Chrissy Teigen learned long ago that it's impossible to please everyone, but all it takes to piss them off is an Instagram post of your dinner. Or an unconventional recipe.
"Oh honey, I put cheese in guacamole, and people were so mad at me," the cookbook author, model and Lip Sync Battle co-host says, wrapping a blush-colored cashmere throw a little tighter around her. She's curled up on the sofa of the Howard Hotel's penthouse suite in downtown Manhattan, doing interviews to promote a partnership with Lawry's seasoned salt (as well as her cookbook, Cravings), when the conversation soon turns to the unintentional controversies she's sparked on social media. The cheddar-in-guac incident was her first taste of the Internet's vitriol.
"I had an ex-boyfriend of mine whose father would shred up cheddar cheese and fold it into guacamole, and I was like, 'oh my god, I cannot have guacamole any other way now,'" she explains. "I posted about it on my blog a few years ago, and people were like, 'this is a travesty; my grandmother is rolling in her grave thinking about your guacamole!"
The wave of complaints—and flat-out disgust—over this simple twist on the classic avocado-based dip stunned her, but it'd be far from the last time she was at the center of an social media firestorm for living her life. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit model has never been afraid to share her opinion, though that openness often comes at the cost of being in the center of a few Twitter fights, including a stint in 2014 when she took a hiatus from the site after receiving death threats for criticizing U.S.'s approach to gun control. Some of the most surprising uproars, however, seem the most innocuous: Posts about what she's cooking, or where she's eating.
One night, she Instagrammed a series of photos as she cooked dinner, starting with sizzling lamb shanks and the simple caption, 'Greek night!' Many of her posts around that time got about 650 to 1,300 comments. When she posted two photos of her dessert that night, baklava, the comments erupted, jumping to 3,407 and 4,736, respectively.
"It was like a war," Teigen says. "I'd never seen anything like it. I had maybe six or seven countries fighting for ownership of baklava. They were like, 'you think that's Greek? That's not Greek!' and 'Are you kidding me?'"
While Teigen's far from the only person who gets flak for how she cooks (at Delish, we've gotten our fair share of complaints for everything from putting cilantro on elote to posting a video that shows a piece of bell pepper falling out of a skillet), the star seems to be a lightning rod for strong opinions. Maybe it's because she's not afraid to fire back, often replying directly to her dissenters.
She understands their passion. After all, it's something they have in common. "Food is emotional," she says. "I get it."
Though Teigen can relate to how much the Internet loves food, all of the comment wars have changed her approach to social—somewhat.
"One of my favorite things about Twitter used to be that you could go and be like, 'hey, I'm in Nashville, where's the best barbecue?' Now, not only will I not ask that question, I will never Instagram a picture of me at a barbecue place, because it is just such a hot topic," she says. "They're like, 'Why'd you go there? That's not the best place!' People are really gung-ho about their spots."
Ultimately, though, she says there's only one thing you can do about online haters, without totally censoring your life: "Stop reading the comments," she says.
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