

There have been more twists and turns in the Alison Roman and Chrissy Teigen drama in the last 24 hours than there are steps in an Alison Roman recipe, which maybe sounds like a read but is honestly one of the things I appreciated most about the Nothing Fancy cookbook author’s offerings. Should you not inhabit the particular corner of the internet that has spent the last couple months cooking things like shallot pasta and The Stew, and as of last night frantically refreshing Twitter to see what turn this culinary cacophony would take next, allow me to quickly catch you up to speed.
Roman, a former Bon Appétit staffer, current New York Times Cooking contributor, cookbook author, and noted anti-content farmer, whose recipes (along with herself as a cooking personality) have rocketed to near-ubiquity on Instagram over the past several months, gave an interview to The New Consumer about how she develops recipes, her brand, and what’s next for her career. Things might have been all fine and dandy were it to have stopped there, but Roman continued on to elucidate what she didn’t want for herself, which is apparently to be anything like Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, both of whom Roman had some choice words for.
Roman called Kondo a sellout for creating a line of products for the home, saying it’s “antithetical to everything she’s ever taught,” while insinuating Kondo had nothing to do with the development of the products themselves beyond slapping her name on them, while also equating Teigen’s burgeoning food empire (which includes cookbooks, an Instagram page, and cookware, thus far) to a money-grabbing content farm. “That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do,” Roman said.
Naturally, the comments didn’t sit too well with Teigen who posted a series of tweets breaking down exactly how she felt about the whole situation. “This is a huge bummer and hit me hard,” she wrote, “I have made her recipes for years now, bought the cookbooks, supported her on social and praised her in interviews. I even signed on to executive produce the very show she talks about doing in this article.”