Earnest & Young

Photo: Justin Stephens; Photo Illustration: Jamie DiVecchio Ramsay

The title of Toby Young’s 2002 memoir, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, says it all: Everything the man has done—as an author of books, contributing editor to Vanity Fair, restaurant critic for the U.K.’s Evening Standard and judge on Bravo’s Top Chef—has inspired almost universal ire in the people around him. But when the 45-year-old Londoner called from his hometown, he was actually…kind of sweet.

We close this chefs issue with the guy who, on the current season of Top Chef, likened one contestant’s pork balls to a bull’s testicles.

Time Out Chicago: I want to start by—
Toby Young: Is this sort of a Q&A? Is that how it will appear on the page?

TOC: Yeah.
Toby Young: Can I therefore grant you my full blessing to correct any grammatical mistakes I make or any kind of switcheroos in tenses? So it all reads like a piece of textbook prose that you would have written yourself?

TOC: Sure, though I’m surprised to hear you’d be concerned about that. On the show you’re very eloquent.
Toby Young: People probably sound that way on TV, but when you actually transcribe it literally, you still sound like an idiot.

TOC: How’d you get tapped for the show?
Toby Young: I’ve been working as a restaurant critic in London for the past seven years. So I like to think it’s because they had read my reviews in the Evening Standard and admired them. But I could be wrong. I’ve never asked, for fear that if I ask I’ll flag the question in their mind and they’ll think, “Yes, why did we hire you?”

TOC: When you were brought on, you replaced Ted Allen, who also had been a magazine writer. What do you think appearing on television does for a writer’s credibility?
Toby Young: It destroys it in a single stroke. As a journalist, I’ve always thought of journalism as potentially leading to television work. Because television work is, you know, better paid. Being on Top Chef certainly has increased my exposure as a restaurant critic, and it’ll make it much harder to try and review restaurants in the United States incognito.

TOC: But in the U.K., anonymity isn’t a requirement for restaurant critics, is it?
Toby Young: It’s not as rigorously enforced. It’s not as dogmatic a requirement of being a critic as it is in the U.S. Personally, I’ve never bothered with it. I’ve appeared as a judge on Hell’s Kitchen over here. And I’ve also competed on a food reality show called Come Dine with Me, which I actually won.

TOC: Was that a cooking show?
Toby Young: It’s a cooking show, yes, in which five celebrities take turns to throw dinner parties for each other in their homes and you rank each dinner party out of ten and the host who ends up with the most points at the end wins.

TOC: Was the win based on the food or on your hosting?
Toby Young: It was based on the food.

TOC: Because hosting doesn’t seem like your strong suit—on Top Chef you come off as a little harsh.
Toby Young: I think British people tend to be a bit more outspoken. There’s no obligation to be evenhanded and fair-minded as a restaurant critic in the U.K. Generally, we’re hired to be blunt.

TOC: That must make people think that you’re a genuinely harsh person. Do you mind?
Not really. I’m used to it. I’ve been attracting that kind of reaction now since I was about 14. I once described myself as having negative charisma, in which I just have to walk across a crowded room where I know no one, and no one knows me, and already I’ve made ten enemies.

TOC: I think it’s the way your face falls. When you smile, you have this sweet, boyish look; when you don’t, you appear kind of stern.
Toby Young: Maybe you’re right. I had a conversation with a Rolling Stone journalist who’s writing a profile of me, and she was very excited because she’d come up with this theory as to why it was I put people’s backs up. She said [In a nasally American voice], “I think I’ve got it! You’re in this world of beautiful people and yet you’re kind of homely looking! People resent that! You’re like an interloper! You suddenly got into the party when really you should be outside the velvet rope!” I was like, jeez, that doesn’t make me feel better.

Top Chef airs Wednesdays at 9pm on Bravo.