Michael Jackson had a soft spot for healthy eating, but there was a catch. The man who cooked for him put it in the funniest way you ever heard.
His name was Mani Niall. He first came into Michael’s world in the early 1980s, when Michael was making “Thriller” and kept ordering from a little vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles. Michael liked the food so much that he eventually brought Niall on as his own private chef. Niall cooked for him from 1982 to 1985 and became his first personal chef on the 1984 Victory Tour.
Niall knew Michael’s eating habits better than almost anyone. And he once told People magazine something that still makes fans grin. He said Michael was “a vegetarian who didn’t like vegetables.”
Read that again. A vegetarian. Who didn’t like vegetables.
Michael’s own chef tells the story of cooking for him
In this sit-down, Mani Niall talks about life as Michael’s cook and what those Victory Tour days were really like. Hearing it straight from the man in the kitchen is the best part.
So how do you feed a vegetarian who turns up his nose at actual vegetables? Niall had to get clever.
He hid them.
The trick was to tuck the vegetables inside a food Michael already loved, something warm and familiar that almost nobody can say no to. That food was pizza.
Niall would build Michael a pizza and work the vegetables right into the toppings, leaning on shiitake mushrooms and eggplant. He called it the perfect way to disguise vegetables, and it worked. Michael got his greens without ever feeling like he was eating them.
The sweets were a whole other puzzle. Michael loved a treat, but reportedly he steered clear of sugar and chocolate. So Niall found workarounds there too. The cookies were said to be sweetened with maple syrup, and the ice cream with honey, so Michael could enjoy dessert on his own terms.
There was one dish, though, that Michael loved more than any clever trick. His favorite was enchiladas, made with a smoky red chile sauce from New Mexico. No fancy disguise needed. He just adored them, and Niall was happy to make them.
It is a sweet little window into the everyday Michael, the one away from the stage and the cameras. Picky about his food, a kid at heart about his sweets and lucky enough to have a chef patient enough to sneak mushrooms past him.
Watch the chef tell it himself above. You’ll never look at a slice of pizza quite the same way again.