Lettuce Cook: The Secret Recipe For Keeping The Funk Alive For 30+ Years

It’s all a little blurry about when my first Lettuce show was.

I know it was around 2012, either at Hell’s Kitchen or Terminal 5, when they were double-billed with Soulive. Or maybe it was at Stage 48? Perhaps at Williamsburg at Brooklyn Bowl? I don’t know. I do know I locked into the groove the second I walked into the room. The air was thick and stanky with sweat from the dance floor. There was a noir-movie-type smoky haze above the crowd. I think I had just stumbled out of a Phish show at Madison Square Garden looking to keep the night alive, but I might be confusing this with another evening. That’s New York City, baby!

All you need to know is that I found myself at a Lettuce show, one of the funkiest bands of all time. They are a defining band of my eight-year New York City chapter in the late aughts and early 2010s. A complete fixture of what a band should be at its highest level. At that time, they were the unofficial kings of the late-night circuit and Gotham cool. A loud, brash funk band that played with the ferocity of a hip-hop group and the stamina of marathon runners. I was lost in their distinct groove, trying to process the sheer wall of sound, when I looked to my left.

Standing there, bobbing his head to the beat, was New York Knicks legend John Starks.

It was a moment of peak millennial confusion and delight. You know how many times I watched that guy defend Michael Jordan as a kid? I had pages upon pages of his basketball cards growing up, and suddenly, here he was, getting down to the same funk band I was. It was my first realization that Lettuce wasn’t just a band for jam kids; they were a cultural bridge, connecting jazz nerds, hip-hop heads, and apparently, 90s NBA icons. I was awe-struck. When I went into the BroBible office the following Monday, I couldn’t shut up about it.

“It’s cool when those kinds of cats show up at our shows,” trumpet player Eric “Benny” Bloom explains to me when I recount this memory to him over a decade later. “We have lots of Knicks friends. We had Cliff Robinson at some shows… We have all types of random people. Chefs, wine people. I don’t want just a bunch of music [nerds]… I just want to have fun.”

This all tracked in the Lettuce, since they recorded a track called “Madison Square” on 2012’s Fly and went on to be the house band for the New York Knicks for a couple of seasons. The Dolans, as in Madison Square Garden and New York Knicks owner James Dolan, Bloom says humbly, are friends of the band.

That spirit of fun, and the discipline required to sustain it, is exactly why Lettuce is currently celebrating over 30 years of existence.

Watch the full, uncut interview with Eric “Benny” Bloom on YouTube. For more deep dives into music culture (and the occasional food rant), subscribe to my Substack.

“Asking For A Friend”

There is a specific type of stamina required to blow into a brass instrument for two hours straight. It requires lung capacity, lip strength, and, according to Bloom, a certain personality type.

“Is it better to be a trumpet player or an asshole?” Bloom asks me, deadpan, mere seconds after ripping a Family Guy impression. He pauses for effect. “Asking for a friend.”

The answer, if you look at the trajectory of his band, is that you probably need a little bit of the former’s discipline and the latter’s audacity to survive three decades in the music industry.

Lettuce is currently on a tear, extending their “Cook World Tour” through 2026 and officially releasing their new album, Cook, out now via their own independent label, Lettuce Records. It completely rips.

The global run has been grueling but rewarding, taking the band from Hamburg to Jakarta. “I’ve been home for five weeks over four months,” Bloom says. “There’s a lot of international touring, which is a little bit more work than going to Cleveland.”

But the payoff is witnessing how funk translates across borders. “In Japan, they all clap [perfectly]… and then Germany, they be rocking there,” Bloom explains. “It’s not like Americans don’t get down… but you go over there, and I think it’s even more revered.”

“That’s Not Normal”

In a modern music landscape dominated by solo artists and rotating casts of session musicians, Lettuce is a bit of an anomaly: a single organism that has been evolving for over three decades, with a musical cast that evolves with the band’s sound. Bloom himself admits that their dedication to live instrumentation can feel out of step with the current industry.

“I feel like we’re antiquated. I feel like there’s a reason why we’re the last one called for a gig, versus piano and drums and singers,” Bloom says. But he also notes a shift, a “golden age” where horns are creeping back into the mainstream via big pop budgets. “I think everyone’s using horns again… all of my friends, all my LA cats, they’re playing with everyone. It’s kind of like… they have these big budgets. So that’s like, filling out the section, filling out the sound.”

However, Lettuce isn’t interested in just “filling out the sound” in the traditional Jerry Hey or Quincy Jones style. They’ve evolved past the wall-of-sound approach.

“We’re only two horn players now [Bloom and saxophonist Ryan Zoidis]. We’re not like three and four like at one point it was,” Bloom explains. “So we use a lot of effects… we really are blending in. It’s not just dry horns. If you’re going to be a modern horn player, you need to have these things to use when it’s the right time.”

Bloom cites modern players like Theo Croker and the “hippie shit” of late-era Miles Davis as touchstones for this new direction. “It’s got sounds and textures… You can really vibe to it and space out. It’s really beautiful.”

This evolution is key to their longevity. “Lettuce has been at it for 33 years. Kind of weird. That’s crazy. That’s not normal,” Bloom says.

Part of that survival strategy is their structure. Unlike groups driven by a singular ego, Lettuce operates as a true collective. It is this internal chemistry that fuels their high-energy live shows, rather than just technical prowess.

