Yahoo News Dylan Sprouse Says Girlfriend Barbara Palvin Is a ‘Fantastic Chef’ and Cooks with His Brand of Mead
Dylan Sprouse is not only an accomplished actor, he’s also the youngest master brewer in the United States.
In 2018, he co-founded All-Wise Meadery, New York’s first full production meadery, with one of his friends from college. So it only makes sense that even when he’s not working, he still incorporates mead (an alcohol made from honey) into his diet.
At a premiere party for the second season of the TBS anthology show Miracle Workers: Dark Ages starring Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi, Sprouse revealed to PEOPLE that his girlfriend, model Barbara Palvin, actually uses mead to cook a lot of the food in their Brooklyn, New York apartment.
“Barbara is a fantastic chef…and so a lot of the time I eat what she likes to make,” said The Suite Life of Zack and Cody alum, 27, when asked what he likes to eat on a normal day. “She’s made some nice glazes for chicken…and reductions. She’s very clever.”
His love for mead began back home in California between the ages of 16 and 17, before he was legally allowed to consume alcohol. “I wanted to get drunk with my friends, and I figured out you could buy all the ingredients legally, so I started brewing it,” he said when asked where his desire to brew mead came from. “I figured out I actually liked the process of brewing it more than drinking it.”
He also told PEOPLE in a November 2018 interview that he was interested in the history and the lore of mead, and that he brewed it while he was living in the dorms at New York University. “My R.A. was a very dedicated med school student who was never in his room — always at the library. So he would never have found out. And he was a pretty lax guy. But I was brewing it all throughout.”
While at the premiere party on Jan. 22, Sprouse joked that while his friends and family haven’t always loved mead, “They certainly do now!” He explained, “People have a perspective about what it’s going to be, and I often have to revise it. Even this [event], funnily enough, is a perspective about mead that’s kind of skewed, but this is fun for me. Mead is a very ancient drink, hence why we’re here, but it’s also being brought into modernity a bit.”
Miracle Workers also partnered with celebrity chef Wylie Dufresne of Du’s Donuts for the event — the result of Sprouse’s friendship with the chef. The two work next door to each other in Brooklyn, and while Dufresne revealed to PEOPLE that he had never prepared a medieval feast before, it’s clear he was ready to take on the project.
“It wasn’t [hard to make the mead into a glaze],” the chef told PEOPLE. “We worked with Dylan and his crew trying different glazes and different meads and tried to find some of their meads that had fun flavors…there’s an elderflower mead and a hibiscus mead, both of which we found lent themselves nicely to a donut glaze.”
The gorgeous feast took multiple days to prepare, and the mead-glazed donuts were highly praised throughout the night.
You’ll also have the chance to try Dufresne’s mead-glazed donuts at the TBS show’s Los Angeles activation on Jan. 28. He created the treats using an exclusive limited-edition batch mead called “The Meadieval” from Sprouse’s brewery, and will be handing them out himself for free at Westfield Century City, L1 “The Oasis” between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. PT.
Merchants Hospitality venues and TBS are also partnering to host a New York City-wide Happy House special so you can try the limited-batch mead, with seven establishments making specialty cocktails using it.
The special will be offered every Tuesday starting Jan. 28, running from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. while supplies last. Participating venues are Ivy Lane (116 East 60th Street), Industry Kitchen (70 South Street), Ophelia (3 Mitchell Place), Treadwell Park (all three locations), and Black Hound (301 S End Ave).
