CARLA HALL

OF ‘THE CHEW’ WEEKDAYS ON ABC

You just opened a restaurant in Brooklyn, N.Y. Can you talk about it?

Yes. Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen and it’s fast casual, meaning that you just come up, you order at the counter and then servers will bring you your food. But it’s not a sitdown restaurant, no reservations or anything like that. And the focus is Nashville’s Hot Chicken and southern fried, so it’s pretty simple. We have mixed drinks and batched cocktails and mocktails, plenty of sweet tea and lemonade.

Did you do this during hiatus? It seems like you couldn’t do this while “The Chew” is in production.

No, I did (chuckles). We actually opened on Memorial Day, so the month leading up to it and then on Memorial Day. So I was doing both and I was just more tired than I have ever been in my life. Twenty-hour days – it was really crazy.

You must have had a lot of coffee on hand.

I did not. I actually made it a point not to drink caffeine because I was afraid to become dependent on it, so I drank a lot of water and I slept when I could. I was sleeping in my dressing room during our breaks, and you know it wasn’t sustainable. I was really tired. Whenever I sat down, I was just falling asleep. But I did that for a month.

So now that it’s open, how is it doing?

It’s going really well. It’s nice to only focus on one thing right now, so the hiatus is welcome. And it’s still very physical and long hours but it’s just one thing, and it’s going well. You know, we’re getting into a routine and the staff’s getting into a groove. And we’re still tweaking things as you do but the reception to the food has been good and it’s going really well.