The Nashville-born chef is also very structured, and it’s this personality trait that is allowing her to explore an entirely different area — the theater — while developing Black and African diaspora recipes that will continue innovating American cuisine. Those who follow Hall’s career know that when she’s preparing a meal, she’s thinking about her Black ancestors’ history or she’s summoning them. What that often means is that Hall prepares meals without additional distractions, such as music or television in the background so that she can hear the water running or the pan sizzling.
This allows her to tune in her ancestors — a distinct take on the semiotics of the kitchen — and to cook with intention. In other words, she prepares a healthy meal that is full of flavor as the ancestors would have prepared it, or as she describes it “the classics with a twist.” By the “classics,” Hall is referring to the comfort food of her Nashville roots and by “twist,” she means the lighter and fresher version of soul food (or “everyday soul food”), such as black-eyed pea salad with hot sauce vinaigrette or her Sea Island Shrimp and Grits, which features fresh vegetables and herbs. “I’ve kept out dairy,” she writes in her book Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration. “The only sauce here comes from the juices that the shrimp and tomatoes let out while cooking.”
The end result is designed to be savored well beyond the plate. “I call myself the culinary historian of my family because I am the one who is going to pass down these stories and recipes to future generations,” she says. And when Hall is tinkering with a dish, she’s asking herself questions, like “What is the initial structure of the dish? I look at the culture. So even if you're innovating a recipe around culture, you have to start from somewhere. You have to understand what the tradition is…We’ve forgotten our traditions because really the heart healthy came first.”
n the full and wondrous life of Carla Hall, there has been a long line of important pivots. Some were big. She
moved to France to model after college; she switched careers and went to culinary school at 30. Others were
bigger. She was a contestant on Top Chef season five in 2008, making it all the way to the final round. Later,
in 2011, she went on to co-host ABC’s The Chew for seven seasons.
Right now, however, at the age of 59, Hall is in full reinvention mode: She’s burnishing her credentials as an advocate of healthy American cuisine and revitalizing traditional recipes to make them heart and brain healthier. She is working on her one-woman show based on her life and journey in the food space for the theater.
That’s right. The tall and talented woman audiences have come to know and love for her creative, soulful dishes and entertaining repartee is now pivoting to the theater for this next part of her life. “I was a theater kid," she says. "That's the thing that I really wanted to do.” According to Hall, theater saved her from being a really shy kid.
But after visiting New York City in 1974 and taking in her first Broadway play, a ten-year-old Hall was transfixed. “I was just drawn to it,” she recalls. She memorized one part of the play and kept saying it over and over for months. “Until somebody said to my mom, ‘Put that kid in theater,’” she remembers, which, thankfully, her mother obliged by enrolling her in acting classes from the age of 12 through 17 years old. “It brought me out of my shell.”
Hall worked toward her dream of attending the prestigious Boston University School of Music, the first school in the nation to offer a degree in the study of music. But after auditioning for entry, the school deferred her admission, crushing a young Hall. “That's when I was like, ‘Forget it. I'm not going to do theater…I’ll major in accounting.’”
With her ancestors, their traditions and her improved recipes, Hall is now working to close health disparities in the Black community, especially around heart health and Alzheimer’s. This year, Hall’s mother was diagnosed with mild dementia and previously her grandmother, Freddie Mai Price Glover, with whom Hall was especially close, passed away at 96 from Alzheimer’s. “Toward the end of her life, she didn’t remember us at all. But for me, touching her hands was powerful,” Hall told the Alzheimer’s Association. “Her fingers were like spatulas and she would get in the bowl and get all the cake batter out because her fingers were so flat. If I close my eyes, I can feel her hands right now."
She’s working closely with the Alzheimer’s Association on campaigns to raise awareness about how the disease afflicts individuals and their families, the impact of food for brain health and getting tested. Hall finally took a 23andMe test and the markers detected Late Onset Alzheimer’s. The results were scary and disappointing though not completely surprising. And she’s using the information to stay aware about her relationship to food. “It is so important for us to understand and be proactive for our health. What do I need to do?” she says. “I know that sugar is one of the things that triggers me, and I love sugar, and I'm on a dessert show.”
The chef and TV host is innovating how we think about and prepare our meals. She’s also reimagining how Black and American cuisine can keep hearts and minds healthier.
CARLA
HALL
BY Shirley J. Velasquez | photographs by GEORGE CHINSEE
Is Looking Back to Move Forward
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Be healthy, but also hold on to our culture. So, yes, keep the soul food, but those are celebration dishes that we made on a Sunday or when somebody is celebrating a wedding or a birth. We will not have lots of celebrations unless we live with the everyday.
CARLA HALL
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Be healthy, but also hold on to our culture. So, yes, keep the soul food, but those are celebration dishes. Those are the dishes that we made on a Sunday or when somebody is celebrating a wedding or a birth or when they’re transitioning. We will not have lots of celebrations unless we live with the everyday.
CARLA HALL
Putting Down Roots
Nourishing Heritage
by Aramide Tinubu | photographs by Bertram Knight
creditS
Creative Direction
+ Design
Laura Kavanaugh
Jen Ciminillo
Styling
Charlie Ward
Makeup
Jesse Lindholm
Photographs
George Chinsee
Video
Reshma Gopaldas
Allie O’Connell
Article
Shirley J. Velasquez
Laying The Groundwork
Hall followed her older sister, Kim Hall, to Howard University and enrolled in the business program. “One thing that I've learned about myself is that I have a quick start. So if I get an idea, I don't mull it over. I'm like, 'Okay, fine. I'm gonna do this,' sometimes too fast.”
After college, Hall pressed on with her accounting training. She got a job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a multinational accounting firm, where she was thriving until she saw something in the office that did not sit well with her. “I looked at the accountant working next to me and he was folding the receipts very carefully so that the edges matched up perfectly,” Hall told MetroNews in a September 2014 interview, “and I just thought, ‘That can’t be me at 40.’ I was so anxious that two weeks later I quit.”
What many people didn’t realize is that even after quitting her job, Hall was still studying for her CPA Exam, which she took and passed. “If I check this box,” she told herself, “I've taken it to where I want to take it. I can leave.”
Could the training in accounting be the lynchpin holding together Hall’s various successful endeavors? “It's so funny that you say that. I think about that discipline of training for an exam that is hard,” remarks Hall, adding that she uses her financial background when doing everything from speaking with her accountant to building recipes and when developing products for her QVC Sweet Heritage line. “Even though I may seem willy-nilly, I'm all systems and efficiency.”
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Return to Innovation
& Advocacy Issue
Return to Innovation
& Advocacy Issue
That is why her health advocacy homes in on reminding people to include grains, pulses and millet when preparing dense dishes. “Be healthy, but also hold on to our culture,” she points out, but also keep in mind that there is a difference between the celebration dishes and the everyday dishes. “So, yes, keep the soul food, but those are celebration dishes. Those are the dishes that we made on a Sunday or when somebody is celebrating a wedding or a birth or when they’re transitioning. We will not have lots of celebrations unless we live with the everyday.”
Return to Innovation
& Advocacy Issue
Return to Innovation
& Advocacy Issue
creditS
Creative Direction
+ Design
Laura Kavanaugh
Jennifer Ciminillo
Photographs
George Chinsee
Styling
Charlie Ward
Video
Reshma Gopaldas
Allie O’Connell
Article
Erika Janes
Return to Innovation
& Advocacy Issue
Return to Innovation
& Advocacy Issue
by ERIKA JANES | photographs by GEORGE CHINSEE
The actor, activist and eco-mom is fighting climate change — and actual fires, too.
Is a Woman On Fire