From the Texan barbecue to the “Tesla diner”, will Elon Musk also turn upside down the plate of the Americans? – L’Express

On social networks, this converted Trumpist and best -sel author always defends him beak and nails. But what could Maye Musk think, dietician and mother of the richest man on the planet, opening X, the social network of his son, last November? Elon Musk, Hilare, future boss of a commission for government efficiency, accompanied by the next Minister of Health Vaccinosceptic Robert Kennedy Jr, the boss of the Republicans of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Donald Trump, managing Burgers and Fries aboard the president’s plane, customary gastronomic slippages … The legend of the photo mocked a commitment to the new administration: “to make America sound again tomorrow”.

This image of Elon Musk in 2024 contrasts with that of his childhood in South Africa. His mother, who has become famous model late, has always had special attention for the plate of her children: “You will never see chips and cookies at home. When I divorced [NDLR : en 1979, du père d’Elon Musk]I couldn’t afford to buy meat, fish or chicken. So I had to feed my children with bean stew “, barely veiled allusion to one of the tastiest dishes in the country, the Chakalaka, where peppers, tomatoes, chickpeas, garlic, and white beans rub shoulders.

This food education infused in siblings. After various adventures thwarted in the tech world with Elon – Zip2 and Paypal -, Kimbal, who has never gone to put himself in the stove for the family, embarks on the food sector. It forms at the French Culinary Institute in New York and creates “Big Green”, an association to promote a healthy food and the establishment of vegetable gardens in many schools in the country. Quickly, he opened several restaurant channels in parallel, all with fresh, local and natural products. The bulimic entrepreneur also rises “Square Roots” in 2016, an incubator project of hydroponic urban farms, with the ambition of revolutionizing the sector. Kimbal Musk simply wants to feed America in the manner of Silicon Valley, title New York Times. The whole family has decidedly a sense of business and the madness of quantities.

The “Santa Claus of Ozempic”

His brother Elon Musk never spontaneously had the irresistible call of the plate. “If there was a way not to eat to be able to work more, I would not eat,” he said in Ashlee Vance’s book Elon Musk: Tesla, Paypal, SpaceX: the entrepreneur who will change the worldpublished in 2015 in the United States (translated into French). He works a lot – up to 120 hours a week – sleeps little, sometimes even “in the Tesla factory”. His eating habits remain as unpredictable as the character.

He just replaced the liters of coffee, the hot dogs, the orange juice swallowed in a hurry in front of the computer in his student room, by the Coca Light without caffeine, the donuts he Eat “every morning”, the sushi, the French cuisine which he particularly likes and obviously the barbecue, very popular in the United States. “I tried to be a vegetarian, but I don’t think we are made to be vegetarians. Some of my best friends are vegetarians, even vegans, which is complicated when we try to go out to dinner,” says Elon Musk In 2012, naturally in a very long American tradition. If many historians say that it is the Tainos Indians in the Antilles that would have been the first to dispose of meats and food on a wooden grid in the 15th century, this tradition became an integral part of the New World Slaws in the 18th century, explain Pierre Singaravélou and Sylvain Venayre in their work The grocery store of the world. Globalization by food products from the 18th century to the present day (Fayard).

The barbecue quickly found its adoption homeland in North America thanks to the British settlers (present in the 16th century), before becoming a real institution. Independence celebration of July 4, large rallies, electoral campaigns in the United States often ends with this sweet smell of smoke … During the inauguration of the new factory and the headquarters of Tesla in Austin in 2022, the billionaire, Cowboy hat and black glasses, arrived on stage by convertible in front of a smartphones forest, to the sound of a piece of rap, under the cheers of the crowd before sharing a barbecue. No wonder that Elon Musk loves Texas so much – where he also plans to move the headquarters of the SpaceX aerospace company and the social network X -, the state where barbecue is the best in America, enthuses THE New York Times !

But the place taken by the businessman in the public sphere forces him to pay more and more attention to his image and therefore his weight. The publication of little advantageous photos of the billionaire on a yacht in Greece in 2022 makes his father say – with whom relations are execrable – that he has become “big” and that he has very “bad eating habits”. Elon Musk quickly got into intermittent fasting and posts in 2024 a photo of him weight in “Santa Claus of Ozempic”. The richest man in the world did not escape the fashion of this drug originally indicated in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity, diverted as an appetite suppressant by many stars in Hollywood.

A “dinner” with musk sauce

If the Ogre Musk can therefore do without eating for a few hours, it is never satisfied with new projects. He has just launched the construction of a “Tesla Diner” in Santa Monica in California, open 24 hours a day. The concept is simple and revisits another monument of American gastronomy: the traditional American “dinner” , born in 1872, when a worker from Rhode Island, Walter Scott, decides to sell food for night workers in a caravan pulled by a horse.

This time, this “dinner” with musk sauce offers the possibility of using the “Tesla Supercharger” terminals to recharge her electric car and see films on giant screens while tasting a few dishes. Elon Musk thus seeks to offer a new experience of catering where cooking, relaxation and … technology obviously coincides. What if the richest man in the world was in the light of a new fast food revolution in the United States? When we see that McDonald’s – especially in France – is also equipping its restaurants with charging stations, we are entitled to think that the tech magnate has so much flair …