions from her management to talk up the new
music instead of banging on about her life-long love of eating, but she is a gastronome to her core and can’t help herself. “OK!” she tells a waiter (imagine the following spoken at rapid pace): “We’ll get the aubergine. And the hummus? Some salad-y things. Which is your favourite out of the feta and the wedge… ? We’ll get grilled halloumi. Ooh, and cauliflower. Is this still working for you? Is this working for me?”