Butter Lettuce Salad with Fresh Cranberry Vinaigrette

Carla Hall first won over audiences when she competed on Bravo's Top Chef and Top Chef: All Stars and shared her philosophy to always cook with love. She believes food connects us all, and she strives to communicate this through her work, her cooking, and in her daily interactions with others.

Expertise: cooking, soul food, food TV, cookbooks.

Experience: Carla spent 7 years co-hosting ABC's Emmy award-winning, popular lifestyle series The Chew, and she currently brightens the mornings of millions as a Culinary Contributor to Good Morning America. Carla is featured on Food Network shows such as BakeAway Camp, Thanksgiving Baking Championship, Holiday Baking Championship, and Worst Cooks in America, as a judge and a host. She was also a judge on Netflix's Crazy Delicious. Carla hosts a podcast on the Wondery Platform, called Say Yes with Carla Hall, focused on interviews with successful people to explore how they overcame challenges and found ways to flourish. Her latest cookbook, Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration, was published in 2018, landing on best cookbook lists across the country and receiving a NAACP Image Awards nomination.

Born in Nashville, Carla grew up surrounded by soul food. When the time came for her to select her career path, she first opted for a business route – she graduated from Howard University's Business School and worked as an accountant for two years – before deciding to switch gears to work as a runway model. It was during that time, as she traveled (and ate) her way through Europe for a few years, that she truly realized her deep-rooted passion for food could be her career path.

Today, she is a trained chef who has worked in several professional restaurant kitchens in and around the Washington, D.C. area and is an accomplished television personality and author. In addition to being featured in numerous cookbook collections including The Chew series of cookbooks, she authored Carla's Comfort Food: Favorite Dishes from Around the World and Cooking with Love: Comfort Food That Hugs You.

Carla is very active with a number of charities and not-for-profit organizations that reflect her passion for causes close to her heart. She is on the board of trustees for Helen Keller International, Pajama Program, GenYouth, and 4H. The thread which runs through all of these things is advocating for the physical and mental well-being of children.

Carla lives in D.C. with her husband, Matthew Lyons.