Kelly Choi is so hot right now
Kelly Choi, pictured with a chicken who asked to remain anonymous.
Everyone’s buzzing about Kelly Choi, who landed a job that many foodies, pop culture lovers and TV watchers envy. She is the host of Bravo’s new competitive cooking series, “Top Chef Masters.”
This spinoff from the original “Top Chef” series, which was wildly popular, will no doubt translate into big profits for the producers and for Bravo. However, even better than that is the fact that Kelly Choi’s show means lots of money will be going to deserving charity organizations.
Kelly Choi on the economy
Kelly Choi has been interviewed by many big-time and small-time publications recently. Of course, you can’t write an article nowadays without using the phrase “in this economy,” and interviews with Kelly Choi are no different. Here is a clip from her interview with Slashfood:
Why do you think this show matters in this economy?
Why not? Everybody loves food. The alternative is to cook at home and you can totally pick up tips. It’s a fun way — to be inspired by fun and passionate people — to cook at home.
Some of the budgets the chefs get for one meal on “Top Chef Masters” are bigger than payday loans, so using the same recipes they do might cost you money instead of saving it. Nonetheless, Kelly Choi makes a good point, that cooking at home is generally less expensive than going out, and that the show inspires people’s cooking.
Background on Kelly Choi
Before “Top Chef Masters” she hosted her own series called “Eat Out NY,” on which she picked restaurants to visit and cooked with chefs in New York. Someone saw her show, liked it, called her and asked her host “Top Chef Masters.” How could she say no?
Kelly Choi is 33, and before she was a TV show host she was a model. She was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in the suburbs of Richmond, Va.
Donating to charity
One of the important differences between “Top Chef” and “Top Chef Masters” is that “Top Chef Masters” pits already well-established, successful, famous-in-the-food-world chefs against each other. Because these chefs don’t need the money to open a restaurant, like the beginners who compete in “Top Chef,” the money goes to charity.
Quotable quote
Here’s another snippets I liked from Kelly Choi’s interview with Slashfood:
What was the best tip you took away from the show?
I won’t tell you who it was, but it was sauce of mustard and bananas. It was sweet and tangy and it was a nice thick sauce. Kind of bizarre, but I am totally going to use it the next time I cook. The chef who made it is a total mack daddy master chef and it was really good.
Tune in to watch Kelly Choi in action and find out which charity will get the dough Wednesday nights at 10 on Bravo.
First off, the woman is absolutely beautiful. Secondly, from what I’m reading, she has a lot of experience in the food industry. Put the two together, and BAM! Kelly Choi – the perfect host for Top Chef Masters.
Kelly CHOI pined after me and stalked me and my girlfriend at columbia J SCHOOL. CHOI IS A PSYCHO..BRAVO HAD NO MONEY TO HIRE A REAL HOST
Kelly Choi is awesome! I really mean it! Oh wait, it;s the internet! Look how easy it is to pose as someone else and bash someone for their success from the safety of my computer while I type online using a variety of screen names and say I’m a former classmate and/or co-worker!
Kelly choi is Void of any culinary comments that are substantive. I vote for dversity but this Choi woman rubs me the wrong way. She comes across way dumb and is she anorexic??
This is mostly really good news. Bravo is coming out with a new Top Chef show, which will “pit internationally famous chefs against each other.” Awesome! Except maybe for the host, Kelly Choi. We have problems with her, some of which may or may not be fair.
Kelly Choi is certainly credentialed – she’s hosted Eat Out NY on New York’s city-government run NYC TV (an episode rundown is here) and supposedly has a book due out in the spring called The 20 Most Delicious Dishes In New York, although a search for this book on Amazon finds nada. What is clear is that the 20 dishes are down from the 25 Choi intended to do a year ago.
Before we state our problems with Kelly Choi, let us state the somewhat obvious. Yes, she’s beautiful. Not Padma beautiful, but in the ballpark. Okay, now the issues, gleaned from watching Eat Out NY a lot:
1) She has a bunch of weird tics that she should have gotten rid of before she entered broadcasting – she repeats what people say, often says “uhhhh” when she can’t think of anything. Stuff like that. In the clip we’ll show you, after someone says an oyster is from British Columbia, she exclaims “B.C.!” for no good reason. Then when he says another oyster is from Prince Edward Island, she says “P.E.I.s!” Not sure what that adds, Kelly.
2) She often wears a long black vinyl coat that looks vaguely S&M -ish, but she totally wouldn’t do any S&M, because she seems kind of wholesome, and it’d clearly gross her out. False advertising!
3) Her taste in restaurants, and food for that matter, often leans toward the “pretty” or fancy rather than the gritty or “authentic.” This might have something to do with being a beautiful woman, so we’ll cut her some slack.
4) She’s fake bubbly. You know people like that? We just made her sound worse than she is, like she’s some horribly insincere person. She’s not. She actually seems really nice, and earnest. But she’s the type of person who would exclaim “That’s great!” when she means “that’s good.” You know? The sort of person who sometimes smiles because she’s got perfect teeth. Again, that sounded too mean. Honestly, if we met Kelly Choi in a bar we’d probably just spontaneously drool.
Look, why don’t you watch this clip from Eat Out NY and judge for yourself? On it, she coins the word “gi-gantuomous”!