Curtis Stone on Hosting Top Chef Masters Season 3, Eating Worm Omelets, and Why Kelis Can Actually Cook

Curtis Stone said it plainly: "I still have a memory of biting on a worm omelet and feeling the grit in the worm and wanting to wretch. Every time I th…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

Curtis Stone — internationally renowned chef, NBC's Take Home Chef, The Biggest Loser, Celebrity Apprentice, and America's Next Great Restaurant — dished up a healthy conversation about his hosting gig on Season 3 of Top Chef Masters. America's sexiest import opened up about his love and intimidation for Southern food, Celebrity Apprentice, his love for Kelis' milkshakes, and biting into a worm omelet.

Top Chef Masters Season 3 premiered Wednesday, April 6 at 11 pm before moving to its regularly scheduled Wednesday 10 pm time slot the following week.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Curtis, you're extremely good looking. What do you do to keep the ladies off you?

CURTIS STONE: I try to encourage them to come forward. I don't keep them back at all. That's funny.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: We were first introduced to you as a chef. Now you're a host. Which do you enjoy doing the most, and do you think that Celebrity Apprentice boosted your career somewhat?

CURTIS STONE: My entire world revolves around food and I love cooking and whenever I can, I'm in a kitchen. This was a really special opportunity for me. I got asked to not only be involved in a show with some of the world's best chefs, but also sit at a critics table with some of the world's leading food critics. So it was one of those experiences that I'll never forget. I got to eat some fantastic food and get a real insight into how these guys judge their foods. It was wonderful all around. So I've got to say, it was one of my favorite TV shows ever and very different to other stuff that I've done. Being on Celebrity Apprentice really affected my experience. I've been working with Feeding America since I got to the states. I used to cook Christmas dinner for the homeless when I lived in London and when I came to the states I tried to find a similar charity and did so. I was sitting around talking with David Arquette one night about different things that we could do — David's been really instrumental in building a celebrity base to the charity and raising a whole lot of awareness and money for it. And then we came from Celebrity Apprentice excited to be involved in the show. I said, why not, it'll be fun — until I wound up in a room with Bret Michaels and Bill Goldberg and Sharon Osbourne and I thought, what am I doing here? But I actually quite enjoyed the experience. It was like playing a game every day. Watching how we'd have to sit across the table from Donald Trump and listen to him swing his axe was very interesting. It gave me a real perspective on how the contestants were feeling in this competition — you're standing there thinking, am I going to look foolish here? Is he going to destroy me? And just like with these guys, it's their credibility on the line and they're doing the best they can. But we give them some really unbelievable circumstances to cook under on Top Chef Masters, and no matter how great these chefs are, we really make them show that mastery through their cooking. So I could really empathize with them.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What peaked your interest to sign on for Season 3 of Top Chef Masters?

CURTIS STONE: This season we really mixed it up. We changed the format — all the chefs were in the show together, whereas in previous seasons there were tournaments. In this one we followed the format of Top Chef where all the chefs begin and in each episode one chef is eliminated. I think that really increased the pressure compared with other seasons because as a chef myself, knowing what it's like to enter these competitions, the last thing in the world you want to do is see the final curtain fall in episode one. The real pressure we saw the chefs under was just immense. I was privileged to eat their food and give comments on it. In a way, I felt fortunate that I didn't have a say in what actually happened — it was up to the critics to decide. I felt a little uneasy about judging my peers but I love making comments and adding some value to that critics table. So I really enjoyed it.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Are you feeling added pressure as a host?

CURTIS STONE: It was so much fun to be the host of the show and in a way I felt like my voice at the critics table was almost there for the chefs. I felt like I wasn't there to tell them what they did wrong about their food — if anything, I was there to plead their case to the critics and try to justify why what ended up on the plate was there. It's always very difficult. You don't understand the inner workings of what's happened and the specifics, especially since we're putting them under such pressure with the different challenges. Sometimes you get a plate of food in front of you and you think, well, why have they done that? I try to fight the corner as it were.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: And as a chef, whose opinion do you value more — fellow chefs or a food critic?

