Foods That Celebrity Chefs Refuse To Eat And Here’s Why – Extended Cut

We’ve covered this topic more than once over the years, so here’s all our coverage combined into one extended video!

You would probably never classify a well-known chef as a picky eater, but even the most famous celebrity chefs have foods they just can’t stand — and some of them are definitely not what you would expect.

#CelebrityChef #Foods #Restaurants

Truffle oil | 0:00
Soup du jour | 1:22
Takeout of any kind | 2:07
Store-bought mayonnaise | 2:58
Lentils | 3:38
Carrots | 4:30
Frozen pizza | 5:07
Most breakfast foods | 6:06
Bananas | 6:52
Green peppers | 7:16
Wasabi | 7:30
Pineapple pizza | 7:53
Deep-fried turkey | 8:18
Coconut | 8:35
Cookie dough | 8:50
Cilantro | 9:13
Pre-grated Parmesan cheese | 10:24
Peanut butter | 11:46
Cauliflower rice | 12:47
Cooked salmon | 13:50
Durian | 14:27
Eggs | 15:20
Fast food | 16:39
Anything in a ramekin | 17:34
Vegan food | 18:28

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You would probably never classify  a well-known chef as a picky eater,   but even the most famous celebrity chefs  have foods they just can’t stand — and   some of them are definitely  not what you would expect. Truffles might be right up there at the top  of the list when it comes to classy foods,  

But truffle oil? Given that it’s not  made from real truffles, not so much. Gordon Ramsay and Joe Bastianich both made their  feelings about truffle oil perfectly clear in one   tense episode of MasterChef. 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 it. Ramsay called it: “One of the most pungent, ridiculous  ingredients ever known to chef.”

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.  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.” It’s an old joke. The customer asks the server:   “What’s the soup du jour?” And they  respond: “The soup of the day.” According to Gordon Ramsay, though, the soup  du jour isn’t actually a laughing matter.  

It’s one of the items on a restaurant’s menu  that he absolutely wants nothing to do with. When Town & Country asked him  what he recommended never,   ever ordering at a restaurant, he  had this bit of wisdom to offer: “Ask what yesterday’s soup du  jour was before today’s special.  

It may be the case that it’s the soup do month.” The idea of getting something served up that’s  been reheated and reused for days suddenly doesn’t   sound so good. The idea of “soup of the day” makes  it sound like it’s going to be super fresh, but  

Take it from Ramsay. You should probably follow  in his footsteps and opt for something else. Every so often, we hear something  about our favorite celebrity chefs   that really serves to remind you that  they live in an entirely different world.

Take Mary Berry. She’s written more than 70  cookbooks and made the world fall in love   with her on the Great British Bake Off,  but if you think that after a long day of   filming she might grab some takeout  on the way home, you’d be mistaken. On James Martin’s Christmas  With Friends, she remarked:

“You won’t believe this, but I  haven’t ever had a takeaway.” Berry has been vocal about her  belief that Britain, quote,   “orders in and eats out” way too much, and  should start making more home-cooked meals. It’s entirely possible she’s the only person  in Britain who’s never ordered out for a pizza,  

A curry, or even fish and chips. And according  to The Telegraph, that’s not just a shame,   it’s a sign that she’s missing out on an  entire section of British cuisine and culture. Store-bought mayonnaise is weird. It’s  shelf-stable, but it’s filled with all  

Kinds of things that definitely aren’t. Do  you know who else thinks so? Rachael Ray. She said on The Rachael Ray Show: “You know, we did not grow up with  mayonnaise in my house. We just   didn’t have it around. It’s weird to  me. The consistency is weird to me.”

But she’s fine with mayo and aioli as long  as she makes it fresh. And according to The   Huffington Post, there’s a lot of people who  can’t stomach the idea of mayo. They chalked   it up to a few reasons. It’s an inanimate object  that shouldn’t wiggle, but does, that whole “room  

Temperature” thing, and it just looks like  something that’s going to make us sick. Yum! Lentils are basically edible seeds, according to  Healthline. They’re a part of the legume family,   and extremely nutritious. While  they’re packed full of vitamins,   nutrients, protein and iron that they’re a  perfect thing to add to a vegetarian diet,  

None of that will ever convince  Bobby Flay to put them on 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 a personal hate. Flay dislikes  lentils so much that when he opened Bar Americain,   he vetoed a beet and goat cheese salad, and  it got the axe based solely on the fact that   it contained lentils. That’s not to say you’ll  never get lentils at one of his restaurants.  

