Celebrity chef may be the ultimate foodies, they are more like us than you would ever imagine. You probably never imagine that these celebrity chefs as picky eaters but personal palates are a funny thing.
Check out what your favourite celebrity chefs refuse to eat and maybe you will feel a little bit better about your pickyness.
Bananas
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Ree Drummond, Food Network Star is funny, charming, down-to-earth and also honest about what she doesn't like. She wrote on her own site about her least favourite fruit - bananas! She used three words to describe them: "Abhor, loathe and recoil." Even though, Drummond has developed some banana recipes for her fans over the years, but they are not her favourite.
Green peppers
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Crunchy and crispy green peppers are nothing to hate about. However, that's exactly why Chef Aaron Sanchez told Food Network he won't touch them. "I like red bell peppers and yellow peppers, but green bell peppers just don't taste like much of anything," he said. Another chef that cannot stand it, Giada De Laurentil. "I don't like the flavour or the look. No green peppers will ever be found in any of my recipes," she said.
Wasabi
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Even though many chefs love spicy food with bold flavours, Chef Katie Lee told Food Network that she just can't do wasabi. "I love spicy food, so I'm not sure why I have this aversion to wasabi, but I really detest it," she said. While Katie doesn't like the wasabi, she's up for other spicy bites.
Plane food
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The late chef Anthony Bourdain travelled like no one else. So it may be a little surprising to hear that while he spent much of his time on a plane, he wouldn't eat the food they serve. When asked if he'd ever considered eating the plane snacks, Bourdain didn't hesitate. "Never. No one has ever felt better after eating plane food. I think people only eat it because they're bored. I don't eat on planes. I like to arrive hungry," he told Bon Appetit. "For a super-long flight, I'd order cheese and s**t load of port. I'd eat some cheese and drink myself stupid."
Liquorice
Liquorice seems to be one of those flavours that you either love or hate. For Chef Donal Skehan, it's a strong hatred. "I absolutely hate liquorice," he told Food Network. "Just hands down, I do not like it as a flavour."
Pineapple pizza
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Some people think pineapple pizza is the perfect blend of sweet and savoury. Gordon Ramsay disagrees. When hosting The Nightly Show, Ramsay decided to order pizzas for the audience. Audience members called out toppings while he phoned in the order, and when one person asked for pineapple pizza, Ramsay lost it in his signature way. "You don't put pineapple on a f***ing pizza!" he barked at the audience.
After ordering pepperoni pizzas for the group, he reminded the restaurant employee at the end of the call, "And no pineapple anywhere." You don't mess with Ramsay and his pizza.
Okra
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Okra is a green vegetable that is known for its nutrition value. However, for Tia Mowry, host of Tia Mowry at Home, it's not coming into her kitchen. "I can't tell you when the last time I had okra [was]. I think I was, like, maybe 12 years old, and it was disgusting," Mowry told Food Network. "I will never, ever forget. It's gross. I hate, hate, hate okra."
Coconut
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When chefs don't like certain foods, they have to decide if they are willing to create recipes with them. Many people love coconut, but Chef Giada De Laurentiis can't stand it and doesn't like to cook with it. "I don't like coconut," she told People. "I may have one coconut recipe in all the recipes I've ever written."
Cilantro
Image source via Barefoot Contessa
Ina Garten, Food Network Star loves creating classic comfort food dishes, but don't expect to see any cilantro in her food. "Hate it!" Garten said when being interviewed on VICE's Munchies podcast. "I know people love it, and you can add it to the recipe. I just hate it. To me it's so strong—and it actually tastes like soap to me—but it's so strong it overpowers every other flavour." Yes, she's just one of those that taste soapy-ness in cilantro.
Eggs
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On his show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Guy Fieri seems to eat just about anything. However, the chef flat out refuses to eat eggs. When being featured on PopSugar, Fieri's assistant made sure to tell the writer, "Oh, Guy doesn't eat egg!"
That's not to say that Fieri hates savoury breakfasts. Without eggs in his diet, he just needs to get a little more creative. When asked about his favourite breakfast, he went right for a rich, comforting meal. "It's gotta be ham and stone-ground grits with red-eye gravy. I'll be making it at the ranch for sure," he told PopSugar. "Grills are definitely underutilized for breakfast. The depth of flavour that you get from charring vegetables and meats is a great foundation for all different types of morning dishes. For example, sausages and steak take on a whole new level when thrown on the grill versus in the frying pan."
