Ted Allen’s Hosting Duties On Chopped Almost Went To A Chihuahua

Had things developed differently, Ted Allen‘s recent James Beard award for TV hosting could have gone to a butler carrying a chihuahua.

In a longer interview with Grub Street NY, the host of Food Network’s Chopped revealed the baroque — and admittedly “trippy” — origins of his hit TV show:

We made a little pilot at the Culinary School at the Art Institute of New York in a ridiculously hot room that was never intended for air. The show was originally a lot more elaborate. It was set in a mansion, the host was a butler, the butler held a Chihuahua, and when a chef was chopped the losing dish was fed to the Chihuahua… I was not that host, which I’m okay with.

This pilot exists somewhere in the bowels of the Food Network, which deemed it “a little too weird,” according to Allen. No! It’s not weird! I am not kidding, I would watch the hell out of that show.  Nevertheless, they took the core conceit — ” Can you cook something beautiful out of these four incongruous ingredients or not?” — and managed to turn it into one of the most popular shows on the channel.

Though Allen spends the rest of the article discussing the new food movement and the process of shooting Chopped, we’ll always wonder whether he would work well with a chihuahua.

Allen is currently on tour promoting his newest book.

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