When the boss is away, it turns out that  the chefs will, indeed, play. He stated: “When I go on vacation, they  run specials on lentils.” Now you know how to tell if he’s out of town. Carrots might seem like an odd thing to swear  off, but according to The New York Times,  

It’s one thing that Alex Guarnaschelli wants  absolutely nothing to do with. She stated: “I will serve baby carrots. But once it gets  over two inches long, I break into a cold sweat.” Why? Early in her career, she was a  sous-chef at an upscale Paris restaurant,  

Julienne carrots were always on the menu.  Like, always. Permanently. And that meant   she was responsible for julienning a  lot of carrots. It’s understandable   how little carrots might be something that  she’d never want to see again. She said: “Now, I have a panic attack when I  see shredded carrot in a salad.”

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 he  absolutely won’t eat a frozen pizza. He told Time: “People should not eat frozen pizza. 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.” “And it’s not exactly pizza  either, it’s Almost Pizza.”  “Come on, that’s pizza!” “Nope, it’s very nearly pizza, but not quite.” But sometimes you just want something that  will cook itself in the time it’ll take  

You to find something on Netflix. Allen has a  suggestion, and it’s pretty brilliant: next time   you order out for a pizza, order an extra one,  individually wrap the slices, and freeze them. If there’s one thing that American cuisine does  right, it’s breakfast. There are just so many  

Options, from breakfast sandwiches to yogurt  parfaits to stacks of pancakes with a side   of bacon. But there’s one chef that refuses to  eat any of those things, and that’s Ina Garten. She told Bon Appetit: “I’ve had the same thing for breakfast every  single day for ten years: coffee and McCann’s  

Quick-cooking Irish oatmeal with lots of salt.  I don’t want it to taste like wallpaper paste.” That’s a lot of oats! At  least they’re good for you! The Barefoot Contessa might not have  any doughnuts hanging around her house,   but for all the breakfast foods she doesn’t  eat, there’s four things that she says are  

Always in her freezer: homemade stock, soup,  vanilla Haagen-Dazs, and Grey Goose vodka. Sounds like a party. Food Network Star Ree Drummond doesn’t   hold back about what she doesn’t like. When  it comes to bananas, Drummond has three words: “Abhor, loathe and recoil.”

Drummond has developed a few banana  recipes for her fans over the years,   but they are not her favorite. When asked about  her perfect dish by Design and Living Magazine,   she immediately took a shot at the yellow fruit. “Oh gosh, well again, if it doesn’t  have bananas. I don’t like bananas.  

I like to drive that point home.” There’s not much to hate about green   bell peppers. They’re like lettuce — crisp  and crunchy without any strong taste. But   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.” Many chefs love spicy food with bold flavors, “BAM! That’s a little ‘bam’ right there.” … but not everyone can get on board. Chef Katie   Lee told the Food Network that  she just can’t handle wasabi.

“I love spicy food, so I’m not sure why I have  this aversion to wasabi, but I really detest it.” While Lee holds the wasabi, she’s up for  other spicy bites, noting that she keeps   hot sauce in her purse, just like Beyoncé. Some people think pineapple pizza is the perfect  

Blend of sweet and savory. Chef 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.

“Let’s have ten of the … pepperonis?” “Pineapples!”  “How many pepperonis?” “You don’t put f***ing pineapple on a pizza!”   Ramsay doesn’t just hate pineapple pizza. He  also won’t do grits or an American Thanksgiving   favorite: deep fried turkey. A friend in  Los Angeles convinced him to try it, and …

“And it was f***ing disgusting.” “Oh, it’s so good!”  “Dry turkey… there’s a reason why  we only eat that bird once a year.”   When chefs don’t like certain foods,  they have to decide if they are still   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. She told People, “I don’t like coconut. I may have one coconut  recipe in all the recipes I’ve ever written.”   Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern told  People that even though he enjoys some  

Of the strangest foods on the  planet, he can’t do raw cookie   dough — and some other perfectly normal  foods, including oatmeal and walnuts. “Raw cookie dough. Won’t eat it. Can’t stand it.”  “I love fermented walrus anus, so  I get to not like some things.” Fair enough!

“You gotta love this kind of thing.  ‘Cuz it’s kinda like eating sand.” One of the most famous celebrity chefs had one of  the most widespread food aversions. That’s right,   Julia Child could not abide cilantro.  The fact that this opinion is so common  

Partly comes down to genetics. According to  a genetic survey from researchers at Cornell,   a distaste for cilantro has to  do with the presence of the gene   OR6A2. This gene is related to aldehyde  chemicals, which are also found in soap,   which is why some people who don’t like  cilantro claim that it tastes soapy.