Truffle oil
Image source via Tasting Table
Truffles might be right up there at the top of the list when it comes to classy foods, but truffle oil? Not so much. Gordon Ramsay and Joe Bastianich both made their feelings about truffle oil perfectly clear in one tense episode of MasterChef (via the Los Angeles Times). When one contestant drizzled her dish in white truffle oil, they didn't pull any punches: Bastianich walked over to her station and threw the cylinder of truffle oil in the garbage after saying any restaurant who had it on the menu wasn't worth eating at. Ramsay called it "One of the most pungent, ridiculous ingredients ever known to the chef." The reason for that is because it's not made from real truffles.
They're not the only ones that refuse to have anything to do with truffle oil. Alton Brown once told Grub Street, "Truffle oil sucks," and when Today asked Martha Stewart what was on her naughty list, she had this to say: "Oh, I would never use truffle oil, oh never."
There was no hesitation, and she continued, "It's bad. They've done many studies on truffle oil. It's synthetic, it's fake, it's horrible. It clings to your tastebuds, it's a hideous thing."
Anthony Bourdain was on the list of truffle oil-haters, too, once calling it "about as edible as Astroglide and made from the same stuff."
Onions
It was Chopped judge Scott Conant who was very, very vocal about his hate of raw red onions on one particular episode, and it apparently made a huge impact on his fans. French chef Jean Christophe Novelli can definitely understand where he's coming from, but he loathes onions of a different sort. When What's On asked him what he hated and would never eat, he had this to say: "I really hate cooked onions. Obviously, I use them in my dishes. But if someone gave me a plate of cooked onions, I'd never be able to eat it."
To give you an idea of just how much he really hates the idea of chowing down on a plate of cooked onions, there was only one other thing on his never-would-I-ever list: "Anything with hair in it!"
Store-bought mayonnaise
Store-bought mayonnaise is weird. It's shelf-stable, but it's filled with all kinds of things that definitely aren't... and that's the definition of weird! Do you know who else thinks so? Rachael Ray.
"We did not grow up with mayonnaise in my house," she said on The Rachael Ray Show. "We just didn't have it around. It's weird to me. The consistency is weird to me. [...] Something about a shelf-stable egg freaks me out."
She goes on to say that she's fine with mayo and aioli as long as she makes it, but she just can't do the stuff on the grocery store shelf. Strangely, this isn't uncommon. According to The Huffington Post, there's a lot of people who just can't stomach the idea of mayo. They interviewed experts who chalked it up to a few reasons: it's an inanimate object that shouldn't wiggle, but does, it bears an undeniable resemblance to various bodily fluids, it's that whole "room temperature" thing, and it just looks like something we shouldn't be eating or something that's going to make us sick. Yum!
Lentils
Lentils, says Healthline, are basically edible seeds. They're a part of the legume family, and they're extremely nutritious. They might be packed full of vitamins and nutrients, and they might have so much protein and iron that they're pretty much the perfect thing to add to a vegetarian diet, but none of that will ever convince Bobby Flay to put them on any of his menus.
He told The New York Times, "Whenever I tell somebody I hate lentils, they're shocked. There are a lot of lentil fans out there." And it's not just personal hate, either — he hates lentils so much that when he opened Bar Americain, he vetoed a dish based solely on the fact that it contained lentils. It was a beet and goat cheese salad — with lentils — and it got the axe. That's not to say you'll never get lentils at one of his restaurants, because when the boss is away, it turns out that the chefs will, indeed, play.
"When I go on vacation," he says, "they run specials on lentils." Now you know how to tell if he's out of town!
Frozen pizza
It doesn't matter how much of a foodie you are, everyone keeps a few frozen pizzas in their fridge for those nights where they just can't. They're quick, they're easy, and if you happen to have some extra cheese and toppings to throw on, they're usually not terrible. But Ted Allen says that while he's fine with eating eyeballs and brains, he absolutely won't eat a frozen pizza.
"People should not eat frozen pizza," he told Time. "Ever. It's terrible. All of it's awful, just packed with the lowest quality ingredients, lousy sauces, and they're overpriced for what they are. It's not a good product. There's so much sodium, so many calories, and artificial crap, and preservatives."
But! Sometimes you just want something that will cook itself in the time it'll take you to find something on Netflix. His suggestion is pretty brilliant: next time you order out for a pizza, order an extra one, individually wrap the slices, and freeze them. Problem solved!
Source: Mash
