The first thing I do when I wake up every morning is pretty unsexy.

I have to take a pill for my thyroid that I have to take every single morning of my life.

It prohibits me from eating for 30 minutes after I take it.

So I always make sure that I take the pill.

The second I wake up and the 1st 30 minutes of my day, I do the getting dressed, showering, brushing my teeth so that 30 minutes go by and then I can eat breakfast.

Breakfast is sort of different every day.

It depends on where I am in the world.

If I'm on location shooting, Top Chef for Top Chef amateurs, breakfast is obviously very different than if I'm home cooking for my family.

What ends up happening is if I don't eat breakfast, I'm super starving by the time we start shooting and that means I eat way too much too quickly from all the contestants dishes and end up not feeling so great.

So breakfast in the morning when I'm on location is something healthy and substantial, but that's not going to weigh me down, poached eggs with sauteed greens, some avocado or maybe even a salad with the poster fried egg on top.

Sometimes I'll have something like oatmeal with fresh fruit or berries, you know, something that will give me a good start to the day and always drink coffee.

I'm not a snob about coffee in the morning, It's more about getting it in my hand and down my gullet than being super picky.

But if I have my choice, my favorite coffee is an americano.

So an espresso with hot water.

So it's long with some steamed regular whole milk on top.

If I'm home in Brooklyn with my kids breakfast looks very different.

My kids really love breakfast.

We eat a lot of eggs in our house.

My daughter's favorite breakfast that she sort of takes credit for creating is her own recipe for an olive omelet.

That's her favorite thing.

All of our, one of her favorite foods in the world and she loves in the morning to make scrambled eggs with sliced green olives in them.

It is actually really savory and delicious and healthy way for her to start the day.

I also make waffles a lot in my house for my kids.

Not so much pancakes.

I think my Children might be the only two Children in the world who don't love pancakes, but we also make a lot of fried eggs over easy eggs.

My kids call them flip eggs we make on the weekends long, leisurely brunch is sometimes I'll make big eggs or shake shaka eggs like student, a spicy harissa, tomato sauce or a big free to and I'll throw in all the vegetables I have in the fridge in a typical day.

If I'm on location shooting top chef, the next thing I eat is the food from that day's elimination challenge.

We usually time our challenge so that it is in and around lunchtime and that becomes my lunch for the day and it's often on location.

So we're outside at a beautiful venue somewhere eating with a bunch of guest chefs or diners.

It's often really delicious.

At this point, after 15 years of doing top chef, even the worst food that our chefs cook, I'm pretty excited about.

People always ask, how do you possibly eat all that food and judge it fairly well.

The answer is, I don't finish everything.

We all make sure though that we have two or three bites from every plate, tasting the individual components and then also the dish as it eats as a whole.

To determine the proper cooking techniques, the doneness and what just tastes the most delicious.

And that usually is my lunch on set.

If I'm home in new york, my lunch is decidedly different.

I try to make big batches of food in advance so that when lunch hits and I'm hungry and I'm in the middle of working, I can just throw things together quickly.

But sometimes it also requires for me to get up and get out of my house for the last year and a half working from home.

If I don't stop and take a walk in the middle of the day, the day will go by and I have not left my office.

So I often use lunch as an excuse to get outside, go for a walk and grab something like a salad or a sandwich from a local restaurant near my house snacks are kind of a big deal in my life because I love them and my kids are big snackers too when I'm on set for Top Chef, the craft services table is very dangerous.

There's a few snacks that I always gravitate to tom clicky and I joked that we share a love for black licorice and beef jerky.

I love black licorice.

It is a weakness of mine.

I grew up with a father from South Africa and he grew up eating a lot of salty sort of dutch and Swedish black licorice, not the red uber sweet kind to me that's not black licorice at all.

I like chewy black, real licorice at this point.

The people who work the craft service and snack table onset know that I love it and always have it on hand.

Same goes for beef jerky.

My father from South Africa grew up with a kind of play on beef jerky called bull tongue.

Bull tongue is dried salted cured meat that is chewy and savory and so satisfying and I love it.

Other snacks that I love, I'm kind of a popcorn addict, spray it very lightly with a neutral oil or even a little bit of butter and then tossed it with very cocky, which is a japanese, seaweed and sesame blend and it's so delicious, a little bit briny.

We also do things like chili powder and sometimes we'll do a little like salt and vinegar powder that to me is sort of a Canadian thing.

I grew up putting salt and vinegar on my french fries and love salt and vinegar chips, which is also a crazy snack and weakness of mine, I will eat a salt and vinegar chips no matter what, although I try not to keep them around because I can't control myself a few ingredients that I always have on hand that I know if I have in my fridge, I can kind of make anything with the big hunk of parmesan cheese, lots of citrus, whether it's like lemons, limes, oranges, some fresh herbs and eggs, I can sort of eat three meals just every day I made from those ingredients.

It doesn't hurt if I have a little champagne on the side, try to keep that in the fridge and then just a really solid pantry of good quality spices, three things in my life that I don't love one root beer.

I mean I don't come across with that much, but anything with the flavor of root beer, it just makes me cringe.

It's like chalk on a blackboard black beans, totally irrational.

And I'm sorry if this offends people.

I love all beans.

Every kind of being in lagoon black beans.

I had a very bad reaction.

The other thing that I kind of don't love is veal.

I've just never really love the texture.

It's sort of mental because I am an Omnivore and every other way.

But veal has just to me been filed under the category of unnecessary meat and I kind of avoid it.

I live in new york.

So obviously I lived there for the food but everywhere I go and travel I love to explore and eat some of my favorite american food.

Cities are new Orleans, L.

A.

Charleston.

I even love philadelphia.

I think it's a really up and coming, interesting place to eat in terms of the world.

I mean I could go on forever, but I'd start with Tokyo, paris Singapore Montreal, one of the best food cities in the world.

I don't have a typical dinner.

It really depends again on where I am, what I'm eating, what I'm craving my travels that have been on, what's inspiring me.

I try to cook in really big batches a few times a week so that we have leftovers.

I believe in left doors.

Let me just say that if you don't believe in leftovers, I am suspicious of your eating habits.

A few simple dinner ideas that I make with the kids all the time are classic things like a big whole roast chicken.

I have this recipe I got from a friend that is sort of a greek style roast chicken.

It's a whole chicken that I rub in olive oil, butter time, other herbs.

If I have them, lots of paprika, salt and pepper, tons of lemon juice and I set it over baby potatoes that roast and get all that delicious flavor from the spices and the chicken fat and the drippings as it cooks.

My kids go crazy for the potatoes and then we have a whole chicken that we can eat for a night or two or even eat for lunch the next day as well.

Yes, I definitely have a sweet tooth, but I definitely don't eat dessert every night.

The one thing that I will always eat and I do have a little weakness for is just a good square of Really high quality dark chocolate and often just one piece of like 70% or more dark chocolate.

Well, totally satiate my craving for sweets because it's also a little bit tannic and makes my mouth pucker but also gives me that like hit of chocolate that I need and that's everything I eat in a day.

Thanks so much for watching and make sure to check out top chef amateurs on bravo.

Yeah.