Child spent much of her career living in  France, where it would’ve been unlikely   for her to come across cilantro, which is far  more common in Mexican or Indian cuisines. But   she also had an aversion to arugula,  a peppery salad leaf that she would’ve  

Been far more likely to come across in her  travels in France or neighboring Italy. As   she told Larry King in a 2002 interview,  she would never order it, as she admitted, “I would pick it out if I saw  it and throw it on the floor.”

But aside from these two greens, Child had a  rather adventurous palate. As she told King, “If it’s properly cooked and properly  served, I can’t think of anything I hate.” Ina Garten has quite a bit in common with  Julia Child. They’re both Francophile cooks  

Who had very successful, non-food-related  careers before turning to the kitchen.   Child developed shark repellent for  the agency that would become the CIA,   while Garten was a budget analyst for the  Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Furthermore,   both ladies have absolutely adorable and  adoring husbands to spoil with their rich,  

Buttery cooking. And both of them hate  cilantro. As Garten told Time Magazine in 2017, “I just won’t go near it.” And that’s not the only thing  Garten won’t eat, as she also noted, “I’m not big on things with eyeballs. And foam.”

That sounds all well and good, because unless  you’re buying whole fish or dining in a   Michelin-starred restaurant, it’s unlikely you’ll  come across eyeballs in your meal. But there is   one common food item that this cook who’s so  famous for telling people that “store-bought  

Is fine” cannot abide: pre-grated Parmesan  cheese. And honestly, she has a point. Not only   is it highly suspicious when a dairy product is  shelf-stable, but the FDA found in 2016 that some   brands of shaker cheese were cutting the product  with cellulose, also known as sawdust. Woodsy  

Aromas in wine are one thing, but when it comes  to actual wood in your cheese, we’ll have to pass. “Are they made of … wood?” One of the United States’ favorite sandwich  fillings is a bit more divisive abroad. Indeed,   peanut butter confuses the  heck out of most non-Americans,  

Which is clear enough during a cursory glance  on Twitter. As one person tweeted in 2019, “Americans? You mean the people who think a   peanut butter and jelly sandwich is an  acceptable thing to eat for a meal?” Meanwhile, another went so far as to posit,

“Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are  proof all americans have brain worms.” One foreigner who really can’t stand  peanut butter is Austrian super chef   Wolfgang Puck. Despite living in the U.S.  since the 70s, he’s never gotten on-board   with this nostalgic American classic, as  he explained to The Daily Meal in 2013,

“I don’t eat peanut butter! I don’t know  why I have no taste for peanut butter,   but we have Nutella, which is  a chocolate hazelnut paste.” Nutella is far sweeter and much more  of a dessert than a sandwich spread,   so it’s not hard to see where Puck is coming from.

Sometimes, a food trend takes on a life of its  own. Such is the case with cauliflower rice,   which began its rise to fame in the  wake of a surplus of low-carb diets.   Fast forward a few years into this trend,  and bags of these pellets have made their  

Way into the likes of Trader Joe’s.  But for Italian-American celebrity   chef Giada De Laurentiis, this is a very  unwelcome addition to the culinary scene. During a 2021 appearance on the Milk Street  Radio podcast, she chatted about her new book,  

While also taking a moment to focus on  cauliflower. As she writes in her book,   it’s having its, quote, “Hollywood  moment” thanks to its neutral flavor.   While cauliflower is indeed versatile, and de  Laurentiis celebrates it for being something  

Plain enough that kids will eat, she isn’t  a fan of its riced form. As she explained, “Right now, cauliflower rice  is having its heyday. I wish   it would go away soon, because it’s gross to me.” She then made her feelings  unmistakably clear, as she insisted,

“I f—ing hate it. I don’t like  cauliflower rice, Okay? Leave me alone!” Rachael Ray is nothing if not approachable  in her style and palate, as she leans into   shortcuts like pre-shredded cheese to help  dinner get on the table fast. But despite her  

Gregarious personality and humble attitude,  there are a few things she just can’t stand. It wasn’t until recently that she  revealed her dislike of cooked salmon,   an aversion that she shares with her  husband John. She likes raw salmon,  

But the cooked version just isn’t her bag. It’s  not quite as bad as her loathing of mayonnaise,   but it’s still significant nonetheless.  Enough so that we sure won’t be serving   her any grilled salmon if she ever  comes around our place for dinner!

