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Celebrity chefs are just like us—there are foods they just can’t stand.The list includes everything from peanut butter and bananas to airplane food and truffle oil.Some chefs dislike these foods because of taste or texture, while others have surprisingly specific reasons.
Celebrity chefs spend their careers tasting everything from perfectly seared steaks to ingredients most of us would never even consider putting in our mouths. So you would think they’d be open to pretty much anything, right? Well, not exactly.
Even the biggest names in food have that one ingredient or dish they simply cannot get behind. Sometimes it comes down to texture, sometimes it’s the smell, and sometimes the hatred is so specific that it feels almost personal. From peanut butter to airplane food, here are the foods celebrity chefs would happily never eat again.
Prue Leith—Peanut Butter
Eli Schmidt
Prue Leith may have judged plenty of peanut butter desserts on The Great British Bake Off, but that does not mean she actually enjoys eating any of it.
Leith tells Delish that she hates peanut butter, stating, “I hate the way it’s cloying, and it sticks to the roof of your mouth.”
Strangely enough, she actually likes peanuts themselves, so it really is the peanut butter specifically that she cannot get behind.
She also explained that she has to put her personal feelings aside when judging because peanut butter is so popular with American bakers. Fair enough, but I would imagine that makes peanut butter week a little less exciting for her.
Kristen Kish—Smoked Salmon
Euan Cherry/Peacock
Kristen Kish has a very strong reaction to smoked salmon.
When speaking about the foods she hates the most, the Top Chef host told Eater, “Number one would be smoked salmon. I cannot get it near my lips, otherwise there will be a physical reaction.”
Part of the problem may come from her time as an apprentice, when she repeatedly had to make and taste smoked salmon mousse canapés.
For Kish, the oily, fatty flavor is simply too much. Considering how many brunch menus revolve around smoked salmon, this one has to make dining out slightly complicated.
Ina Garten—Cilantro
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Ina Garten’s cilantro hatred is nothing new. On the Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus podcast, the Barefoot Contessa said, “it tastes like soap” and that even a small amount can overpower an entire dish. She prefers flavors that build on each other, while cilantro, in her opinion, completely takes over.
She has even joked that if someone at the next table is eating cilantro, she can practically taste it herself. That level of sensitivity is something I genuinely cannot imagine.
Guy Fieri—Eggs
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Guy Fieri has eaten his way through thousands of diners, drive-ins, and dives, but breakfast-style eggs are where he draws the line, according to Eater. “Hard-boiled and scrambled—that’s just not the way I like to party.”
Fieri has explained that he is fine with eggs when they are used as an ingredient in dishes like carbonara; scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, and especially runny yolks are another story. He once described runny yolk as “liquid chicken,” which is unfortunately an image I’ll be thinking about the next time I order eggs.
Andrew Zimmern—Raw Cookie Dough
Neilson Barnard
Andrew Zimmern has eaten some of the most intimidating foods imaginable, but somehow raw cookie dough is one of the things he refuses to get behind, he told Outside.
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His main issue is the raw flour. Zimmern has said he does not like the taste or texture and cannot understand why anyone would choose uncooked dough when you could simply bake it into a cookie instead.
He has even said he would “rather eat a possum than raw cookie dough.” If that doesn’t convince you to put the tray in the oven, I’m not sure what will.
Ree Drummond—Bananas
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Ree Drummond is not casually anti-banana; she really hates them. The Pioneer Woman has written, “I hate, abhor, loathe, and recoil at the sight of bananas.” In fact, her disdain for the fruit is so strong, she said, “I wear it like a badge.” She has also acknowledged that banana lovers probably find her dislike just as confusing as she finds their obsession.
Gordon Ramsay—Airplane Food
George Pimentel
Gordon Ramsay’s least favorite food is less of an ingredient and more of an entire dining experience: airplane food.
The chef has said his past experience working with airlines gave him enough insight into how in-flight meals are prepared that he would rather skip them altogether. “There’s no f***ing way I eat on planes,” he told Refinery 29. “I worked for airlines for ten years, so I know where this food’s been and where it goes, and how long it took before it got on board.”
Martha Stewart—Truffle Oil
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Martha Stewart is firmly against truffle oil. Stewart told Today, “I think truffle oil is one of the few ingredients that doesn’t belong in anyone’s kitchen,” and has called it ruinous to many recipes. Importantly, her issue is with truffle oil, not actual truffles, which are obviously a very different experience.
Considering how often restaurants drizzle truffle oil over fries, pasta, and pizza, this might be one of the more controversial opinions on the list.
Melissa Ben-Ishay—Marshmallows
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You might not expect the founder of Baked by Melissa to have such strong feelings against a classic sweet, but Melissa Ben-Ishay is not a marshmallow person.
During an episode of SNACKS!, Ben-Ishay admitted that she simply does not like the fluffy treat. “I don’t like marshmallows in general,” she tells Delish. She also shared plenty of other dessert opinions, including her preference for cake over pie and her complicated feelings about fruit-based desserts.
For someone whose entire career revolves around sweets, she has a surprisingly specific list of desserts she would rather leave untouched.
Bobby Flay—Durian
Steve Mack
Bobby Flay is known for bold flavors, but durian is apparently a little too bold even for him.
Flay revealed that he dislikes cooking with the notoriously pungent fruit because of its smell and described the idea of working with it as “awful.”
Durian is already one of the most famously divisive foods in the world, so Flay is definitely not alone here. Still, when someone who has spent decades around intense ingredients wants nothing to do with it, that says a lot.
Dining and Cooking