CURTIS STONE: I'll tell you this — there's nothing more nerve-wracking than cooking for other chefs, apart from cooking for critics who hold your career in their hands. I value both equally because chefs can understand what you've done from a technical perspective — what techniques did you use, how did you treat the ingredients to get them to taste a certain way. But critics look at it from the diner's perspective, and I think that is probably even slightly more important because you can impress a chef but at the end of the day, they're not your customers. Diners are. Working with these guys really blew me away. The wealth of knowledge of both the critics and some of the other guests on the show was just phenomenal. I don't think there's a dish I could try on Ruth that she couldn't tell me from what era it came from and who was the first to cook it and who made it famous. Knowledge like that about food is so important because I always say to people, I can teach you how to make one dish but you really have to understand the background of it — the entire life of that dish — because it's that knowledge that helps you understand how it should be treated and how it should be cooked.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Who will be tasting the bugs and insects on the show?

CURTIS STONE: I have a specific point of view here because I was the one that had to eat all of those bugs. I tell everybody this was the best job of my life — that was one of the worst days of the best job of my life. The chefs had a challenge. We had guests from the show Man, Woman, Wild on, and these guys get dumped in the middle of nowhere and have to survive on whatever they can find. So we went and found our chefs everything from night crawlers and beetles and bugs and you name it, and they had to cook with it — and guess who got to eat it all. No matter how good these chefs are, it's pretty hard to cook with those sorts of things. There were some good attempts and some that just didn't work and unfortunately I got to eat them all. I still have a memory of biting on a worm omelet and feeling the grit in the worm and wanting to wretch. Every time I think about it, I still have the same feeling.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Kelis, Maroon 5, and other entertainers were special guests. Did you like Kelis' milkshake?

CURTIS STONE: We had Kelis — the artist that sang Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard. I can actually sing it for you if you like. I didn't realize that she was actually a trade-qualified chef. She'd gone to the Cordon Bleu. It's so interesting — these celebrities come on board and we're in awe of them, and they're totally in awe of the whole Top Chef franchise and wanted to get their photo in front of the Top Chef Masters sign. It was really cute to see. I loved meeting her mom too. Another episode we had Maroon 5 on — this incredible rock band that are on tour all the time — and we got a real look into their life and how they travel and what they eat and what sort of food they like. And we had our chefs do some incredible food for them. Before the season started, Alison Sweeney, the host of The Biggest Loser, phoned me up and said, look, even if you don't get me on the show, I'd just love to come and hang out and watch it all happen because I'm such a huge fan. And to hear that from those kinds of people is just so touching. I remember we had Christina Hendricks on one of the episodes with her husband and we actually had the chefs cook this incredible cocktail party for them. It was so interesting to listen to their experience on set and what the food of the 60s was like, and then having them around this food from the 60s all the time. That was really fun.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What do you think of the food from the New Orleans region?

CURTIS STONE: I'm a huge fan of the food in New Orleans. I wasn't when I first came to the country — I actually found it quite intimidating because I didn't know anything about it. But the great thing about chefs from that region is they just cook with so much passion and love and flair and it just shines through. Whether it's your favorite type of cuisine or not, you can't do anything but love it because it's just so raw and so real.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: These chefs are already celebrated chefs — were they very receptive?

CURTIS STONE: Yes. What was really interesting — we did a quickfire challenge where we had all of the chefs rank from best to worst all of the dishes that were done, and they had the opportunity to rank themselves as the best dish. There wasn't a single chef that did rank themselves as the best dish. So I think that goes to show just how modest and humble these guys are.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: How important are farmers markets?

CURTIS STONE: I think that's super important. I'm actually looking down — I'm wearing a t-shirt that's got a picture of a tractor that says 'support your local farmer' on it. By supporting your local farmers we end up giving a little bit of love to the real heroes of the food industry. Chefs get a lot of credit and we get a lot of glory at the moment on TV and writing books and all the rest of it. But I really feel like the heroes of the food world are the cheesemakers and the farmers and the fishermen and the cowboys — the people that really put their entire life into raising beautiful ingredients for us to cook with. Farmers markets are great. The essence of farmers markets is right through this season. It doesn't matter which chef or contestant you talk to, they all believe in sustainability and seasonality and they all have a great respect for the raw product. And they're just such nice places to hang out. All you have to do is take yourself a bag and go down — and the great thing about farmers markets is you're talking to the people that grow the ingredients. So they're really knowledgeable about what they grow and they're friendly. You can talk about different ingredients and if there are things like okra that you haven't tried before and they're available, speak to the people that grow it and speak to the other customers and you'll find it really easy to spark up good conversation and pick yourself some nice ingredients.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: At the end of each season, the chefs normally gain a few pounds. Have you gained any weight doing this season?

CURTIS STONE: Well I sure didn't lose any weight. I put on about five pounds over the course of the show. I might have downgraded that. It might have been more like twelve.

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