Ted Allen is the Emmy Award-Winning Host of the long-running hit shows Chopped and Chopped Junior—with a combined run of nearly 1,000 episodes so far, one of the most successful projects in Food Network history. Ted received a James Beard Award for his work as host of Chopped and the show itself also received a Beard for Best In-Studio Program.  

Ted rounds out his Food Network presence with regular co-hosting work on holiday specials and Beat Bobby Flay. He also took on voice acting as the villainous, recipe-stealing "Cast-Iron Chef" in the 2020 animated reboot of Disney’s The Rocketeer. Previously, Ted was the food and wine specialist on the groundbreaking Bravo series Queer Eye, which was nominated twice for an Emmy Award and took the prize in 2004. He was also a judge on the first four seasons of Bravo’s Top Chef and Food Network’s Iron Chef America.

Along the way, Ted wrote In My Kitchen: 100 Recipes and Discoveries for Passionate Cooks and The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes, two collections of vibrant, all-natural dishes and co-wrote the New York Times Best Seller Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab Five’s Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better. For five years, he traveled to food festivals across the country offering wine education for the Robert Mondavi Private Selection label.

As a decade-long contributing writer to Esquire, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for a feature story on the little-known phenomenon of male breast cancer. Ted has also written for such publications as GQ, Bon Appétit, Epicurious, and Food Network Magazine. Before joining Esquire, Ted was a senior editor at Chicago magazine.

Today, Ted serves as a spokesperson for Dining Out for Life, an annual national fundraiser in which restaurants across the country donate a portion of their proceeds to HIV/AIDS service groups that amounts to about $4 million each year. Ted also supports World Central Kitchen, Share Our Strength/No Kid Hungry, and the Food Bank for New York City. He serves on the Food Council for City Harvest, which rescues unused food from New York restaurants and gets it to needy families. In 2014, he hosted the James Beard Awards at Lincoln Center.

Ted holds an M.A. in journalism from New York University, with an advanced certificate in the school’s Science and Environmental Reporting Program, and a B.A. in psychology from Purdue University. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, interior designer Barry Rice.