Chef Ilan Hall cooked his way to fame as season two winner of Top Chef. From 2009-2014, he ran the downtown LA fixture, The Gorbals. He also hosted the cooking competition show, Knife Fight, for four seasons on the Esquire network. Currently, Hall is serving up amazing 100% vegan ramen at his ramen spot Ramen Hood in LA’s Grand Central Market, and at pop-ups throughout the country. Recently, we caught up with Hall at a Ramen Hood pop-up in Hazel Park, just outside of Detroit, where he talked about music, sneakers, capitalism, and his enduring love of the rapper Cam’ron for the latest installment of That’s 5.
The following interview has been lightly edited.
What influences you?
Music, a lot. I get a lot of drive from music. Whenever I’m doing a new project, music is super important to me; when I have to cook something or when I have to do a huge event, the more aggressive rap music I listen to the better it helps me get in a fighting mode. Whenever we do the Coachella Festival—or something like a multi-day pop-up—I use music to keep me going. The Rocky VI soundtrack always works. Not the big songs, but the actual score. Also “Special Delivery” by G Dep, the Puff Daddy extended mix. The inspiration comes from Puff at the beginning, and in the end, his ad-libs put me in a frame of mind like the music that I listened to in high school did. It just puts me in the headspace where I feel like I can do anything. And, of course, anything by Cam’ron. His music puts me in a mindset to not take myself so seriously.
Cam’ron helps me to look at food and realize it’s about feeding people. It’s about being delicious, not pretentious. The work is serious: you have to stay organized, you have to be fast. But at the end of the day, I’m not repairing brain cells. It’s a necessary thing, making and eating food, but I try not to take myself too seriously, and I think the type of music that I listen to helps me do that. Cam and hip-hop help me do that.
Sneakers, too. I’m a classicist when it comes to sneakers. Infrared Air Max 90s, they’re kind of like the shoe. Everybody has them, but they’re just perfect. I also like a lot of the offshoots, the sneakers that the Air Max 90 inspired. I also like the Nike Lunarlon. I have really bad feet, so the visvim Moc is great.
What’s the most overrated?
Capitalism. I keep thinking about how pure capitalism is inherently flawed—and I’m no communist by any means—because for capitalism to work properly for big corporations, they need to include so many tenets of communism within their structure. Just look at how much money and time is spent on ideas like teamwork, and collaboration, itself, is considered to be so important. For the companies that operate according to capitalist ideas like “every man for himself,” it’s a fucking mess. So pure capitalism is overrated.
What’s the most underrated?
Communism! No, just kidding [laughs]. Purple Haze 2, the album by Cam’ron. Actually, no, I think Killa Season, his album that came out in 2006, is very underrated. I listen to it nonstop. I saw him on a plane and took a picture with him about two months ago. I was waiting to board, and I’m sitting at the gate, and then all of a sudden, I see Cam’ron walking by—he’s super tall, by the way—in a full purple sweatsuit. He’s head to toe in “Purple Haze” gear. He’s incognito [laughs]. He’s in full Cam’ron mode.
So I board right behind him, and I’m texting pictures to my wife and my friend trying to work up the nerve to ask for a photo. And I choke, I just choke. I’ve been obsessed with him for like 20 years.
So I’m like, fuck, I have to get a picture with him. When the plane lands, I’m pushing people aside to rush off the plane, and I find him standing at the gate, texting. I was able to pull it together and go up to him and calmly ask him for a picture. He was like, “Sure, no problem.”
What are you excited about right now?
I am excited that people are passionate about vegetables. It’s a big thing in my life right now. Partially because I cook a lot of them, and I try to stick to a very vegetable-heavy diet. Meat is the thing that I care about the least. I will eat it, but I’ll save it for something special. I’ve eaten meat in so many different ways, in so many different places that I’m not going need meat all the time. I get more excited about the way that somebody can take a piece of celery and make it taste different. I think that people are really starting to embrace [plant-based diets] more, and the most exciting foods are coming from people doing things with plants.
What’s next for you?
I don’t know. I’m still trying to do some more TV stuff. We had a great show, Knife Fight, that we did for a while out of my old restaurant. I want to do some sort of iteration of that. I’d like to do more plant-based stuff, more pop-ups, and more vegan ideas and concepts. It’s good because it’s more sustainable.
Bonus question: Was that 5?
No. It was four. Wait, is that really how it goes, for the last question?
