The witty and culinary know-how of Ted Allen—the food and wine guru who schooled heteros in the kitchen on TV's 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'—will debut with Food Network's food-science-mythbusters show, Food Detectives, later this month.
Allen spoke with Windy City Times about the highly anticipated series, as well as his rise from from a journalist and writer in Chicago to network television's most popular culinary critic.
Windy City Times: With your new show premiering July 29, tell me: Why will Food Detectives fill every Tivo box in America from chef to science-buff alike?
Ted Allen: We're taking funny and magnificent stories, and [ we're ] actually designing original scientific experiments to test them. We've all heard our moms tell us to not swallow our gum or it will be in our stomach for seven years, or the five-second-rule; I mean, we're probably a long shot from the Nobel Prize for some of these things, but I think we're going to have a good time doing it. As we've been shooting, we've been cracking up the whole time; it's always a good time when the crew laughs when you're shooting.
WCT: What interesting questions have potential viewers submitted to be answered on the show?
TA: Actually, we've already tested some of the questions submitted to us on the Web site such as, 'Does celery really have negative calories?' And this is something I've never heard before—it's the idea that the energy used chewing burns more calories then what you are eating. It turns out there is some a little bit of truth to this, not so much from the chewing, but because celery has so much fiber in it that the digestive process burns more calories than a lot of other things. But eating only celery as a weight loss plan is probably a bad idea.
WCT: What competition reality shows have you been addicted to lately? And you can't say 'Iron Chef' or 'Top Chef,' or any other show you've been a judge on.
TA: I've done so much of that kind of show; I'm actually a little bit tired of that format, but I have been into the last few seasons of [ Project ] Runway. The other problem is, I'm in production right now, so I'm working 12 hours a day on my show, then I get home at nine o'clock, I barely have time to eat my delivery food and kind of pass out before waking up the next morning at eight o'clock I'm missing a lot of TV right now, but I'm Tivo-ing a lot.
WCT: I was reading some of your compelling articles in Esquire. [ Allen has an M.A. in journalism from New York University with a focus on science and environmental reporting. ] How did you get from reporting for Chicago-based community newspapers to contributing editor at Esquire to 'famed culinary expert' on various networks?
TA: I tried to hustle a fair amount and show initiative [ in his early years as a writer ] , I identified the publications I really wanted to write for and convinced those people to give me a shot at it. I think it's important for writers and journalists to be open-minded to opportunities you can use writing for. I typically would contact the editors of national magazines to see if they would have lunch with me or give me an informational interview, and that got me into GQ and Condé Nast Traveler. But with the 'Queer Eye' business, I had already been working with Esquire for six years and, as much as I loved Esquire, I kind of wanted to try something different. So, 'Queer Eye' was having an audition, and I was 37 years old, [ and ] I had never been on television or even been in a school play, [ but I tried out ] . It just goes to show: If you see something interesting like that, you ought to go for it.
WCT: So you lived in Chicago for a while, writing for Chicago Magazine and even guest-speaking occasionally at Columbia College Chicago, right?
TA: Yeah, actually, my partner Barry was the chairman of the magazine department at Columbia for several years, so I would guest-lecture for like one class occasionally. I love Chicago; it is a place we've lived in for about 14 years, the longest place I've ever lived. I'm actually coming back to host a fundraiser for GenderPAC [ a national gender-rights group ] —which is a really good organization.
WCT: When you do visit Chicago, what restaurants, fine dining and nightlife do you frequent in and out of Boystown?
TA: Well, for me, it's got to be Gibson's downtown. I love the mix of glamour and pure red meat. If you go the piano bar in the front, you'll see rich guys with women who are a third their age; you'll usually see a bag lady, high-society ladies. I love that place because it's really Chicago.
I'd have to say that as far as going out—Barry and I don't go out a lot anymore—I've always thought of Boystown as being the best gay party town I've ever been to, mostly because it is so tightly close together. Also because [ Boystown's bars such as ] Sidetrack and Roscoe's are such high-quality places: they're beautiful, they have great material and they actually hire architects to make them. So many gay bars in the country have like a plywood bar. I mean we're really lucky in Chicago to have such nice joints, and then there's Berlin.
WCT: Anything else you'd like to add about the anticipated potential of Food Detectives?
TA: I think what we're looking to do is find out things about food that people can relate to, and then do something sort of absurd. Like with our relationship we have with a microbiologist from John Hopkins, who is literally going around Manhattan with a pair of tongs, dropping French fries on the sidewalks, timing it with a stopwatch [ and ] swabbing it into a petri dish. It's so much fun. It's almost like a Monty Python-kind of silly. And you know it's real: What we find is that a lot of people's kitchen floors are not that much cleaner than heavily-trafficked sidewalks in [ New York City ] . For example, we are telling people what to do to cool down their mouths after a bunch of hot chilies. It's funny to watch the crew's faces turn red like they're on fire; it's funny in a 'Jackass' kind of way. And then we teach [ the viewers ] what to do when you are in a place where you overdo it with the spices. Hopefully, we're changing lives and having a blast at the same time.
Ted Allen will be judging GenderPAC's Chicago Celebrity Cook-Off at The Chopping Block in the Merchandise Mart Sat., July 26.
