- Hey, I'm Gail Simmons and this is
everything I eat in a day.
The first thing I do when I wake up every morning
is pretty unsexy.
I have to take a pill for my thyroid
that I have to take every single morning of my life.
It prohibits me from eating
for 30 minutes after I take it.
So I always make sure that I take the pill
the second I wake up
and the first 30 minutes of my day,
I do the getting dressed, showering, brushing my teeth.
So that 30 minutes go by and then I can eat breakfast.
Breakfast is sort of different every day.
It depends on where I am in the world.
If I'm on location, shooting Top Chef or Top Chef Amateurs,
breakfast is obviously very different
than if I'm home cooking for my family.
What ends up happening is if I don't eat breakfast,
I'm super starving by the time we start shooting.
And that means I eat way too much,
too quickly from all the contestants dishes
and end up not feeling so great.
So breakfast in the morning, when I'm on location
is something healthy and substantial,
but that's not going to weigh me down.
Poached eggs with sauteed greens, some avocado,
or maybe even a salad with a poached or fried egg on top.
Sometimes I'll have something like oatmeal
with fresh fruit or berries.
You know, something that will give me
a good start to the day
and, always drink coffee.
I'm not a snob about coffee.
In the morning, it's more about getting it in my hand
and down my gullet than being super picky.
But if I have my choice,
my favorite coffee is an Americano.
So an espresso with hot water, so it's long
with some steamed, regular whole milk on top.
If I'm home in Brooklyn with my kids,
breakfast looks very different.
My kids really love breakfast.
We eat a lot of eggs in our house.
My daughter's favorite breakfast
that she sort of takes credit for creating
is her own recipe for an olive omelette.
That's her favorite thing.
Olives are one of her favorite foods in the world.
And she loves in the morning
to make scrambled eggs
with sliced green olives in them.
It is actually really savory
and delicious in a healthy way
for her to start the day.
I also make waffles a lot in my house for my kids,
not so much pancakes.
I think my children might be the only two children
in the world who don't love pancakes,
but we also make a lot of fried eggs over-easy eggs.
My kids call them flip eggs.
We make on the weekends long leisurely brunches.
Sometimes I'll make baked eggs
or shakshouka eggs like stewed
in a spicy harissa tomato sauce
or a big frittata.
And I'll throw in all the vegetables
I have in the fridge.
In a typical day, if I'm on location, shooting Top Chef,
the next thing I eat is the food
from that day's elimination challenge.
We usually time our challenge
so that it is in and around lunchtime.
And that becomes my lunch for the day.
And it's often on location.
So we're outside
at a beautiful venue somewhere,
eating with a bunch of guest chefs or diners.
It's often really delicious.
At this point, after 15 years of doing top chef,
even the worst food that our chefs cook,
I'm pretty excited about.
People always ask,
how do you possibly eat all that food
and judge it fairly?
Well. The answer is I don't finish everything.
We all make sure though that we have
two or three bites from every plate,
tasting the individual components,
and then also the dish,
as it eats as a whole
to determine the proper cooking techniques,
the doneness and what just tastes
the most delicious.
And that usually is my lunch on set.
If I'm home in New York,
my lunch is decidedly different.
I try to make big batches of food in advance
so that when lunch hits and I'm hungry
and I'm in the middle of working,
I can just throw things together quickly,
but sometimes it also requires for me
to get up and get out of my house.
For the last year and a half working from home,
if I don't stop and take a walk in the middle of the day,
the day will go by and I have not left my office.
So I often use lunch as an excuse to get outside,
go for a walk and grab something
like a salad or a sandwich
from a local restaurant near my house.
Snacks are kind of a big deal in my life
because I love them.
And my kids are big snackers too.
When I'm on set for top chef,
the craft services table is very dangerous.
There's a few snacks that I always gravitate to,
Tom Colicchio and I joke that
we share a love for black licorice and beef jerky.
