‘The Great American Recipe’: Judge Francis Lam Talks Season 4, Al Roker & What Makes Show Special

PBS is preparing to serve up Season 4 of The Great American Recipe. Premiering July 11, the popular cooking competition series brings in eight new home cooks from across the United States to pull from their regional roots and backgrounds. They’ll look to tantalize the taste buds of notable chefs and restaurateurs Tiffany Derry and Timothy Hollingsworth, along with Splendid Table host Francis Lam as judges and mentors. 

Alejandra Ramos returns to host as the participants embark on a culinary journey with one leaving with bragging rights. Helping kick off the festivities in the first episode is beloved Today TV personality  and meteorologist Al Roker. A bestselling cookbook author in his own right, the 70-year-old also brings the PBS Kids series Weather Hunters coming September 8. 

Lam was excited to return to the judging panel for the series, which was filmed at Green Door Gourmet, a 350-acre farm, on-farm market and agritourism destination in Nashville. Here the noted food journalist sets the table for what’s to come.  

You joined The Great American Recipe last season. What did you take from that experience leading into this time around? 

Francis Lam: I’ve had the opportunity to judge different food competitions over the years, whether on television or real life. It’s always fun. I enjoy tasting the food and talking to the ones who cooked it, getting a sense of technically what they were going for. Being able to offer the feedback, was the technique there or the balance of flavors correct? The experience of The Great American Recipe really brought that to a different place and level. It was so clearly so much more as an experience, for me as a judge and hope for the viewers at home, about the wonderful people. 

Not just the wonderful cooks, but the wonderful people behind the dishes. How proud they were of the food they were making. So often, the food they were making represented their home, their family. That sense of pride someone brings when someone puts that on a plate in front of you is really palpable. The other piece of it too that I thought was really amazing was how much the cooks loved one another and loved learning one another and helping one another. It was really a human experience. I really came a little more this season prepared for that. It didn’t take me by surprise, but the last time I thought, “This is what this is about.” 

THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE Season 4 contestants, L-R: Waigal Safi, Brie Jamieson, Coby Bailey, Anika Chowdhury, Rex Alba, Suwanee Lennon, Carlos Tiburcio, and Fran Wescott.

Maybe because you are used to other cooking competitions where they may draw from the drama and conflict. Would you say this is what separates this show from others? 

Yeah, I think so. There is very much a sense of camaraderie that builds. Everyone wants to win. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t come on a show like this without wanting to win, but even the motivations for winning. It’s not like there is this huge prize package. It’s not, “I have to win this because it’s life-changing money.” It’s really, “Hey, I want to keep doing well because I want to keep telling my story.” Everyone in that kitchen wants to tell their story and hear their friend’s stories too. So often people were helping each other out, whether they were on camera or not. You saw bonds being formed. It’s really a beautiful thing to be a part of. And the food was terrific. 

Tell us about some of the folks we’re going to meet. 

There is a gentleman named Coby [Bailey] who is a firefighter in Louisiana, a veteran. He came up cooking for his family, but certainly in his firehouse as well. He is very Cajun. He is the most Cajun person you ever laid eyes on. He is proud of his culture and Cajun cuisine. You can tell he loved cooking for not only his family but also chosen family. This is a guy who cooks for his firehouse. The bond of being able to feed his brothers really means something to him. There is a gentleman named Rex [Alba], who is on our show, but this is not his television debut. He was once a competitor on American Ninja Warrior, which is incredible. He is this incredibly fit guy. He is a physical therapist who grew up in a village in the Philippines. He has a very intense back story. There is this palpable sense of longing and about being together that ..So much of what he cooks is extraordinary Filipino food from his village. It’s about creating the few memories he had when his family was all together. It’s so powerful. There are so many touching stories. 

L-R: Judges Tim Hollingsworth, Tiffany Derry, and Francis Lam (PBS).

What do you make of the judging panel with Tiffany and Timothy and your approaches to judging? 

