How culinary school shaped Victoria Mont's return to music

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred This past spring, while deep in rehearsals for a European stadium tour with Bruno Mars, Victoria Monét would get up early every morning to chop, blend and sauté as a prep cook at Verse L.A.in Toluca Lake.The gig at Verse, a supper club owned by the prolific mixing engineer Manny Marroquin, satisfied the externship requirement for Monét’s graduation in May from Pasadena’s Institute of Culinary Education; cooking school itself was a way for the 37-year-old singer and songwriter to get back in touch with her creativity, as she describes it, after the lengthy promotional hustle that followed her new artist win at the Grammy Awards in 2024.“It was like I got this big spotlight and then my job just became capitalizing on that spotlight,” Monét says, taking pains to clarify that she’s not complaining about taking home one of the music industry’s most coveted prizes.

“But going to this or that event because I have to be in the front row and take photos — I kind of started to question what it is I’m doing.” Learning to make aguachile and chocolate soufflé, she adds, “took me back to that place where I was creating something that I wasn’t earning from.” She laughs.“I actually had to pay to do it.”Monét’s sense of rejuvenation is easy to feel across “Frequency of Love,” a sprawling and vibrant new album out Friday on which this seasoned multitasker showcases the breadth of her talent.

The long-gestating follow-up to her very long-gestating debut LP, 2023’s “Jaguar II,” the 22-track set encompasses dusty throwback R&B, acoustic folk-soul and throbbing dance music; there’s even a lushly decorated rendition of “Somebody,” the midcentury standard penned by Harry Warren and Jack Brooks, which Monét discovered as a kid thanks to HBO’s “Introducing Dorothy Dandr...