I think what I do differently from a lot of TV chefs is that I break down barriers and make fine food more accessible to the regular person, who might be intimidated. I try hard, particularly with wine, to make it not intimidating. It’s sort of a teaching job.

Allen frames his on-camera persona less as a gatekeeping “expert” and more as a translator between elite culinary culture and everyday home life. The “barriers” he names are social as much as technical: jargon, ritual, and the fear of doing it “wrong,” especially around wine. By calling it “a teaching job,” he emphasizes pedagogy over performance—demystifying taste, giving viewers permission to experiment, and treating refinement as learnable rather than innate. The quote also positions accessibility as a distinctive professional ethic in food media, suggesting that the real value of a TV food host lies in lowering the stakes and expanding who feels entitled to enjoy “fine food.”