“There’s not many bands like Lettuce,” Bloom notes. “They’re really a band. A bad band. Not a bunch of cats that write together. There’s no real leader… It’s a democratic process.”

This lack of hierarchy allows the music to take precedence, creating a live show that feels less like a performance and more like a telepathic conversation. That conversation began in the early 90s. The band’s founding collective—including drummer Adam Deitch, guitarists Adam “Shmeeans” Smirnoff and Eric Krasno, bassist Erick “Maverick” Coomes, saxophonist Ryan Zoidis, and keyboardist Neal Evans—met as teenagers at a Berklee College of Music summer program in 1992.

They bonded over a shared love of Herbie Hancock and Earth, Wind & Fire and never really stopped. Over the years, the family tree has expanded to include incredible talents like the late, great saxophonist James Casey and current vocalist Nigel Hall, with Bloom joining the brass section later, in 2011.

It is a legendary origin story that the band is now honoring by funding a full-tuition scholarship for future Berklee students.

Cooking With Gas (And Tower of Power)

The band’s new project leans all the way into the culinary metaphor. When a band is hot, after all, they “cook.” Lettuce cooks, musically. But they also decided to stop speaking in metaphors and actually get in the kitchen.

The album rollout includes a cookbook featuring recipes from the band members, and the cover art features the six funk-lords dressed in full chef whites, standing around a cauldron. They’ve even launched a YouTube series, Lettuce Cook, where guests like Sam Gellerstein from SNACKTIME try their hand at the band’s recipes.

“Generally, we’re all serious, and all of our albums have beautiful designs and are kind of trippy and heady,” Bloom laughs. “Now we’re going kind of fun, tongue-in-cheek. Because Cook is what we do. When you’re making music, you’re cooking.”

via Lettuce

Bloom, a Rhode Island native with Portuguese roots, contributed a recipe for a kale and chorizo soup that he claims has a serious kick. But the “cooking” extends to the studio, specifically on the track “Keep On,” a tribute to Bay Area legends Tower of Power. The song was actually co-written by Emilio Castillo, Tower of Power’s bandleader.

“I hated Tower of Power when I was in high school because all the band geeks liked them,” Bloom admits with a laugh. “But then I’d listen to ‘What Is Hip?’ and be like, ‘This is one of the greatest things ever.’”

For the upcoming 2026 tour legs, fans can even buy a “Cookin’ with the Band” VIP package that includes a pre-show hang, a custom apron, and a recipe zine. It is full immersion.

Tequila Shots & The Bowlive Era

My Starks sighting back in 2012ish wasn’t an isolated incident. There was a specific era in New York City, roughly 2010 to 2016, where Lettuce felt like an unofficial soundtrack of the city. It was a sort of yin to the yang of everything going on in the fully matured indie sleaze world of the era that took over Brooklyn. They were the bridge between the jam band scene and us funk-loving hip-hop heads, playing late nights at Brooklyn Bowl that would leave the walls sweating.

I reminisce with Bloom about the legendary “Lettuce Bowl” and Soullive “Bowlive” residencies at Brooklyn Bowl, specifically the chaos orchestrated by venue owner Pete Shapiro.

“When he starts, either the last night or the first night, he’d come with a whole tray of tequila shots,” Bloom remembers. “Even if you don’t really drink… it’s just like, ‘Alright boys, here we go.’ Oh my god, dude. I’m trying to remember my music. I’m tequila-ed out immediately.”

It was during this time that the band solidified its reputation not just as musicians, but as essential fixtures of the New York scene, eventually becoming the actual house band for the New York Knicks, playing beats during timeouts at Madison Square Garden. It makes sense, then, why Starks felt so comfortable in that crowd.

Paying It Forward

Despite the high-profile gigs, the wine business (Bloom and saxophonist Ryan Zoidis recently launched Benny & Zoid Selections with two signature wines, Red Crush and Orange Crush), and the global tours, the band is looking backward to help the next generation.

They recently partnered with the nonprofit Music is a Language to launch a scholarship at Berklee College of Music, funded by a dollar from every ticket sold. The fundraising kicks off in earnest this week with “House of Lett,” a series of intimate, sold-out shows in Denver on December 5th and 6th.

“I didn’t get into Berklee when I was younger,” Bloom admits (he attended the rival New England Conservatory). “I wasn’t good enough, or I didn’t get enough money… Now we get to help someone else do that. We’re just out there playing gigs for the right reasons.”

The Infinite Groove

As our conversation winds down, Bloom is prepping for a show in LA at The Bellwether on New Year’s Eve. He’s been on the road for months (Japan, Australia, Europe) but the fatigue doesn’t seem to touch his enthusiasm for the craft. He’s still studying the greats, listening to everything from Schubert to The Cure, and obsessing over his tone.

He mentions that he can’t go more than a few days without playing his horn, or the muscles in his face—his embouchure—will start to fail. It’s a relentless physical demand that most people don’t associate with the party vibe of a funk concert.

But that’s the duality of Eric “Benny” Bloom. He’s a guy who will debate the merits of a late-night chili burger at Tommy’s in Los Angeles, then wake up and practice complex classical etudes. He’s a “bad” band member who takes his fun very seriously.

“You just want to vibe out to this,” Bloom says of Cook, before offering the ultimate endorsement. “You could easily cook a three-piece chicken tender meal over this.”

If the music is half as good as that meal, being a trumpet player beats being an asshole every single time.