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10/14: Ted Allen at Taste of Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is a story I wrote for Monday’s paper about Ted Allen (“Top Chef,” “Iron Chef America,” “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy”)
ABOVE: Ted Allen offers up a wonderful shrimp dish for a fawning audience. CREDIT: Rodney Ho
“Queer Eye,” the Bravo surprise breakthrough hit makeover show earlier this decade, is about to bid the world adieu for good in a few weeks, and cast member Ted Allen is cool with that.
“I don’t want to wax people’s backs for the rest of my life,” Allen joked over coffee outside of Dolce before doing a food demonstration Saturday for Mondavi wines at Taste of Atlanta in Atlantic Station.
At the same time, the New York food and wine expert is proud of what “Queer Eye” (which was originally called “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) accomplished during its moment in the zeitgeist, enabling the world to see gay people in an entertaining yet nonthreatening light.
“The show defused a lot of tension over gay issues without getting political,” he noted. “Little grandmas in Des Moines would watch. High school boys picked up pointers to impress girls. Military people and police officers were fans.”
And for people like Mike Tropp, a 28-year-old Atlanta financial analyst, the show helped him while he was coming out a few years ago to his family. “The show really made a difference in my life,” he told Allen after the AJC interview. Later, Tropp said, “it was really a way for my family and I to bridge that gay-straight gap and opened a dialogue between me and my parents.” (Tropp later hung out with Allen at Wet Bar Saturday night.)
Ironically, Allen hated the show’s name given the controversial nature of the word “queer.” “One of the funniest things early on was watching Matt Lauer try to wrap his mouth around the words ‘Queer Eye,’ “ he said. “To this day, I don’t think my mom likes the name but she likes the show.”
Although “Queer Eye” is no longer the big hit it once was, it created “the Queer Eye unified field theory,” Allen said, meaning all subsequent Bravo shows from “Project Runway” to “Kathy Griffin” fell under at least one of five subject areas the show delves into: fashion, food, beauty, design and pop culture.
And for Allen himself, “Queer Eye” turned him into a high-demand personality, helping him nab book deals and gigs as a judge on both Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” and Bravo’s “Top Chef” as well as host of a PBS show “Uncorked: Wine Made Simple.” He’s currently in production in Chicago for season four of “Top Chef,” which features at least one Atlantan. He can’t say much about the upcoming cycle but promises there’ll be plenty of fun characters.
And while in Atlanta, Allen said he grabbed dinner at Rathbun’s Friday night after meeting Kevin Rathbun during a recent taping of “Iron Chef America.” He sampled a delicious shrimp and okra dish, carpaccio with parmesian, salmon croquettes, beef strip steak and a super crispy flat pizza with proscuitto and gorgonzola.
“It was,” Allen said, “off the hook.”
Comments
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By question
October 15, 2007 9:56 AM | Link to this
ok-is Kathy Griffin Queer? she is really funny..won’t make any difference. I jsut thought it odd that she was married and now she is on the Bravo channel. Anyone know?
By stacy
October 15, 2007 12:17 PM | Link to this
She’s not gay, but she has a HUGE gay following. Kinda like Liza Minnelli.
And she divorced her barely-employed husband because he was basically leeching off of her and spending lots of $$$ that she didn’t know about.