The Big Picture

Chef Carla Hall is involved in the Taste of the NFL program, which aims to tackle food insecurity and promote youth health and wellness.
Chef Carla shares her recommendations for incorporating Quaker oats into recipes and suggests making meatballs with ground oatmeal for a moist texture.
Carla’s new series, Chasing Flavor, explores the culinary roots and stories behind beloved American dishes, highlighting the cultural significance of food and honoring its creators.

When people think of Bravo, it’s easy to jump to Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, Below Deck, and all their other reality TV offers. Many forget that Top Chef is under the Bravo umbrella, which means many of the chef personalities known and loved by foodies everywhere are technically Bravo-lebrities. Chef Carla Hall first hit television screens across the nation on season 5 of Top Chef. Her personality shined throughout the reality competition, and she made it to the top three before being beaten out for the title by Hosea Rosenberg. She returned in the 8th season alongside other previous contestants in Top Chef: All-Stars, where she made it to the final four before being eliminated.

Since her time on Top Chef, Chef Carla has become a staple on food lover’s screens. She was a co-host for 7 years on The Chew alongside Chef Michael Symon, Clinton Kelly, and others. She currently acts as the co-host of Food Network’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Holiday Baking Championships. She has also written three cookbooks, Carla’s Comfort Food: Favorite Dishes from Around the World, Cooking with Love: Comfort Food That Hugs You, and most recently, Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration. She also wrote a children’s book called Carla and the Christmas Cornbread, which was inspired by her own childhood. Carla is also heavily involved in philanthropy and is a board member of Pajama Program, 4H, Helen Keller Internationa, and GENYOUth. GENYOUth is a non-profit dedicated to “helping school children thrive by living a well-nourished and physically active life.” Carla’s work with GENYOUth has led her to Superbowl LVIII, working in partnership with other celebrity chefs and Quaker Oats on Taste of the NFL, which featured legends in the NFL alongside some of the world’s most renowned chefs. Collider had the opportunity to speak with Chef Carla about Taste of the NFL, as well as her new Max series, Chasing Flavor.

Game Day Delights Serve a Purpose On ‘Taste of the NFL’

Taste of the NFL is a food celebration with a purpose. When asked about how she got involved with the program, Chef Carla said: “I’ve been involved with GENYOUth from the beginning. I was one of the founding board members, and it was because one of the boxes that I wanted to check was children and also dealing with food insecurity. And so, because GENYOUth is a youth health and wellness nonprofit, it was a perfect match for me. And then the fact that [I’m] the unofficial Quaker oats girl… I’ve been calling myself for decades. Quaker was on my vision board to work with, and here we are. My worlds have collided.” As the “unofficial Quaker Oats Girl,” Chef Carla also made recommendations on how to incorporate the healthy grain into any recipe. “Meatballs are a good snack because you can use oats. That’s the secret to my meatballs because [it makes] them very moist. So, I grind up the oatmeal; that’s the secret! They can be beef, chicken, pork, or turkey.”

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While she and other culinary greats like Andrew Zimmerman, Tim Love, Lasheeda Perry, and Mark Bucher host the Taste of the NFL in Vegas, people can easily have their own tasting event at home. Chef Carla said: “You need to do dips because dips are easy. You can do them ahead. You can do your dips a week out. So cold dips, any kind of bean that you have in your pantry like black-eyed peas, chickpeas, black beans, red beans, white beans– you can make some kind of a dip or hummus, right? Then I would say if you have sour cream and some kind of soup packet, you can make a dip, and then you can add in some kind of vegetables like your artichoke, your spinach, collard greens– you can make something that’s really interesting there.”

Chef Carla Hall Seeks Out History In ‘Chasing Flavor’

Chef Carla recently had a new series debut on Max. The series, Chasing Flavor, follows Chef Carla as she seeks out the culinary roots and stories of our favorite foods. The series goes beyond the simple question of, “Where does this dish come from?” and takes it to the next level. Chef Carla shared: “We take a beloved American dish and we trace it back to the cultures who had a hand in that dish. And it was all about giving people credit because so often these days, you know, you put up a recipe, and you put up a picture of people like a recipe [and people] don’t care about the history. They don’t care what it means to you. They just want a recipe, but food comes from people. And so the show is saying, ‘There is so much more to know about the dish than just eating it.’ There’s the culture there, the people, and you can’t separate them.”

The history of the food we eat is an equal part of human history, something many would not think about in this day and age. She also shared her goal for the series, saying: “I want people to look at this show with curiosity, like what they can learn about something that they have been eating and that they love, but also to honor the people who created these who sort of created that version of the dish.” The series dives into seemingly simplistic favorites, and discovers histories hidden behind them that one could never even imagine.

When asked about her favorite dish that was explored on the show, it was difficult for her to make a choice. She eventually settled on the story of the Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich. Chef Carla said: “I loved going back to Nashville and actually looking at hot chicken because when you’re from a place you take it for granted, and you just– you don’t really look at it from an intellectual perspective. You’re just in it, right? So, doing the hot chicken journey and talking to Miss Jeffries and the family who is involved– I learned so much more about Nashville [and] about them. So that was great, [and] that journey took me all the way to Ghana.”

Her story about the Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich has deep ties to Black History Month, as the majority of the enslaved kidnapped and brought to America during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade were taken from West African countries like Ghana and Nigeria. Being a Black American chef, Carla spoke to this as well. She shared: “When I think about our culture, Black culture, our language was taken. So, we don’t really have the language embedded in the food in our contributions. We don’t know what it is. So, part of this journey and part of this show is understanding what some of the culture [and] contributions were of African Americans… Barbecue, for instance! So [for] Virginia barbecue, you needed Europeans, you needed Indigenous Americans, and you needed the enslaved African people to bring you whole hog barbecue. It’s a trifecta. So again, it’s everybody’s story, right? But you can’t exclude one of those people.” The wonderful thing about Chasing Flavor is that even though it premiered on the first day of Black History Month, it travels through and honors a multitude of cultures throughout the world.

Chasing Flavor is currently streaming on MAX.

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