The Big Picture

Chef Carla returned to
Top Chef
as a guest judge, enjoying the experience after being away for years.
Carla had a partnership with Quaker Oats, viewing oats as an ingredient and exploring its versatility in recipes.
Chef Carla discusses spring oat recipes, her show
Chasing Flavor,
and more in an interview with Collider.

Chef Carla Hall first appeared on American TV screens in season five of Top Chef. Her light and quirky personality endeared her to reality viewers. She returned to the series as a contestant in the eighth season, which featured chefs from prior seasons who were fan favorites. Life post-Top Chef led to cookbooks and regular appearances as a host and judge on various Food Network shows. She’s a regular host of several seasonal baking shows like the Halloween Baking Championship, the Thanksgiving Baking Championship, and the Holiday Baking Championship. She is now a true household name, and the years of Food Network appearances led her to get her own passion project, Chasing Flavor, which premiered in February 2024 on Max. The series shows Carla traveling all over the world, tracing the origins of popular dishes in mainstream cuisine while getting in-depth cultural knowledge from the cooks in those various countries.

In addition to her television appearances, Carla is heavily involved with philanthropy. She is currently a participant in Favorite Chef, a competition in which home chefs use social media to promote themselves as cooks and their personal recipes. The winner of the competition gets a feature in Taste of Home magazine, and other participants can potentially win an opportunity to cook with Chef Carla herself, complete with a trip to meet her and all expenses paid. The people voting can purchase votes, the proceeds of which benefit the James Beard Foundation. In addition to Chef Carla’s participation in Favorite Chef, she is also working in partnership with Quaker Oats, introducing multiple recipes and other ways to use oats in everyday cooking and food prep. Collider spoke with Chef Carla about spring recipes using oats, as well as her recent return to Top Chef as a judge.

Top Chef A reality competition show in which chefs compete against one another in culinary challenges and are a judged by a panel of food and wine experts, with one or more contestants eliminated each episode.Release Date March 8, 2006 Cast Padma Lakshmi , Tom Colicchio Seasons 21

Chef Carla’s Return to ‘Top Chef’ Put Her On the Other Side of the Table
Image via Bravo

Chef Carla was featured on the current season of Top Chef as a guest judge during a cheese-focused challenge. When asked about what it felt like to return to the series after being away for many years, Carla said: “It was so much fun. They asked me to come back for years and the timing didn’t work. So it was really nice to be there with Kristen [Kish]’s debut as the new host. And just to be on the other side, quite frankly.” After participating in seasons six and eight as a chef vying for the prize, one can only imagine how good it felt to be there as a judge. A recap from Reality Blurred of the episode stated that Chef Carla’s return was the “cherry on top of Top Chef’s fried ball challenge.”

The author also said: “I wish we would have had more of this time, too, just because of the look they gave others when talking to Kenny about his crab salad with Gorgonzola cheese. Carla is great as a judge on Food Network, but those shows have rigid formats that don’t allow for moments like those on Top Chef.” It was clear that Carla was a welcome presence, and hopefully the timing will align in the future for her to come back more often.

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She also enjoyed watching the challenge. She shared, “It was really fun to watch how you can take a single ingredient, in that case cheese, and show the different things to do with it. Even though a lot of people did croquettes. Thinking of the challenge on Top Chef also reminded her of the partnership she currently has with Quaker Oats. “That’s how I think about oats,” she said. “It’s an ingredient to me. It’s not porridge in a box or a canister. It’s an ingredient. So, how much can I push it to do different things?” Carla has a lot of unique ways to use oats in various recipes, showcasing some of the samples during her conversation with Collider in her kitchen. This particular ingredient also has personal relevance for Carla. She shared, “I was thinking of my grandmother. She was the person that brought me into this world of oats.”

Watch the full interview with Collider above to hear more about Carla’s spring oat recipes, her thoughts on the future of Chasing Flavor, and more. Top Chef airs Wednesday nights at 9 P.M. ET on Bravo. Episodes are available to stream the next day on Peacock. Watch on Peacock