food

SOS — Benny Blanco‘s banana pudding is so good, SZA couldn’t Ctrl herself around it. During an appearance on the Monday (April 29) episode of SiriusXM’s The Sporkful podcast, the producer told host Dan Pashman about the time the “Kill Bill” singer ate an entire tray of his banana pudding while they were supposed to be working on music together.

“We were at my house, and she went down to get a drink and she saw something in the fridge,” Blanco recalled. “She had one bite. It was in a big like sheet tray. And then by the end of the day, there was no more banana pudding left.”

“She would just, like, sneak down for bites,” he continued. “And then every time she came to the studio, she needed a banana pudding. Then it was like, ‘Oh, wait, what else do you make?’ Then it was like, lasagna … We wound up cooking more than making music, you know?”

The “Eastside” musician — who worked on “Nobody Gets Me” and “Special” on SZA’s 2022 Billboard 200-topping album SOS — also revealed that he and the R&B-pop star now have a “bartering system” when it comes to food and music. “There was a time when SZA said, ‘I’m not coming over unless you have spicy rigatoni cooked for me,’” Blanco said. “And she was, like, halfway joking, but halfway serious. ‘Cause I’ll bark demands at her. I’ll be like, ‘We need to get this vocal done.’ And she’s like, ‘We need to eat the spicy rigatoni!’”

The new interview comes ahead of Blanco’s new cookbook Open Wide, which hits shelves Tuesday (April 30). While promoting the project in a Wall Street Journal interview last week, the hitmaker gushed about how he and his girlfriend, singer-actress Selena Gomez, like to bond over their passion for food and enjoy making dinners for their families.

Blanco also told the publication that he was the “last one to know” he was in love with the Rare Beauty founder. “It’s crazy how your partner could just be sitting there the whole time, right in front of your eyes, and you don’t even notice,” he recalled. “Then you have that Clueless moment where you’re like, ‘Wait, I’m in love.’”

Later, he told SiriusXM that he and Gomez have not yet gone on a double date with Taylor Swift, the Only Murders in the Building star’s longtime best friend, and Travis Kelce — but he has bumped into the “Anti-Hero” singer recently. “I just saw [Swift] at [Los Angeles restaurant] Sushi Park a week ago,” he said. “I ran into her right before Coachella a week ago.”

Listen to Blanco talk about SZA enjoying his banana pudding below.