Gail Simmons Talks About her New Memoir and 'Top Chef' Behind the Scenes
By: Rosemina Nazarali
Published: February 22, 2012

Gail Simmons has just released her new book, Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater. She recently admitted that the book wasn't always intended to be a memoir. 
"When I first started thinking of writing a book, it wasn't a memoir at all," the Top-Chef judge said. "Of course, my first instinct was to write a cookbook, because in the food space, that's generally what everyone writes, but I started writing down questions that people ask me, and realized there's about 25 questions or so that I'm asked everyday by journalists, by strangers on the street, by my friends, by my relatives. These questions and the answers... are a story unto themselves."
In her book, Simmons dishes about her role on Top Chef and talks about what the experience on the show is like when the cameras are off. 
"There's a lot of late-night drinking with the crew in the hotel bar or in other bars -- especially when we were in Texas [shooting season 9]," Simmons said. "Texas was really fun -- more fun than I anticipated -- especially because I'd never really been there. We would take over the hotel bar and seek out the local really cool music places and great restaurants [and] we would see a lot of live music together in Austin. One night, literally half the crew and I ended up at an awesome gay cowboy bar in Austin and learned how to do the two-step." 
Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater is available here.