This is what you don't want.
You don't want to see your dish displayed as Ted Allen briskly lifts the silver cover. Because that means, as Allen brusquely intones, "You've been chopped."
Since January of 2009, Allen has been hosting the popular Food Network show that pits four chefs (and sometimes celebrities) against one another in a unique cook-off that features three courses -- an appetizer, entree and dessert -- cooked at a breathless pace, and incorporating four generally very disparate, seemingly incompatible ingredients. After each course, one of the chefs is eliminated.
The chefs have to contend with absurd mystery ingredient combinations like pickle juice, herb stems, overripe tomatoes, fish carcass for the appetizer; fenugreek, new potatoes, bison short ribs, cheese spread in a jar for the entree; and cooked corn cobs, pitcher of sangria, duck sauce, stale plain doughnuts for the dessert course. What is it they say these days? Oh, right. Om nom nom.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Ted Allen
(Photo by Peter Ross)
The people who dream up the ingredient combinations for Chopped are clearly either full-on sadists or genuinely believe that culinary magic can be arrived at combining fruit punch with chicken feet. Even Allen admits that not all the dishes are appetizing. "Sometimes it's terrible," he confides. One of the Food Network's most enjoyable, enduring competitions, Chopped owes much of its success to Allen, whose on-screen persona is best quantified as equal parts warm, remote and unforgivingly stern.
In person, Allen is nothing but warm. A former member of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy posse, for which he served as "food and wine specialist," and prior to that a journalist who penned culinary articles for Chicago magazine, Allen still contributes frequently to Esquire magazine, and was recently handed the hosting keys to yet another Food Network show, America's Best Cook, which premiered Sunday, April 13. On it, home cooks from different regions of the nation are mentored by Food Network celebrity chefs as they vie for a $50,000 grand prize. That buys a lot of Kraft Mac & Cheese.
But Allen also has a philanthropic side, and as such serves as an ambassador to Dining Out for Life, helping to promote the nationwide event in which participating restaurants donate a portion of their day's receipts to worthy causes that help to feed the infirm and homebound.
In the case of our city, the beneficiary is Food & Friends, which helps to keep people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other illnesses not only well-fed, but in healthy nutritional balance. It's one of our area's most enduring, important services, and though it sprung out of the gay community, it has evolved over the years to reach far beyond its initial bounds, enveloping all who are in need of its services.
In advance of Dining Out for Life, Metro Weekly talked with Allen about the event, as well as his time spent on Chopped, where he reveals, among other things, his favorite "weird" ingredient of all time.
Hint: It comes in a can. And sounds spectacularly unappealing. Om nom nom, indeed.
METRO WEEKLY: You are one of four Dining Out for Life ambassadors, nationwide. What do you like most about this event?
TED ALLEN: I really love this event because in a single day it raises $4 million to fight HIV and AIDS in cities all across the county, while at the same time, encouraging people to go out and spend money in local restaurants, thus helping the economy, helping my friends who are chefs, hopefully helping diners discover something really delicious, and playing a meaningful part in the fight against HIV and AIDS. It's such a win-win-win, I can't stop being involved with it.
MW: We've been a supporter of it here, for Food & Friends, for years. One thing we've noticed over the years is that fewer restaurants seem willing to give at the 100 and 50 percent level. Of course, that's voluntary and any amount is obviously appreciated by the organization, but why do you think it's decreased?
ALLEN: I'm not privy to official statistics inside the organization itself, so this is just me talking. Whenever anyone's trying to raise money for anything, the restaurant community is always the first place they go, and the restaurant community always steps up. That having been said, if there has been a decrease in the percentage that many restaurants are able or willing to put in, I can only imagine that it's because of the economy over the last five or six years. It's made life difficult in a business where the margins are always tight. If you're making 10 percent profits in the restaurant business, you're doing a great job. Also, I think the demands on everybody for philanthropy has just gone through the roof. Since the original Dining Out for Lifes, lots of other people have started doing a Dining Out for this and Dining Out for that. That said, someone who used to give 100 -- if they can still give 50, God bless 'em.
MW: Where do you usually do Dining Out for Life?
ALLEN: The irony is that New York City, being a place that was basically ground zero for the AIDS epidemic in the first place, is so well served with organizations that deliver food to people and raise money for AIDS and HIV that they don't actually do a Dining Out for Life here. I have in the past gone to Philadelphia to celebrate it. But this year I will be in a studio on April 24, shooting Chopped, so I don't get to go. When I have done it, I try to do drinks and appetizers at one place and dinner and dessert at another place to kind of spread it around a little bit.
MW: Let's talk about Chopped. Great show. How long have you been doing it now?
ALLEN: It's been about five years. We have made 257 episodes. We have not aired all those yet. We have new ones coming out now, and they will be coming out for a while.
MW: Watching you on it, you seem to genuinely enjoy it.
ALLEN: I love it. I love all the judges. I have great friends there. We're super fortunate that the show's been so successful. The only thing about it that I don't like is getting up at the crack of hell. I hate that. And I don't like being on my feet for 12 hours. But talking about food with these gifted New York City chefs all day is such a treat for me -- it's a blast.
MW: I'm not generally a huge fan of the food competition shows, but I like Chopped because of the bizarre combinations of ingredients you hurl at the chefs.
ALLEN: Lamb testicles and chicken feet.
MW: It's often remarkable that they can actually make something good out of the disparate ingredients they're given.
ALLEN: Sometimes it's terrible. It's very difficult to cook anything good with the ingredients we give them, under those conditions.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Ted Allen
(Photo by Peter Ross)
MW: Do you personally get to taste everything?
