Top judge This guy is in the winner’s circle

By Mary Alice Blackwell

Published: May 6, 2008

Ted Allen boarded a plane Tuesday to find out who will make the final cut on “Top Chef.”
He’s not telling. But the judge on the hit Bravo show was more than willing to dish the dirt on another contest. Allen, who is probably best known as the bespectacled food guru from the Emmy Award-winning “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” is going to be part of the “prize” in a new Alltel Wireless promotion, My Circle Reunion. 
“It’s a really neat thing,” Allen said. “The more I think about it the more I get excited about meeting the winners.”
It seems tailor made.
“I’m always talking to people about recipe ideas, entertaining and getting together with family and ways to do it affordably, seasonally and with great flavor,” Allen said. “So for Alltel to come up with a program where the people who use the calling circles can actually get a luxurious getaway for a whole group of their friends and family is really exciting to me.”
Alltel is going to rent a house in Key West or Palm Springs or Las Vegas for the reunion, and guess who’s coming to make dinner?
“They are going to fly these people in from all over the country and then we get to cook a big meal together,” Allen said. “That’s my favorite thing to do with friends — cook and sit out on the patio. I can’t think of a more fun thing to do. I’m not going to know these people, but by the end of the night I will. I just think it’s a really cool thing.”
Allen has made a cool career in food — including serving as a judge on “Iron Chef America” and
penning his own cookbook, “The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes.” His interest had its beginnings in his mom’s kitchen.
“My mother is from the South; I am the first Yankee in the family,” he said with a laugh. “She is a great cook, and she always encouraged us kids to cook with her. We would do simple stuff like cakes and burgers and pork chops.
“But it was really the journalism that got me into it more seriously.”
Since 1996, Allen has been writing for Esquire magazine.
“Before that I worked for Chicago Magazine and before that I worked for a weekly community newspaper in Chicago,” he said.  “I found my way into the food world by writing about new restaurants. The Chicago Magazine has always been the restaurant bible for that city.
“They would send me off to interview chefs and talk about new places, and I fell in love with the people who do this. They are generous, crazy, fun people to be around.”
Allen fits in that category, too.
Unfortunately, there can only be one family of friends who can party with Allen in the winner’s circle.
Allen, however, offered up a few suggestions for what the rest of us can serve at our own dinner parties — sans “Top Chef” judge, of course.
For us in Charlottesville, he suggested pairings for our Virginia wines, although he has yet to sample our wares.
“Pinot Grigio is a perfect summer wine,” he said. “It’s simple, it’s light and refreshing, low in alcohol. That’s just a great wine to sit on the porch and sip on a hot day. Goes great with anything light, like shrimp and fish and lighter pastas, scampi, things like that.”
What about our big red?
“Cab Franc, of course, is a considerably bigger wine and can be very nice, if you are being fancy, with duck, but would also taste pretty good with ribs or burgers, or simpler foods like that. I think it has enough body to hold up.”
Pinot and the Cab both grow well in Long Island, too.
“I wonder if it’s an East Coast thing?” the Brooklyn resident said. “I’ve got to get my hands on some Virginia wine. I don’t think I have ever had any.”
If you win, take him a bottle.

Alltel.com/circlereunion