I love black licorice.
It is a weakness of mine.
I grew up with a father from South Africa
and he grew up eating a lot of salty,
sort of Dutch and Swedish black licorice,
not the red uber sweet kind to me.
That's not black licorice at all.
I like chewy black real licorice.
At this point, the people who work the craft service
and snack table on set know that I love it
and always have it on hand.
Same goes for beef jerky.
My father from South Africa
grew up with a kind of play on
beef jerky called Biltong.
Biltong is dried, salted,
cured meat that is chewy and savory
and so satisfying. And I love it.
Other snacks that I love,
I'm kind of a popcorn addict.
Spray it very lightly with a neutral oil
or even a little bit of butter,
and then toss it with furikake,
which is a Japanese seaweed and sesame blend.
And it's so delicious, a little bit briny.
We also do things like chili powder
and sometimes we'll do
a little like salt and vinegar powder.
That to me is sort of a Canadian thing.
I grew up putting salt and vinegar
on my French fries and love salt and vinegar chips,
which is also a crazy snack and weakness of mine.
I will eat a salt and vinegar chip, no matter what,
although I try not to keep them around
because I can't control myself.
A few ingredients that I always have on hand
that I know if I have in my fridge,
I can kind of make anything with,
big hunk of Parmesan cheese,
lots of citrus, whether it's like lemons, limes, oranges,
some fresh herbs and eggs.
I can sort of eat three meals
just every day made from those ingredients.
It doesn't hurt if I have
a little champagne on the side,
try to keep that in the fridge.
And then just a really solid pantry
of good quality spices.
Three things in my life that I don't love.
One, root beer.
I mean, I don't come across it that much,
but anything with the flavor of root beer
just makes me cringe.
It's like chalk on a blackboard.
Black beans, totally irrational.
And I'm sorry if this offends people,
I love all beans, every kind of bean and legume.
Black beans, I had a very bad reaction.
The other thing that I kind of don't love is veal.
I've just never really loved the texture.
It's sort of mental because I am an omnivore
in every other way, but veal has just to me,
been filed under the category of unnecessary meat
and I kind of avoid it.
I live in New York, so obviously
I live there for the food,
but everywhere I go and travel,
I love to explore and eat
some of my favorite American food cities
are new Orleans, LA, Charleston,
I even love Philadelphia.
I think it's a really up and coming
interesting place to eat.
In terms of the world, I mean, I could go on forever,
but I'd start with Tokyo, Paris, Singapore, Montreal,
one of the best food cities in the world.
I don't have a typical dinner.
It really depends again on where I am,
what I'm eating when I'm craving
my travels that have been on, what's inspiring me.
I try to cook and really big batches
a few times a week so that we have leftovers.
I believe in leftovers.
Let me just say that if you don't believe in leftovers,
I am suspicious of your eating habits.
A few simple dinner ideas
that I make with the kids all the time
are classic things like a big whole roast chicken.
I have this recipe I got from a friend
that is sort of a Greek style, roast chicken.
It's a whole chicken that I rub in olive oil,
butter, time, other herbs if I have them,
lots of paprika, salt and pepper,
tons of lemon juice.
And I set it over baby potatoes
that roast and get all that delicious flavor
from the spices and the chicken fat
and the drippings as it cooks.
My kids go crazy for the potatoes.
And then we have a whole chicken
that we can't eat for a night or two,
or even eat for lunch the next day as well.
Yes, I definitely have a sweet tooth,
but I definitely don't eat dessert every night,
but one thing that I will always eat
and I do have a little weakness for
is just a good square of really high quality,
dark chocolate.
And often just one piece of like 70% or more
dark chocolate will totally satiate my craving
for sweets because it's also a little bit tannic
and makes my mouth pucker,
but also gives me that hit
of chocolate that I need.
And that's everything I eat in a day.
Thanks so much for watching
and make sure to check out Top Chef Amateurs on Bravo.