Tragic Details About Carla Hall

Tragic is hardly the first word that comes to mind when you think of chef Carla Hall. We first knew her as kooky Carla, the sleeper assassin of "Top Chef" Season 5, whose offbeat mix of enthusiasm, zen calm, and Southern charm made her an all-time fan favorite. Hall's 2008 "Top Chef" run catapulted her to celebrity chef status. At times she bobbled, and even fell, but the irresistible authenticity and culinary perspective of Hall's culinary brand have allowed her to remain relevant all these years.

Hall is one of those TV chefs you feel like you know, and that's because you do. Those close to Hall have said that the upbeat chef you see on TV is exactly who she is in real life, but it's taken a lot for her to get — and stay — where she is today. As a self-described quirky girl, Hall struggled to find her path in her younger years and endured a few false starts before beginning her culinary training until age 30. Even then, Hall had to work incredibly hard to establish herself in the food world.

The work has paid off many times over. Hall, now in her 60s, is a force in food culture. More importantly, she has been able to stay centered and positive in the face of adversity. Here are some of the tragic details that have helped make Carla Hall the chef and woman she is today.

Carla Hall grew up in a middle-class household in Nashville, Tennessee, but her early home life had its troubles. Despite the fact that she's a very family-oriented person, Hall doesn't speak about her father, George Morris Hall, very often. She has disclosed that he was an alcoholic and that his battle with addiction is the reason why she does not drink.

Hall's father also had a history of domestic violence, inflicting abuse on Hall's mother, Audrey. Her parents divorced and remarried when Hall was young. By the time she was seven they were divorced for a second time. Still, not all of Hall's recollections of her father are tragic.

She says sitting with her parents and sister at the dinner table are among the earliest moments she can remember from her childhood. THere, her father would discuss his interests which included music and psychology. Hall also says her comedic timing was a trait she got from him. George Morris Hall died several years ago; one of the last memories Hall has of her father is sitting down together for a family soul food meal in Nashville.

"Theater saved me from being bullied, because I was a quirky kid and really shy," Hall told Garden & Gun in 2018. From age 11, Hall's passion was acting. She attended Nashville Academy Theater Camp every summer and took acting classes in high school. But when her application to Boston University's School of Theater was deferred, Hall lost her way. She instead enrolled at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University, where her sister was a student. There, she majored in accounting, on the principle that she had liked her high school accounting teacher and enjoyed working with numbers.

Two years as an accountant at Price Waterhouse in Florida hurtled Hall into an existential crisis. Terrified of being miserable in her profession, she followed a group of young women to Paris and began to pursue modeling in the late '80s. In Paris, Hall and other Black models would have Sunday suppers at the home of a woman named Elaine Evans, where Hall watched the models trade cooking knowledge they had learned growing up. But Hall realized she didn't know any techniques and also felt incredibly homesick.

Hall wasn't in the fashion industry for very long. Before leaving Europe, she began to buy cookbooks and made meals for friends. To Garden & Gun, Hall said, "Paris ended up being the bridge between what I knew I didn't want to do and what I eventually wanted to do." She returned to Washington, D.C. with the real beginnings of her culinary career in the works.

Many of Hall's core memories are centered around Sunday suppers at her maternal grandmother's house. From her kitchen in Lebanon, Tennessee, Freddie Mai Price Glover, better known to Hall as "Granny", prepared post-church soul food meals of smothered pork chops, mac and cheese, collard greens from the garden, candied sweet potatoes, and cast iron cornbread. It was Granny who showed Hall the importance of cooking with love — it was what she always did until Alzheimer's disease took her from the kitchen and eventually claimed her life at the age of 96.

Granny's suppers remain at the heart of Hall's connection with food, but she wasn't perched on a kitchen stool learning the family recipes back in those days. When she was young, Hall loved eating more than cooking and would often be found playing outside while Granny worked her magic in the kitchen. 

One of the first signs that Granny was losing her memory was how it affected her signature dishes. "We all loved her macaroni and cheese so much that she served it every Sunday. There was one point when she served us macaroni noodles in milk. There was no cheese, it wasn't baked," Hall told the Alzheimer's Association in 2022. Granny's Alzheimer's disease progressed to the point that she no longer remembered family, but Hall recalled that, "touching her hands was powerful [...] If I close my eyes, I can feel her hands right now."

For three years, Hall worked as a fashion model in Paris and London, but then was lured home in 1991 by a newfound interest in cooking. When Hall catered her sister's baby shower with homemade smoked turkey, buttermilk biscuits, sandwiches, and chess pie, she promised to bring leftovers to a friend — but there weren't any. She remade the food the following day and brought it to the doctor's office where her friend worked. The other employees were so enticed by the fare that they asked Hall for prices so they could order lunch from her every day.

