Chopped Castaways: Ted Allen Spills Tea on Dramas, Romances & Whats Next

Food Network has channeled its inner Survivor taking 12 chefs to a remote island for Chopped Castaways. The field thinned during the first two episodes when Sunny Moody and Cate Meade were the first eliminated. The remaining competitors continue to battle the elements, lean on their environment, and bare bones materials in hopes of winning $100,000.

Each installment the brave culinary souls are served up two rounds with the first providing immunity and the next pushing the limits in the dreaded Gauntlet eliminator. This tribal counsel of network staples Gabe Bertaccini, Maneet Chauhan and Marcus Samuelsson judge while Ted Allen hosts these hunger games. Just when Allen thought he had seen it all during his almost two decades working on the show, Chopped found new ways to level up.

Here the Emmy-winning master of ceremonies sets the table for what’s to come.

When Food Network came to you with this theme for Chopped, what were your initial thoughts?

Ted Allen: I thought, “Well, that is crazy. That is something we have definitely never done before.” My other thought was it’s a lousy February in New York City. The first rough winter we’ve had in three years. So, sure, I’ll go to a warm Caribbean island and shoot an eight-part series. We knew from the get-go it was going to be good. The casting was great. All 12 of those chefs are really good. They all have experience with survival skills and tactics. They were carefully picked for just those reasons. You take an atmosphere where the bones of Chopped are very much there. It’s 12 chefs competing and delivering the best food under difficult conditions. All we did was make the conditions way more difficult.

How did filming compare to other shoots you’ve been on? I feel this environment is conducive to a good bonding experience.

That’s such good insight because the bonding in this case was pretty immediate between the 12 of them. I think television loves to put people together and have conflict. That doesn’t really work with chefs because their natural instinct a hundred percent is to work as a team because you have to do that in a restaurant or the whole thing will fall apart. Even when your job is to compete against the other chefs you find ways to help one another. There is something really beautiful about that. To contrast this with other types of competitions we’ve done, we’ve shot outside before. The thing about weather on an island is it can change so rapidly.

We were shooting the opening of the show, and the weather was picture perfect. If you want a picture of paradise for what many of us imagine as paradise, it’s a beautiful white sandy beach with gorgeous palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze. That is what it was like. I’m looking at the camera saying, “Here on a tropical island amidst the harshest of conditions.” Of course, the conditions in that moment were paradise. As one of the contestants says in episode 2, the weather can change so fast. We found out that paradise very quickly became a rain lashed, windy, really difficult ordeal. When you’re cooking under live fire, that wind makes it especially challenging. They have to build fires with wood they collected themselves across the beach and try to keep them going. That’s a huge part of the challenge.

The Castaways pose with host Ted Allen.

Speaking of rain, that certainly played a role with what we’ve seen. What did you make of the first two weeks?

Everybody who comes to Chopped knows in their head all but one chef will be eliminated. That doesn’t really feel real until you see it happen. That’s the profound takeaway from the first two episodes. We saw two people get chopped. We heard the reasons why they were chopped. It’s educational when you hear what the judges say about why they chose one person over another.

It’s all information you can use going forward if you’re a competitor that didn’t make the cut. We still have plenty of people left to go. It’s kind of a glass of cold water to the face that, hey, we’re not kidding. This is the way it works and you need to step up and at the top of your game all the time. It’s very much a mental game as it is a physical one. Even with these challenges like swimming into the surf, which is extremely difficult as you’ll see in the next episode. I think the first episodes established the reality of the situation.

When it comes to the judging panel, how much do you say they take into account all they have to do to just get to even create their dish? Even before they prepare their meal there is so much that has to be done.

Absolutely. The judges and myself have a great deal of empathy for what these people are willing to put themselves through. We express that. We are people. We are nice people. We’re friendly people. The judges are empathetic. At the same time it’s their job as it always is to base their decision entirely on the quality of the food. Everything else goes away. Once you get to the chopping block all that matters is how this tastes.

The real challenge is did they focus on the four mystery basket ingredients. That’s where your attention needs to be. Did they celebrate those four ingredients or did they find some way to sneak them onto the plate? Marcus and Maneet and Gabe have many years of experience discussing those issues together. It is kind of the same thing each time they come to the table, but the challenges are always different. There are always these little nuances unique to each comparison between one plate and another plate. They are pros and get it done. They always get it done.

Did the judges enjoy filming this season?

We really lucked out because the weather where we were shooting was about 80 degrees and sunny for much of the time. I remember Maneet and I were walking around with Marcus, and he spontaneously ripped off most of his clothes and jumped in for a swim. We were all very happy to be there. Maneet doesn’t live in New York anymore and lives in a warmer climate now. But those of us from New York were especially grateful because we got two-feet of snow. I did not miss the two-feet of snow. I was here to shovel my walk like everyone else, but I did miss about 10 days of the cold and did not take that for granted. Even though I had to work.

Gabe Bertaccini, Maneet Chauhan and Marcus Samuelsson (Food Network)

It’s a hard job but someone has to do it.

That’s exactly how I felt.

What’s to tease with the challenges to come?

I have to take my hat off to the producers of this series because the challenges they come up with are really creative. Some of them are extremely difficult. It turns out it’s not as easy to shoot a blowgun as you would think. Winds became more of a factor than I had anticipated. You shoot it on a windy day. You’re shooting a blow dart at a target that is about 10 feet away. That doesn’t sound so hard, but if the wind catches the dart and sends it off course. That was one of the things they had to do to try to win the best mystery basket they could win.

You’ll see a consistent evolution of difficulty and variety in the challenges that should keep things interesting. The feedback from the first episodes was really strong. People are saying they are hooked and coming back for more. I think that comes down to the familiarity of Chopped, this survival-type component. It has a lot of universal appeal as a fun way to shake up this familiar format. I think the network wanted to do something special to bring us back for this season. I could tell from day one this would be good. By the time we got to the end, it’s a really good ending. I never spoil things, but I walked away from there really certain we had made something good.

Can we expect any romance brewing on the island? It looked like Paulette [Tejada] was crushing on James [Peck].

I don’t know if any romance blossomed. When we’re shooting it, the judges and I miss a lot of the action. Many of the challenges were done without any of us around. So I will have some surprises in that department. Just because of logistics, it’s not realistic for us to be around for all of that when we’re needed later in the day for our part of the action. I don’t know of any love connection. James is definitely crush worthy. My husband and I were talking about that last night. He is tall, handsome. I think he is British. He is smart, educated, and has a good job. Tall, blond, and handsome. What is not to like? I will be intrigued to learn if anything comes out, but if it does, our producers were right there to get it because that’s their job. We’ll find out.

The show has been on for a long time. As entrenched in it for so long, if you had your way, anything Chopped hasn’t done you’d like to see?

That’s an interesting question. What else would I like to see us do? The outdoor work is really challenging because of the weather, but that does make it more fun in a way. Now that we’ve done this in a beach environment…Well, I certainly wouldn’t want us to shoot in Alaska and have them build their own igloos or something. I think it would be fun to take this kind of competition and put it in different kinds of climates and scenery. Maybe a mountain based one, which is a kind of geography I really love. Maybe shoot something in The Rockies.

That would be really cool. You can have horse-related competitions, riding them of course. I used to do a lot of skiing. One time I went to the Food & Wine Festival in Colorado and wasn’t skiing because it was June. I did some horseback riding. There is a culture of cooking that comes with camping, being out west. That might be a really nice setting for a competition. It’s beautiful, scenic, and weather challenges unique to mountainous places. That would be a lovely one for me. Chopped: Aspen, sign me up.

Chopped Castaways, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Food Network