Gail Simmons has been a fixture on television screens since she joined Top Chef in 2006.
Yet even her most ardent fans will realize they've only scratched the surface when it
comes to learning the untold truth of Top Chef judge Gail Simmons.
While attending Montreal's McGill University — alma mater to such famous Canadians as
William Shatner, Leonard Cohen and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau — Gail Simmons
began writing restaurant reviews for the McGill Tribune.
That experience, she told the Tribune years later,
"...gave me great writing experience and also gave me experience writing specifically in
the genre of food."
After graduation, she decided to pursue journalism.
Simmons landed an internship at a local magazine, and then became an editorial assistant at
a national newspaper.
She recalled,
"I found myself following around the food editor and asking him to let me write for
him, and slowly he let me write little stories here and there.
After about a year, I came to him and said, 'Well, this is what I really want to do.
How do I become a food critic or how do I become a food writer?'"
The advice he gave led her to what is now the Institute of Culinary Education, placing
her on a path leading to Top Chef.
“I didn’t mean to sort of start my one woman business, but, you know, it happened
really authentically, and I think that's why I've been able to have the success that I’ve
had.”
Born and raised in Toronto, Gail Simmons hasn't lived in her native Canada for some time.
In a chronicle of her daily life for New York Magazine's Grub Street, she opened up about
some only-in-Canada foods she misses.
These include Jamaican meat patties, she revealed.
"Toronto has a huge Caribbean community, so a patty was actually my middle-school snack."
Gail has expressed an affinity for Coffee Crisp snacks and ketchup-flavored chips.
She also shared her delight when a friend brought her an iconic Canadian candy called
Smarties.
She explained,
"Smarties are Canadian, and they're kind of like the equivalent of M&Ms — candy-covered
chocolates.
But you can't get them [in the U.S.], so my friend visiting from Toronto brought me a
container, and we cracked it open while we drank a bottle of Tempranillo rosé."
In 2012, Gail Simmons combined her twin talents for writing and cooking in Talking with My
Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater.
In the book, Simmons shares her personal story of how early aspirations to be a journalist
led her into the kitchen.
In an interview with Refinery 29, Simmons explained what inspired her to write a memoir,
saying
"I found that so many people — strangers, friends, journalists — always ask me the
same 20 questions about eating, cooking, judging food, how I got my job, and how I handle my
weight.
I realized the best way to answer them is by telling my story."
Gail Simmons told Grub Street her busy schedule left her limited time to work on her memoir.
To accomplish the goal she kept a strict schedule, writing for three to four hours per day, three
times a week.
That brief window of time, she explained,
"always included lunch.
But it was always rushed... so I sat with a very odd array of things.
Like half a turkey sandwich, a cut-up apple and a chocolate Popsicle.
Or a bunch of baby carrots, a thing of hummus and leftover Chinese takeout."
If that sounds like a fairly healthy array of snacks, it's reflective of Simmons' typical
diet.
In an interview about her book with the Denver Post, Simmons revealed that when she's not
on duty tasting culinary creations on Top Chef, she tries to eat sensibly.
She said,
"I'm almost exclusively vegetarian.
I eat tons of fruit and vegetables, lots of whole grains."
Gail Simmons first joined Tom Colicchio behind the Top Chef judging table when the show premiered
in 2006, with her performance on the show leading to more television opportunities.
In 2010, she was tapped to host spinoff Top Chef: Just Desserts, which focused on pastry
chefs creating sumptuous desserts.
Gail subsequently appeared on more Top Chef spinoffs, including Top Chef Duels, Top Chef
Masters and Top Chef Jr..
And in 2014, she starred in her own show, The Feed, for FYI Network, which was described
by The Hollywood Reporter as a, quote, "food comedy road show".
Asked jokingly if her goal is to have a show on every network, Simmons played along, saying,
"Yes.
I am systematically trying to get a show on every cable network in the universe.
The universe is a small goal.
I think it's really attainable."
In addition to Top Chef and its spinoffs, and other various TV appearances on American
television, Gail Simmons also has a side gig in her home and native land.
Since 2018, she's served as host of Iron Chef Canada for Food Network Canada.
The premise is pretty much identical to the U.S. version of Iron Chef, with professional
chefs competing against some of Canada's top celebrity chefs.
In addition, an actor known as "The Chairman" introduces a mystery ingredient at the start
of each episode that must be used by all the chefs in their dishes.
In an interview with Food Network Canada, Simmons outlined the various reasons she enjoys
her role on Iron Chef Canada, explaining that she gets to work alongside
"the best chefs in Canada and I also get to see how far the culinary world has come since
I left 20 years ago."
While Gail Simmons may have been born in Canada, she's a longtime resident of Brooklyn, New
York.
Her Brooklyn home is actually an old church that's been converted into luxury condos.
The post-WWII era church was repurposed into its present form seven years before she and
her husband bought it in 2011.
The couple oversaw a renovation in 2013.
She said of her 2,400-square foot, two-story unit,
"The outside of the building still looks like a church, with stained glass windows along
the sides and a garden courtyard in the center of it.”
Asked to single out her favorite room, Simmons' answer shouldn't be surprising.
Gail designed her kitchen herself, knowing it would be the room in which she'd spend
much of her time.
