\n<\/p>\n
Carla Hall\u2019s tarot card reading was running long. Astrology, numerology, psychics, the Chinese zodiac \u2014 she\u2019s open to all manner of metaphysical messaging.<\/p>\n
I slipped off my shoes in the foyer of her century-old house in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, D.C., out of respect for a recent million-dollar gut renovation. Then I went to wait in her airy kitchen, which happens to have the most expertly arranged, hand-labeled spice drawer I have ever encountered.<\/p>\n
Ms. Hall finally bounded down the stairs with news from the reading. \u201cOh, my God,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was so good. All stars point to \u2018this is your year.\u2019 \u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Indeed, Ms. Hall seems to be everywhere. She\u2019s selling $88 carrot cakes and nesting bowls decorated with okra flowers from her Sweet Heritage<\/a> line on QVC. She made croquettes from Doritos at the Super Bowl\u2019s Taste of the N.F.L<\/a>. event. She is luminous in a recent People magazine spread<\/a> marking her 60th birthday, which arrives in May. (She\u2019s a Taurus.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And of course, she\u2019s on TV, the medium that made her a food star almost from the moment she was introduced to the world as \u201ckooky Carla\u201d<\/a> in the fifth season of \u201cTop Chef<\/a>\u201d in 2008. This year, she\u2019ll judge Food Network baking championships, appear on \u201cBeat Bobby Flay<\/a>\u201d and serve as a guest judge when \u201cTop Chef<\/a>\u201d returns in March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her biggest splash is \u201cChasing Flavor<\/a>,\u201d the first show in which she\u2019s not the wacky sidekick but instead the authoritative star and an executive producer. The show, six episodes of which were released this month on Max, is another entry in the Anthony Bourdain-influenced food-travel genre.<\/p>\n Say what will about the generosity of the universe, but you\u2019ve got to hustle if you want to make it big. As much as she relies on the metaphysical, Ms. Hall is a grinder who has surfed a string of setbacks to become an unlikely star<\/a> in the celebrity cooking firmament \u2014 a Black woman who has let her hair turn gray and uses her platform to share some unpopular opinions.<\/p>\n A theater kid from a middle-class neighborhood in Nashville, Ms. Hall pinballed her way up from an accounting job to modeling to running sandwiches to doctor\u2019s offices. She has navigated dead ends and disappointments, including a much-hyped Brooklyn restaurant that flopped<\/a> and the abrupt cancellation in 2018 of \u201cThe Chew,<\/a>” a show where she made a fifth of what her male co-stars did and worried almost daily that she would be fired.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The hits she\u2019s taken, both public and private, would have laid out most people. To her, they were gifts from a universe that does things for you, not to you.<\/p>\n \u201cI am constantly looking for why something happens,\u201d she said. \u201cI may not know in the moment. I may not even know in five years. But I\u2019m constantly asking myself, why did I experience this?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Michael Symon<\/a>, a Midwestern chef who grew close to Ms. Hall during their time on \u201cThe Chew,\u201d said she is the most curious person he has ever met. \u201cEveryone I know was born with a fear of failing except Carla.\u201d<\/p>\n With a face as malleable as Lucille Ball<\/a>\u2019s and a body honed by dance and yoga, Ms. Hall is a physical humorist who never passes up an opportunity for a laugh. When she tripped<\/a> while running across the stage as host of the 2018 James Beard awards ceremony, she played it up by going into a pratfall<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018Engage the core and just go down,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cFall like a 2-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s been polishing her fashion sense since her teens. She makes good use of her height (she\u2019s 5-foot-11, but calls herself \u201csix-feet presenting\u201d) and what she calls her face art \u2014 an ever-rotating pair of statement eyeglasses she selects from a collection of some 75 she keeps in a glass case.<\/p>\n Some celebrities seem to have a force field that repels spontaneous fan interaction. Not Ms. Hall, whose entire vibe is accessibility.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to have personal time with her, we have to be in an isolated space,\u201d said her sister, Kim Macedo, a fifth-grade teacher who lives in Olney, Md. When they took their mom, Audrey Hall, out for Mother\u2019s Day in Nashville last year, fans came to the table in a steady stream.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen her slight even one person,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n Ms. Hall credits her father, George Morris Hall, with her comedic timing. She also recalls that he was a heavy drinker who beat her mother. Her parents married and divorced twice, the second time when she was 7.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After Ms. Hall saw the musical \u201cBubbling Brown Sugar<\/a>\u201d at age 10, her mother enrolled her in a theater group, the perfect move for a tall, quirky girl. \u201cTheater saved me from being bullied,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By 17, she was sure her future was at Boston University\u2019s school of theater. She didn\u2019t get in, so she followed her sister to Howard University.<\/p>\n Plot twist: She became an accountant. The work appealed to the same love of detail and order that compels her to arrange her cookbooks by color and make shopping lists that follow the store\u2019s layout, but her job as an auditor in an otherwise all-white PricewaterhouseCoopers office in Tampa, Fla., was a bad fit.<\/p>\n She abandoned that and followed some young models she met to Paris, relying on skills she\u2019d learned at college fashion shows and some low-stakes modeling she did for stores in Tampa.