Back to Basics

Most chefs have a story or two about a meal gone awry. Burnt garlic. A nicked finger. Table salt mistaken for sugar. But few can lay claim to engulfing their oven in flames.

“I have to own that,” says Carla Hall, chef and former co-host of ABC’s Emmy Award–winning series The Chew. She was working as a private chef in the Bahamas at the time, and midparty, she put the main-course lobster in the oven to finish beneath the broiler. “And the oven caught on fire,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘What are these flames coming out of the back of the oven?’ I let the oven door down, and 
everything was on fire, including the lobsters.

• To See Carla Hall at the upcoming Palm Desert Food & Wine, visit palmdesertfoodandwine.com for tickets.

Hall learned early on that it takes some heat to discover your strengths. She grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, with a family that gathered every Sunday for supper at her grandmother’s house. Despite the early introduction to “egg bread” (her granny’s version of old-fashioned, hot-water cornbread), Hall’s path to the kitchen was winding. She went to business school and worked as an accountant before trading numbers for the catwalk and traveling Europe as a runway model.

While abroad, she realized that her penchant for studying cultures through regional cuisine overlapped with her predilection for haute trends and, ultimately, translated to a viable métier making food.

At the heart of it, Hall is an impassioned teacher who just wants to share the joy she feels whipping up a tasty meal with those around her. But being a great home chef doesn’t mean you need to master poached lobster, she points out. Start small.

“People should know how to make a good biscuit,” Hall says. The fluffy bread rounds are a basic culinary building block that you can dress up or down with whatever local ingredients are in season. And they’re pure comfort. Hall feels so strongly about this cooking fundamental, from time to time she actually invites random people over to her house for one-on-one baking lessons. “I literally make biscuits with strangers that I meet on the street.”

Perhaps the antithesis of biscuits, Hall’s latest endeavor is all about fantastical food porn. She appears as a judge on the Netflix series Crazy Delicious. The competition show ranks participants’ dishes on overall aesthetic — the more crazy-beautiful the better — and deliciousness.

“The set is incredible,” she says. “They put down dirt, put plants in, and the contestants actually forage through the set for their ingredients. I think the unintended bonus is that you get to see what these plants look like as a viewer because so many people don’t know where their food comes from.”

In addition to regular stints on the small screen (initiated by her 2008 appearance on Top Chef) Hall also works as the culinary ambassador for Sweet Home Café at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In this capacity, she endeavors to connect the museum with the histories that inspire the café’s regionally themed plates. In those narratives, she also found inspiration for her latest cookbook, Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration.

“I realized how much I didn’t know about my culture, and information is power,” she says. “For so long, I ran away from the foods that I grew up on. I wanted to be a chef, not a cook. I wanted to do French food, not soul food. I honestly wanted to run in the opposite direction of fried chicken. But I came to this place where I decided to lean into it and unapologetically say, ‘I love soul food.’ It is a part of my history.”

“For so long, I ran away from the foods that I grew up on. I wanted to be a chef, not a cook. I wanted to do French food, not soul food. I honestly wanted to run in the opposite direction of fried chicken. But I came to this place where I decided to lean into it and unapologetically say, ‘I love soul food.’ It is a part of my history.”

— Carla Hall

Shedding her fear that a dish with humble ingredients would be ill received has allowed Hall to embrace simple ingredients, reconnect with her roots, and loosen up behind the line. “Cooking is not that serious,” she says.

As a chef, you have to think fast and be ready to put out those figurative culinary fires. And in the case of a real fire, you must pivot quickly and figure out what else you can make.

Back in the Bahamas, Hall had set aside two lobsters that didn’t get caught in the blaze, and she had some extra produce on hand. “I made a corn and lobster salad with some beautiful greens. So instead of everybody getting a tail, they got a piece.” And no one went hungry.

“You have to fail and know what that feels like to be pushed to the thing that you’re meant to do or the place where you’re meant to be,” Hall says. “When everything is all good, something is wrong. You’re either not seeing something or not doing something, or you’re just not pushing yourself.