Interview With Ted Allen

AE: How about a quick rundown on the contestants. From whom do you expect the most? Who has the best credentials?
TA: We got a lot of great credentials. Dale, who is someone that our community will come to know and love very well, is the guy from Chicago with the faux hawk. He comes to us from working in a kitchen in Trio, which was a legendary, very fine dining restaurant. It's no longer with us, but it broke all kinds of barriers. He's a very colorful guy and a lot of fun.

And from Las Vegas, the chef Hung comes to us from a really fancy restaurant called G Savoy. If you think about the ultimate French fancy dining experience you want someone else to pay for, Hung is the chef in that restaurant. He's an amazing talent.

We've got a couple of great guys from New York — Howie and Joey. Joey became known as Joey Pickles on set. He's a very Brooklyn kind of guy and classic New York, and we thought he needed to have a name like Joey Pickles.

We've also got Tre from Dallas, who is an amazing chef. I can't give away who I think is going to win. And I don't know yet, I'm excited to say. I'm looking forward to our finale episodes. It will be fun to watch. There's a little bit of screaming, too.

AE: Most importantly, who is the hottest?
TA: I'm going to go with Tre. Have you seen the pictures of our cast? I think you all are going to agree with me.

AE: I hear the finale is going to be televised live so the winner can't be revealed ahead of time. Is that true?
TA: I don't know. They normally take a few months before they do the finale in some exotic location. I don't know if we're going to do something live, but that would be awfully cool.

I can't overstate how hard it is for these guys. People don't realize. You're living with these strangers. You're being awakened early in the morning or kept up late at night, and you have such a tiny, limited window of time to figure out what to cook with tight restrictions. It's really, really hard. If Bravo goes the extra mile and does something live, these poor guys …

AE: What's the worst dish you've had to taste?
TA: One thing that's hard about judging: We start out with 15 contestants. You get a lot of dishes thrown at you, and remembering all is the tricky part. It's just like with wine. We had food that wasn't washed well enough, so I got sand in my mouth. That wasn't pleasant.

AE: Are you the polite type or do you spit it right out?
TA: My parents are Southern, so I was raised to be polite. And I'm generally more polite than a lot of people judging food on television. But there's one quote Bravo used of mine which was, "We really need to see some wow here because so far we've seen a lot of not wow."

That's in the first challenge you'll see Wednesday night, where Seasons 1 and 2 cook for the contestants in Season 3. [Editor's note: This episode aired last week.] It's the all-star cook-off. Honestly, when you get to this level of talent, you don't really get a dish that's just awful. It's just more in the detail. OK, there were some awful dishes, but I'm going to save that for the season and let you guys enjoy that — as much as we didn't.

AE: What's the biggest mistake contestants make?
TA: If there's one consistent thing, it's probably succumbing to the pressure and not being able to keep a clear head. One of my favorite contestants from the previous seasons was Dave who cried all the time. And I think he was also a member of our community. … Anyway, Dave is a very talented chef, but he tends to cry a lot. He's an example of how people crumble under pressure. And also it's a mistake referring to old, familiar recipes instead of innovating.

AE: The vending machine challenge last year produced some pretty amazing dishes. Is there something similar this year that forces the chefs to really think outside the box?
TA: The producers love to throw them curveballs. The vending machine challenge was a great one. I can't give away any of the special secret tortures they have for the chefs except to say there definitely are some shockers like that. For the chefs and the judges, what we like the best is when the chefs are allowed to just cook and do their thing. That will most likely result in a delicious meal, more so than if you have to cook with Cheetos. But there are plenty of good ones.

AE: Be honest with us. Do you, Padma and Tom always know what you're talking about? Or sometimes do you just make it up?
TA: Padma and Tom always know what they're talking about. And in addition to them, we have top chefs from the finest restaurants from around the country who join as guest judges. Gail Simmons is a top editor at Food & Wine magazine. She has enormous expertise in food.

But with a TV show like this, they want to have a range of opinions. They bring someone like me in. I'm not a professional. I fall somewhere in between a chef and a layperson. And I like to make food accessible to everybody. I'm a very enthusiastic home cook.

Padma is a cookbook author and has great knowledge of international cuisine, particularly from India, which is her background. Tom knows fine restaurants, and then we get the range of other palates who come in. And it's fun to get somebody like Anthony Bourdain in there to throw some fireworks into the mix and say some spicy things. He tends to shoot from the hip, if you know what I mean.