Hall made up her pricing on the spot. She also based the company name, Lunch Basket, after the picnic basket she packed the food in. From there she went door to door in the Washington, D.C. area, gradually building up her clientele. She also reportedly didn't take a single day off for the next five years.

We admire Hall's hustle, but the lack of work-life balance during her catering years was extreme. As business picked up, she began delivering food in an old mail truck. Five years in, Hall felt that her food would be even better if she went to culinary school, so she enrolled at L'Academie de Cuisine in Maryland. She was 30 years old.

In the wake of the socio-political unrest surrounding George Floyd's death in 2020, Carla Hall found herself not just emotional, but shaken up. It compelled Hall to open up about a brush with police brutality she endured in the mid-'90s. Hall was driving home from a work engagement in her home city of Washington, D.C. when she coasted through a red light (her view of the traffic light was obstructed by an 18-wheeler in front of her). She was pulled over.

Hall handed her license and registration to the officer, but was told to step out of her vehicle because her documents were expired. In disbelief, Hall found herself handcuffed and pressed against the trunk of her own car as several other police cars arrived on the scene. As her sense of fear mounted, Hall turned to a female officer and said she was worried that she might lose her composure at that moment. Hall says that the female officer advised that it would not end well for Hall if she didn't stay calm. She was taken to a police station in handcuffs and eventually released.

In speaking about this traumatic experience, Hall wanted to illuminate the dangers of racial profiling. As she told ABC7 News, "Sometimes I think I'm seen as Carla but not really a black woman. I think sometimes I want to say that if you don't see my color see my culture."

To anyone who has felt like it was too late to make a change in life, Carla Hall is a shining example that achieving happiness has no time limit. She was practically thrust into the catering business on a whim in her mid-20s, but met the experience with the tenacity and reliability of a true professional. After attending culinary school and furthering her catering business with the establishment of Alchemy Catering in 2003, Hall didn't have time for love. That was until she found Matthew Lyons on an internet dating site after just one day. They married nine months later.

Hall was 42 when she married Lyons, who knew she was the one from the start. Just before they were married, Hall became pregnant. At that time, she was working as a private chef in the Bahamas (which she's noted was one of her worst-ever food jobs) and suffered a miscarriage while about eight weeks into the pregnancy. 

Her immediate reaction was acceptance. Hall was in her 40s and hadn't planned the pregnancy, so she took the loss as a sign from the universe. She admits now that it might seem insensitive, but she simply asked the doctor what she needed to do in order to go to work and move on. Hall never had biological children but is a stepmother to Lyons' son from a previous relationship.

Season 5 of "Top Chef" was Carla Hall's' to lose — and lose she did. When the season's final episodes kicked off in New Orleans, four contestants remained: Fabio Viviani, Stefan Richter, Hosea Rosenberg, and Hall. By that point, Hall was proving to be formidable competition. Viviani was eliminated for an unsuccessful Creole dish, Hall picked up another win (plus a new car), and she joined Richter and Rosenberg in the finale.

Hall's "cook with love" strategy paid off until a major mistake cost her the whole competition. When the sous chefs were announced for the final meal (these were "Top Chef" competitors from previous seasons) Hall was paired with Season 3's Casey Thompson. While menu-planning,Thompson pushed for using the sous vide method to cook New York strip steak and swapping a bleu cheese soufflé for the cheese tart Hall originally envisioned.

Hall didn't appear comfortable with either, but conceded to her second in command. Both changes made for grievous flaws in Hall's meal. Although Richter served every dish with a side of toxic masculinity (which seemed to irk head judge Tom Colicchio more than his female counterparts) and Rosenberg's food often lacked a wow-factor, the judges agreed that Hall was out of the running. Tears fell from Hall's eyes as she acknowledged where it all went wrong and Rosenberg became Top Chef.

Hall credits the high-stakes nature of "Top Chef" with making her comfortable with the uncomfortable, but her entrance into the world of celebrity chef-dom was a harder place for her to settle into. Fresh off of her appearance on the eighth season of "Top Chef: All-Stars," Hall signed on as a co-host of ABC's "The Chew". But in the talk show's early years, Hall didn't feel worthy of the opportunity.

The learning curve Hall traversed on "The Chew" was so intimidating it gave her stomach pains and caused her to go home crying. By Season 2, she developed a perpetual fear of being fired that was only assuaged when saw a psychic who advised her that "The Chew" would be on air for five more years. A similar surge of imposter syndrome flared up while writing her first cookbook, 2012's "Cooking with Love: Comfort Food that Hugs You."