ALLEN: I taste anything that looks really good. Every once in a while someone really hits it out of the park and the judges always fix me a little bite. It's just so impressive when someone can do that. It's a very specific skill and it really has very little reflection on your actual talents as a chef day-to-day. Every chef [in their own kitchen] gets to pick their own ingredients to a certain extent and has a chance to try them out and plan and dream and research. And the ability to make something out of lamb testicles and chicken feet and Pabst Blue Ribbon in 20 minutes without cutting off your thumb is a very specific and different talent.
MW: The competitions are shot in real time?
ALLEN: Yes.
MW: That's incredible. It's brilliantly photographed and edited. But, God, what a nightmare it must be to edit.
ALLEN: One episode of Chopped takes 37 days to edit. We have nine or 10 cameras, each of them coming out of a 12-hour shoot day. They probably shoot about seven or eight hours of tape each. All that stuff has to be viewed in the raw, on a single monitor with all nine cameras at once, in different little squares. It's unbelievable to me -- I can't believe anybody could do that job.
It sounds so trite to say we're a close family, but we just are. We have a great director and a team of camera operators. They're all freelancers, but they all come back because they love to work together and it's kind of like shooting a basketball game. It's fun for them to shoot. Many of the same people have done the cake competition shows, and those are not fun for them to shoot because [contestants] have two hours to bake a cake and there's no action. It's just [host] Ron Ben-Israel in the room and a cake in the oven gradually getting larger.
MW: You've had a really interesting career. Obviously you don't plan a career like this, but, looking it over, are you happy with the way it's turned out and where you've ended up?
ALLEN: I couldn't be more grateful. I loved writing for magazines and newspapers, too. But I think anybody who gets to work in a field that they love -- in my case talking about and tasting and thinking about food -- that's a very fortunate person. To get a chance to work in television and have a show that takes off is such a rare thing. I'm kind of amazed by it. The only thing about it that's kind of difficult is that it's really hard to plan for the next act, as every show ends. I have a couple of things in the hopper, but the ratings for this show are nowhere but great, so I don't think it's ending anytime soon.
It amazes me that as long as we've been doing it, it's still basically the same game show. I don't get bored. I think that's something to be really grateful for. We always have different competitors, our judges rotate, we have different personalities, we have different ingredients, there's always something new to learn and talk about. I couldn't be happier. The network's great to me. I'm very fortunate.
MW: You're well known as a gay man, and you're hosting this popular show, but it's never really brought into focus at all. It's just another example of just cultural assimilation. I'm saying that's a good thing.
ALLEN: I agree with you. I think that's something Food Network deserves some credit for. In fact, the LGBT presence at Food Network is reflected all the way at the top, starting with our president, Bob Tuschman, who's openly gay. There are lots of gay people in the executive suites and the ranks of the producers.
MW: Was there ever any doubt that you now know of before they selected you as host?
ALLEN: I'm sure they had their doubts. Whenever you put somebody in the host position, you wonder if they can carry the show. And I don't have to carry the show because the stars of our show are the competitors. And then I've got the judges to lean back on, as well. I'm sure you would always wonder if this person is going to work out whether they're gay or what gender or race or whatever it might be. But this was actually the second show Food Network has put me in charge of and they've been nothing but great. No one has ever said, "Hey, stay away from those pride parades!"
MW: What's your favorite thing to cook at home?ALLEN: Ironically, when you consider where I work, I'm very much a slow-food guy. I actually don't even like to cook things that are done quickly. I love to braise things. I love to put a roast in my smoker -- like a pork roast -- and cook it for eight hours until it's just fall-off-the-bone tender. Stir-fry? I'll eat it once in a while if I'm in a hurry and because it's delicious and I like it.
But what really gets me started is slow and low, long-developed flavor. Long-simmered sauces.
I've taken a lot of inspiration from our judges, because I've spent so much time talking to them and I've learned a lot -- [chef and Chopped judge] Scott Conant taught me a lot about cooking pasta and about making polenta. And the secret to polenta is cooking it for a very long time. Scott cooks his for about three hours. Very low temperature. It's just cornmeal, but it becomes something sexy and silky and sensual. I love stuff like that.
MW: What's the weirdest ingredient you've ever encountered on Chopped? Where you were like, "I can't believe they put this into the mix."
ALLEN: In a competition that's seen at least three or four kinds of testicles, it's kind of hard to narrow it down to one ingredient. But I'll tell you my favorite weird ingredient: a whole chicken in a can. I don't know why anybody would want such a thing, but it does exist. I think they probably can the chicken raw, seal it and then cook it, because when you open it and plop it out, it comes slipping out with a bunch of gelatin. It's hideous -- and the skin is on it and the skin's all rubbery-looking. It must have been developed for bomb shelters or something. It's just such an appalling ingredient, that's what I like about it.
MW: I've never eaten chicken in a can, nor do I think I want to. And I've never eaten testicles. Hmmm. I probably shouldn't put it that way.
ALLEN: [Laughs.] I was going to try to save you, but too late. I did an interview about an hour ago where I said, "You know it's not like I want to eat polish sausage every day of the week, but...." I really think I should have rephrased that.
New episodes of Chopped air Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on the Food Network. America's Best Cook airs Sundays at 9 p.m. Visit foodnetwork.com.
Dining Out for Life is Thursday, April 24. For more information on the national event, and to find a city near you, visit diningoutforlife.com. For the local D.C. event, benefiting Food & Friends, visit foodandfriends.org/dol. A complete listing of participating local restaurants follows.
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