<\/p>\n Ms. Hall never thought twice about jumping from job to job, and often encourages people to quit if they\u2019re not happy. \u201cYou got everything that you\u2019re supposed to get out of that job and you\u2019re supposed to move on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After two years in Paris, she returned to Washington, but not before she had a food epiphany at the Sunday suppers assembled by other Black models, who cooked and talked about the food they grew up on. The meals cast new light on her grandmother\u2019s post-church smothered pork chops and cast-iron cornbread.<\/p>\n Ms. Hall carried that feeling into a career that underscores the importance of soul food, which she defines in part as Southern food cooked by Black people. \u201cSouthern food is like a hymn,\u201d she said. \u201cSoul food is like a Negro spiritual.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI spent so many years pushing it away,\u201d she said. \u201cBut then I understood that my connection to this food is my connection to my heritage and my story and my family.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Hall studied at L\u2019Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Md., and cooked in Washington hotel kitchens. She was running a catering company when her husband, Matthew Lyons (whom she\u2019d met on her first Match.com date<\/a>), started watching \u201cTop Chef.\u201d He knew his effervescent wife would be perfect for the show. She ended up losing in the final round, but created the basis of her brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her crucible was \u201cThe Chew,\u201d the food-centered daytime variety show on ABC that she hosted for seven years alongside the chefs Mario Batali and Mr. Symon, and the \u201cWhat Not to Wear\u201d star Clinton Kelly. The program was widely mocked by the food elite,<\/a> but drew nearly three million viewers at its peak.<\/p>\n Jessica B. Harris<\/a>, the scholar of African-diaspora food and a friend of Ms. Hall\u2019s, said people underestimate the importance of having a Black woman showing up every day in that many people\u2019s homes over the course of 1,500 episodes. \u201cThat is a degree of engagement and human awareness that I don\u2019t know any other African American in the country had at the time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But Ms. Hall felt out of her league and a little isolated. There were no Black producers or even a stylist who knew how to work with Black hair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018\u2018Oh my God, it\u2019s such a steep learning curve,\u201d she recalled. She asked for more training and pushed for more visibility, which helped her land the role as lead interviewer<\/a> when her idol, Carol Burnett, was a guest.<\/p>\n The pay was not equitable. Her male co-hosts earned more than she did, though she concedes that they had more experience. She couldn\u2019t get the producers to renegotiate her contract until the last year. When they did, her salary more than doubled, to about $950,000.<\/p>\n The couple decided that Mr. Lyons could leave his job as a government lawyer and become a teacher of meditation and yoga. Two weeks after he did, \u201cThe Chew\u201d was canceled. In the meeting where the producers told the cast, Ms. Hall couldn\u2019t resist a little comic relief. \u201cI got up said: \u2018Oh, wait. Hold on. I\u2019ve got to see if my husband can get his job back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There were several reasons<\/a> for the cancellation: Ratings had softened. The show was expensive. And Mr. Batali\u2019s planned exit was fast-tracked after several women<\/a> stepped forward to say that he had harassed or assaulted them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Hall has remained friends with Mr. Batali, and declined to join in<\/a> the public condemnations. She describes her decision as a nuanced one: She believes the women who came forward, and she saw violence against women in her own home growing up. But she never witnessed Mr. Batali\u2019s offenses, and refused to take on someone else\u2019s pain or anger. She called it a \u201cjudge not, lest ye be judged\u201d moment.<\/p>\n She has also fielded criticism for not speaking out more forcefully about racial injustice.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I tend to say things in jest, but I know exactly what I am saying so I make it a little easier for people to take,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to choose how activism happens for you, not how someone else thinks your activism should look.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, her bread and butter comes from the sale of cookbooks and cooking equipment, public appearances and a plethora of partnerships with companies like Hormel Foods<\/a>. She recently landed Quaker Oats<\/a>, the cereal her grandmother ate daily. \u201cThey\u2019ve been on my vision board for 20 years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For her new show, Ms. Hall was paid about $100,000 for all six episodes. But she got to travel to a half-dozen countries, tracing the roots of al pastor tacos to Lebanese shawarma makers who migrated to Mexico, and exploring the origins of ice cream in Turkey. She highlights Black contributions as often as she can, like those of Augustus Jackson, the 19th-century White House chef who developed eggless, American-style ice cream.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Hall is also writing a funny one-woman stage show with bits about menopause and how she keeps getting confused with the actor Tracee Ellis Ross, while conjuring another TV idea about remodeling her childhood home in Nashville that she hopes HGTV will pick up.<\/p>\n Back in her kitchen, after nearly three hours of talking, she opened a bag of tortilla chips and set out an array of salsa and dips in bowls from her Sweet Heritage line. The guacamole, she confessed, came from Whole Foods Market. She doctored it up with fresh avocados and oregano.<\/p>\n To be honest, I had expected something a little more \u2014 although, to be fair, she had planned to take me to a neighborhood Mediterranean restaurant. We got so caught up in conversation that we never made it out the door.<\/p>\n Ms. Hall reminded me that expectations are only disappointments waiting to happen. And that everything happens just the way it\u2019s supposed to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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