Hall questioned why anyone would want to recreate recipes she had written. Her lack of confidence resulted in overcompensation — Hall made some of the recipes in her first cookbook extra complicated in order to prove her command of the kitchen. She told T. Cole Rachel she would do things different now. After all, it was Hall's refreshing brand of authenticity that made her famous in the first place.

In the '90s and 2000s, Mario Batali was one of the most successful celebrity chefs in the business. His hit Food Network show "Molto Mario" put him on the map and his New York City restaurant Babbo commanded the A-list crowd. When Carla Hall was invited to co-host ABC's "The Chew" alongside Batali, Micheal Symon, Daphne Oz, and stylist Clinton Kelly, she was ecstatic. "The Chew", an hour-long show all about food debuted in 2011.

Initially, "The Chew" wasn't well-received, but as time went on the hosts got into a groove and Hall's effervescent personality shone through. At its peak, the show amassed three million daily viewers. "The Chew" won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host in 2015 and Outstanding Talk Show/Informative in 2016. Two years later, after seven seasons and 1,5000 episodes ABC gave "The Chew" the ax.

Hall said she was shocked by the decision — but from an outsider perspective, it kind of seemed like "The Chew" had it coming. Batali departed from the show in 2017 amidst a flurry of sexual misconduct allegations that put an end to his celebrity chef career. Between Batali's absence and a dip in ratings, Hall suddenly found herself out of a day job.

There is no question that Black female chefs have not historically gotten the visibility they deserve. Carla Hall has been integral in changing that state of affairs yet, even after finding culinary fame, she has had to battle prejudice.

For instance, Hall's salary for "The Chew" was a fifth of what the male hosts made. Hall initially believed that it was because she had less experience; however, she was not able to renegotiate her contract until the show's final season. After the planned departure of defamed celeb chef Mario Batali, "The Chew's" fate was on the ropes. Hall was only offered a more fair compensation once the show was on the verge of cancellation.

Perhaps more surprising was Hall having to defend her 2018 cookbook, "Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration" to her own team. For Hall, hearing insinuations that a soul food cookbook might alienate her white fan base was deeply hurtful. "You don't say that to people who are Italian or Greek or Chinese or Indian, so why would you say that to me when I want to share my food? Why would soul food be for one group?" she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020.

Carla Hall opening a Southern restaurant in Brooklyn really seemed like a great idea. At the time, she was regularly filming "The Chew" in New York, while it now goes without saying that Carla Hall and soul food are a match made in gastronomical heaven. Carla Hall's Southern Kitchen opened in Brooklyn's Columbia Street Waterfront District in 2016. A year later, it closed.

How could Hall, a hard–working chef and lovable television personality, shutter her first restaurant so quickly? A lack of know-how was part of the reason why Carla Hall's Southern Kitchen was such a flash in the pan. Her use of a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the restaurant was a problematic twinge early on, as some scoffed at the idea of such a high-profile chef resorting to public funding. Also, the Kickstarter and actual opening were nearly two years apart, prompting more than a few funders to grow suspicious.

The food at Southern Kitchen was one of the restaurant's few saving graces. Yet an over-fixation on branding, its outer borough location, and inexperienced staff hurt the business. Two months in, there was an electrical fire and the walk-in fridge had to be replaced ... twice. What's more, Hall's commitment to "The Chew" didn't allow her enough time at the restaurant.

Hall has spent much of her culinary career and beyond connecting to her roots and seeking out information about her ancestral history. When she took a test from 23andMe — a biotechnology company that uses genotyping to provide insight on genetic health and ancestry — it revealed some troubling results. Hall's genetic testing panel detected a predisposition to late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Hall wasn't exactly surprised. Her maternal grandmother, who was a profound influence on Hall and the matriarch of the family died from the same condition at 96. Hall's mother was diagnosed with early dementia. Not one to come undone by a bout of bad news, Hall has embraced a series of preventative measures to help offset the risk of Alzheimer's potentially debilitating grip.

Her current wellness routine includes walking and working out with light weights three to five times a week, as dementia-related studies show that light exercise is beneficial to brain health. She is also reflecting on her eating habits, looking to cut back on sugar (no easy feat for a judge on Food Network's "Halloween Baking Championship") and incorporating whole grains and sufficient amounts of protein. While discussing self-care rituals with Marie Claire in 2024 Hall proclaimed, "I want to live until I'm 104, specifically because my great-grandmother passed away at 103, and I want to beat her."