Durian is a divisive food, with a pungent  aroma that even led Singapore’s public transit   authorities to forbid the fruit from subways  and buses. Foodies from 17th-century missionary   Jacques de Bourges to New York Times journalist  Thomas Fuller have waxed poetic about this South  

Asian fruit, which hides a creamy-textured treat  beneath a spiky exterior. As Fuller put it, “You’ll experience overtones of hazelnut,  apricot, caramelized banana and egg custard.” He also proclaimed, “There is no other fruit like it.” But for others, that uniqueness  isn’t exactly a positive. Late  

Foodie Anthony Bourdain reportedly  once said that after eating durian, “Your breath will smell as if you’d been  French-kissing your dead grandmother.” And Food Network star Chef Bobby Flay isn’t  a fan either, as he told People Magazine, “It’s awful. I don’t want to be around it.”

On Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Guy Fieri  seems to like pretty much everything he   sinks his teeth into, from crocodile  burgers to a three-pepper hot sauce   so spicy it could cook raw chicken.  In fact, he has a policy of keeping   things he doesn’t like to himself. As  he explained to The Hollywood Reporter,

“If I don’t like the food,  you won’t see it on my shows.” But there is one particular food that  this spiky-haired chef really can’t stand,   and that would be eggs, although this wasn’t  always the case. He in fact used to love eggs,   and as he confessed in an  interview with Extra Crispy,

“A fried egg sandwich with processed  cheese on white bread when I would   go to my friend’s house was the  greatest thing in the world.” But then at around the age of 10,  he had a revelation. As he put it,

“I came to a very clear understanding of  how chickens grow — when we opened the egg.” As Fieri recalled, the shell cracked to  reveal, not a blood spot, but an entire   chicken. But this actually wasn’t the experience  that made him swear off eggs. As he explained,

“That didn’t really freak me out. You  know what it was? It’s that I had a   bad hard-boiled egg. It was the chalky yolk.” Considering this backstory, it remains  pretty clear that you probably won’t   see any boiled eggs on Diners,  Drive-Ins and Dives anytime soon.

In a world where toxic chefs are being  exposed seemingly all the time, Emeril   Lagasse still seems like a genuinely good guy.  As he noted in a 2011 interview with Grub Street, “There’s enough drama in the real world, I  really stay out of it in the food world. I  

Find it to be a huge waste of time […] There’s  no room for that kind of nonsense in my life. If   I’m confronted with negativity, all I can think  is, ‘You can’t be everything to everybody.'” It’s perhaps no surprise then that if Lagasse  has nothing bad to say about any person,  

Then he has nothing bad to say about any  food either. And that’s true for the most   part. He told Grub Street that he doesn’t  consider himself a food snob, as he noted, “I can go to any regular  restaurant and find good about it.” However, he does draw the line  somewhere, as he admitted,

“My children will never, ever eat at fast-food  restaurants. It’s strictly not allowed.” Nigella Lawson is the textbook definition  of low-key when it comes to cooking. The   Domestic Goddess is known for taking viewers  along as she seeks a sweet midnight snack   while wearing pajamas and for demonstrating  non-traditional cooking methods. She even  

Proudly leans on a much-maligned kitchen  tool despite her bizarre pronunciation. “But I still need a bit of milk full fat,  which I’ve warmed in the ‘meecro-wah-vay.'” Lawson’s lack of pretension is perhaps what has  led to her aversion to a particular kitchen tool:  

The ramekin. Maybe she thinks it’s too fussy, or  maybe, as she’s indicated on Twitter, she just   doesn’t like the way the word sounds. But to her  credit, her issue isn’t so great that she can’t   clamor for a chocolate chip cookie dough pot.  And honestly, we get it. They look awesome. Maybe  

She’d be okay with mixing up a meecro-wah-vay’d  chocolate mug cake in a ramekin as well? Gordon Ramsay has long been known for his  hot-headedness. Indeed, he’s made a whole career   out of it. So it was really no surprise that he  didn’t hold back regarding plant-based diets. When  

Someone asked him on Twitter in 2016 if he was  allergic to anything, he quipped, “Vegans.” And it   turns out that he’s got a history of not exactly  being friendly to vegetarians. As he once said, “If one of my daughters’ boyfriends  turns out to be vegetarian,   I swear to God I’d never forgive them.”

Ramsay has also joked about  what he would do if one of   his own children adopted the diet. As he put it, “My biggest nightmare would be if  the kids ever came up to me and said,   ‘Dad, I’m a vegetarian.’ Then I would sit  them on the fence and electrocute them.”

But Ramsay has been eating his words lately. He’s  rolled out vegan items at his own restaurants, and   he even told TikTok that he was, quote, “turning  vegan.” And when Piers Morgan had the audacity to   critique the vegan roast at Ramsay’s London-based  Bread Street Kitchen, the chef pulled no punches.

“So, Piers Morgan is now a food critic.  Go and f–k yourself. Seriously? Really?”