 I mean, Tiffany obviously is the veteran. She’s been a judge for all four seasons. Tim and I started last year, so last year we were kind of getting our feet wet and learning the ropes a bit. I think we have very similar styles in the sense that we are here for it all. They bring obviously particular expertise as chefs, as restaurant chefs, and really hone in on the technique. I love doing that too. I’m a nerd for that stuff. I went to culinary school. I cooked in restaurants, but I never attained anywhere near the kind of culinary achievements they have. So for me, I try to make sure that I’m tasting the food for the viewer. I’m really trying to describe the dish so that the viewer can put themselves in my seat for a bit and taste it along with me so they have some sense of what it’s actually like eating the food. I feel like that’s a little bit of a role I play that’s a little bit distinct from, again, Tim’s really brilliant sense of the technique and how, oh, the next time. So a huge part of our role is we’re not just judges, but we’re judges and mentors, right?

So we’re actually interacting with the cooks a lot. We walk around to their stations. We want them to succeed. We’re not trying to see them fail. So if we see something, whether in our walk around or even sometimes from our desk, we want to alert them in a way that’s fair, a way that everyone gets our attention, and we try to help everyone out. And so Tim brings a really extraordinary high level fine dining technique to that conversation. Tiffany is just an amazing teacher. I have to tell you, this is not related to the show, but before I was on the show with her I was in an event where she did a cooking demo, and I went up to the producer of the event afterwards. I was like, “That was the single best chef cooking demo I’ve ever seen in my entire life. She’s an incredibly talented teacher and the kind of teacher who connects with you, not just on the level of the material, but on the level of a human to human kind of connection.” “So she brings that and her own sort of Southern charm and warmth and vulnerability. So we all have a little bit of a different role we play, but it’s not like, “Oh, you’re the technique guy, and you’re the whatever guy.” I think that’s one of the beauties of the show. Everyone brings different sides of themselves to their role.

And you’re going to have a couple guest judges this season. Al Roker was revealed, noted foodie. So how was it having him on set for this?

Oh, it was a blast. It was a blast. I mean, he’s someone who, obviously everyone in America knows, but when you actually get to see him, and part of why he is so successful is because he’s so funny and charming and relatable. When you see him up close in person, you are like, “Wow, he’s really the same guy as you see on TV.” So he brought so much enthusiasm. It was really fun, a really great jolt of energy to kick off the show. Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, we have such a nice dynamic as a trio, Tiffany, Tim, and I really love working with each other, but it doesn’t mean there’s not room for someone to just bring a new spark and a different vibe to it as well.

Fans know you from Top Chef Masters, and you’ve been in industry for so long. What did you take from that judging experience? 

I was on Masters, geez, I mean, 15 years ago or something. God, yeah. Was that the last time we had a season of Top Chef Masters? A good long time ago. Well, over a decade. And I think that if we’re talking about sort of the state of the industry, I think you’re right. I think earlier on there was much more an emphasis on cutthroat and the cutthroat-ness of the competition and sort of revealing and this sort of narrative of chefs as being really intense people, really intense figures. And obviously that’s entertaining to watch, and it reflects reality to some degree, for sure. But I think that as viewers have seen season after season of series, after series, we are looking for more, for different ways to sort of see the idea of cooking for the camera. Cooking and competition has become its own sort of industry in a really interesting way. No such thing existed when I went to culinary school, for instance, or at least not in a way where you thought like, “Oh, I can make a career as a competitive cooking competition chef.”

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What do you think the state of these competitions are compared to when you first started. How important are these shows to inspire others to kind of want to pursue this maybe?

I do think we as viewers have gotten used to many different angles on this kind of content. And I think there are folks who do want more than just, “Oh, hey, they’re going to stab each other in the back, and they’re going to, “Oh, they’re going to burn the steak.” Whatever they want to see, in some cases, shows that highlight extraordinary creativity in a way that would never be achievable at home. They want to see that. And in some cases, like our show, you want to see food that is literally being made by home cooks that you could make at home. 

And again, like I said, what I think of as the really beautiful feature of our show is the humanness of it, the connection, the bonds being formed. As you watch the season, you see these cooks really connect to one another, and we connect to them as well. So I think there’s something really beautiful about that. And I think especially in a time where there’s so much in the world that feels really hard, really divisive, there’s just a lot of negative feeling and negative energy in the world. It’s really powerful to be a part of something where it’s about people who are different than one another, learning from one another, connecting to one another from total strangers by the end of the season, in some cases, lifelong friends. It’s a really beautiful thing to be a part of.

The Great American Recipe Season 4 premiere, July 11, 9/8c, PBS