Having been deeply enmeshed in the New York City culinary scene since the late 1990s,
Gail Simmons has seen a lot of trendy food fads come and go over the years.
Asked by Us Weekly to pinpoint the one fad about which she's happiest to see fall by
the wayside, Simmons pointed to,
"monster, over-the-top food, like the rainbow unicorn sundae with the cotton candy on top.
I want to be able to eat and enjoy it and I can't really enjoy that stuff."
While ubiquitous kale and avocado might also be seen as food fads, that's not how Simmons
sees it.
She insisted that, quote, “Kale is legitimately not a trend, it's a green."
And while she conceded those particular items are overused, admitting, quote, "I could do
with a little less avocado in my life," she was adamant that kale and avocado
"are ingredients, they're not trends, and they're here to stay."
There have been numerous celebrity guest stars who've popped in to participate in Top Chef
over the years, including Oscar-winners Natalie Portman and Charlize Theron, Maroon 5 frontman
Adam Levine, and even Sesame Street favorite Elmo.
After rubbing elbows with all those A-listers at the Top Chef judging table, could Gail
Simmons possibly single out one star who left her in awe?
That took place when Top Chef welcomed iconic rock band Foo Fighters to the show.
As Simmons recalled, she was shocked to see how thrilled the band's frontman Dave Grohl
was to be there.
Simmons told Delish that the former Nirvana drummer was unable to contain his enthusiasm,
“I’m digging the yams, too, because they burnt the marshmallows.
You gotta burn the marshmallows, man!”
telling her excitedly that he couldn't believe he actually got to appear on Top Chef.
She exclaimed,
"I was like, I can't believe you're Dave Grohl for God's sake, like, are you kidding me?!
It was just a really great moment to realize how similar we all are."
Gail Simmons loves pickles — so much so that she wrote a veritable ode to the crunchy
cucumber-derived snack for a compilation entitled The 100 Most Jewish Foods.
Writing of her affection for pickles, Simmons explained that her father was the family's
primary pickle-maker.
She wrote,
"As far back as I can remember, full-sour dill pickles have been the single most important
food in my life.
There's no other flavor as satisfying, nor that defines my family and my Jewish heritage,
as perfectly as a pickle."
“One way that I do that, is to make pickles!
I love making pickles!”
There are, however, limits to Simmons' affection for the briny beauties.
She wrote,
"As far as I'm concerned, sweet pickles don't count in the category.
[I will] gladly accept any other salty, well-brined, and preserved vegetable..."
In an interview with Parade, Gail Simmons shared some of the key ingredients she always
keeps on hand inside her family's refrigerator, such as citrus, Parmesan, and eggs.
She also likes to stock her fridge with fresh fruit, quote, "in sync with the seasons".
She added,
"I love having things like Hood Cottage Cheese in my fridge that I know I can make 15 different
recipes with on a moment's notice."
She described a number of more interesting items to SheKnows: handmade Canadian maple
syrup flavored with bourbon; lemons that she "quick-preserved" in salt, olive oil and chili;
a customized bourbon-maple-barreled fish sauce; and Jamaican Pickapeppa sauce.
When TV viewers see the judges deliberating over a dish on Top Chef, Gail Simmons wants
them to know there's nothing staged about any of it.
She divulged,
"So, what you see at the Judges' Table is really what you get.
The only difference is that we talk for four hours and it's culled down to about eight
to 12 minutes, but we taste all the foods together like you see us do it in the challenge."
According to Simmons, producers discourage her and the other judges from interacting
too much before the judging, saying,
"We talk about every dish, the pros and cons.
It really becomes about not only understanding the fine-tuning of what went into cooking
and the intention behind every dish, but pulling apart the micro details to figure out which
dish is better or worse than the rest, because they're all pretty good these days."
Gail Simmons was almost entirely absent for Top Chef's 16th season, because she was pregnant
with her son Kole.
However, when Simmons appeared at a Top Chef event at Paleyfest in New York City in October
2018, she teased an appearance on the show before the end of the season.
She told Bravo’s The Daily Dish,
"I wasn't sure if I was gonna come back.
We really were playing it by ear every step of the way.
And our producer sort of said to me, 'Look, if you're feeling up to it and you want to
come down at any point, we're there’...
I felt like, 'You know what?
I can do this.
I'm gonna come for 24 hours, shoot one dinner.’"
After giving birth, she recalled thinking that
"it would really make me happy to get out and do this one thing for myself.
And I did and it was great, and then I went right back home and got back on the couch
with my baby boy."
Gail Simmons has never held back when it comes to speaking her mind about the cuisine she
judges, and the same holds true whenever she encounters casual sexism.
This was the case when she was interviewed by the Denver Post while promoting her 2012
memoir, and was asked,
"How do you balance eating for a living and looking good on TV?"
The interviewer, by the way, was female.
Simmons issued a pointed response, saying,
"Tom Colicchio never gets that question."
Speaking with MarketWatch, Simmons addressed why that seemingly innocuous line of questioning
rankled her.
"A question I get a lot is, 'How do you eat all that food?'
— meaning quantity of food, and not getting fat.
Interestingly, I have this conversation with Tom Colicchio often, and he doesn't get that
question as much as I (or other female chefs) do.
We're supposed to be much more concerned about how we look (than male chefs)."
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