Gorilla Food’s Aaron Ash: When Saskatchewan and the Beastie Boys collided

Regardless of how you feel about the raw food movement, many of us have been influenced by it in one way or another, whether it is drinking juices or smoothies, or even sprouting. Aaron Ash took his love for food as a life force from passion to profession not after a profound culinary experience, instead it came after spending time with a huge influence in the music world, and also Ash’s world. We talked to the Ash, the owner of Gorilla Food in Vancouver, and author of the cookbook by the same name about his introduction to raw food, and his friend Mike D of the Beastie Boys.

How did you get into the raw food movement?
It was really through becoming vegetarian and vegan, and finding out about organic food. That just led me into a new exploration of food, shortly after that time, I started working at this health food store, and this friend of mine was working there and she was really into sprouting, and that was kind of my first introduction of the idea of foods being alive.
That was the first little light bulb that went off in the sense of there being a difference between this dead thing on my plate or this thing full of life force. That was where the raw food thing came from.

There seems to be a lot of overlap between the vegan and vegetarian worlds, and particular genres of music, especially punk. What kind of music are you into?
I am into so much. There is so much variety. I’ve come through all different phases. I was relating to something Moby said recently about how we are in such a different generation where we have MP3s and that, and we can access every genre of music possible at any moment, but when I was in high school I had to save every penny for a CD. We didn’t really explore so much as we do now. That made a lot of sense to me. The influence on food and activism, and that definitely comes through punk rock and straight-edge hardcore. There is also the whole taking psychedelics and going to rave parties, and that was part of my life. I listened to all kinds of electronic music, and hip hop, and all kinds of genres. I found there was a common thread through all kinds of music, there is a split in so many of them in that there is this materialistic side of a lot of genres and then this conscious and aware side, like in reggae there are those two sides.

It’s interesting what you were saying about Moby and the access to music, because it is almost like food is on that same path. With the Food Network and the Internet we have so much more knowledge about the kinds of food and lifestyles out there. Has that impacted your career to certain extent? Do you think more people are aware of raw food than they maybe previously were?
I would definitely say that. I’ve been doing this professionally for about 12 or 13 years now, and within that time from when I first moved to Vancouver there were no vegan restaurants in Vancouver. There were a lot of vegetarian restaurants, but none that were strictly vegan, but now, this many years later, there are quite a lot of vegan restaurants actually. In that same sense, I remember 10 years ago, I feel like raw foods now are what organic foods were 10 years ago. The idea of raw foods isn’t as foreign any more.

I read that you were once a chef for Mike D from the Beastie Boys, and seeing as we are a food and music website I thought I would ask about that. How did you find yourself cooking for him?
We met in Saskatchewan at the record store I was working at, and when I moved to LA, it was really funny, the first day I got there I went to a health food store and I pulled up and we were getting out of the car right beside each other at the same time. Over time he became sort of like a mentor and teacher of mine in a big way. It is fascinating to me that that happened, because I remember the moment with a friend of mine and he brought over Paul’s Boutique and I remember we were like in Grade 6, he put it on and I didn’t really get it. I wanted to listen to Master of Puppets. I wasn’t into hip hop growing up, but I guess it was more like rap music at that time. I felt like I didn’t really get it at that time. It wasn’t until, I feel like Ill Communication where I was a little bit more open to it and something struck me about how they were having fun making music. I read the liner notes and there was one song called “Bodhisattva Vow” and I read how the proceeds from the single all went to the Free Tibet foundation, and that struck me to realize that as an artist we can utilize our art forms to be activists. That was a strong moment for me.
Somehow Mike D and I met, and I spent a lot of time with him, and we practiced yoga at the same place. I ended up making food a bunch, and I was trying to be around music a lot. At that time in my life I was looking for what my service to the world was, and I came to wonder if music was that service, because it had always been in my life. I learned engineering and music editing.
There was a time just after him and his wife had their first baby and were finishing up on a film and music project, and we were always eating and cooking too, and they asked for help keeping food in the fridge and preparing meals. That sparked my inspiration to pursue food in a more serious way.

Gorilla Food: Living and Eating Organic, Vegan and Raw by Aaron Ash was published by Arsenal Pulp.