Dave Stone Is a Food-Loving Comic
Photo by Laurel RandolphDave Stone is not your average food-is-fuel comedian. In fact, he loves food as much as he loves comedy, and his stand-up often veers towards the gastronomic. He’s from Atlanta, where he performed with the group Beards of Comedy and lent his voice to the cartoon Squidbillies.
In 2012, Stone moved to LA in a retrofitted van that he called home for two years, eating a lot of turkey sandwiches and Jack in the Box. All the while, he toured and made a name for himself in standup. Stone caught the eye of a documentary crew that ended up following him around for a year and a half, culminating in the soon-to-be-released Netflix documentary Gutbuster.
He oftens opens for Craig Ferguson on the road, and is setting off on another tour in November. Paste sat down with Stone and a plate of sushi to talk about his love of cooking, life as a touring comic, and picky eaters.
Paste: You’re from Atlanta—how do you feel about Southern food?
DS: I love Southern food. I love barbecue, fried chicken, Southern vegetables like collard greens and fried okra. Fried okra is probably my favorite food of all time. I love to cook it, too. I have a side hustle out here now: I sell smoked wings and homemade biscuits at comedy clubs. It does well, it blows people’s minds. I smoke my wings for 5 hours the day of and then flash fry them and serve them with homemade ranch. I do plain biscuits, pimento cheese biscuits, fried chicken biscuits. I’ve been experimenting.
Paste: How did you get into food and cooking?
DS: I think a lot of it was just rebelling against the mediocrity that I was raised on, and getting older and trying new things. I’m also a good cook, and a lot of that came from necessity. In my early 20’s I lived in a rural part of Georgia where there was no good barbecue. So I decided to teach myself how to make it. I bought a smoker and through trial and error I made good barbecue.
Paste: I feel like a lot of comics don’t cook.
DS: I think everyone should know how to cook a little bit. Because if you’re lucky, you’re going to eat two or three times a day for the rest of your life. Why not do some of that yourself? It blows my mind how many adults have zero chops in the kitchen. You need to learn to cook a little bit.
And after living in the van—I couldn’t cook in the van. So I’m making up for lost time.
Paste: So would you say that you’re an adventurous eater?
DS: I used to have a joke about that. “I’m an adventurous eater. You don’t get a physique like this without taking a few chances.” There’s no food I don’t like, and there’s no food I won’t eat. There’s nothing I won’t try. People eat this? I will eat this!
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