The Only 2 Foods Jacques Pépin Thinks Twice About Eating

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For all the accolades Jacques Pépin has earned throughout his career, it's comforting to know his tastes are the opposite of snobby. For instance, even though he likely has access to the fanciest butters in the world, the chef likes to use an everyday store-bought butter for baking, calling Land O'Lakes one of his favorites (via Food & Wine). Pépin is famously open to all sorts of food, including his own take on tortilla pizzas, which is why it's hard not to take notice when he says he's not a fan of something.

In an interview with KQED, the chef was asked if there were any foods he actively disliked, and he answered in the most Pépin way: "I'm kind of a glutton. I kind of like any food, but I'm not crazy about coconut. Too much coconut, for me, kind of turns me off. I'm not crazy about marshmallow, either."

This is the same man who, in a Q&A with The Minnesota Star Tribune, once said, "You can never put anything in front of me that I don't eat," so singling out coconuts and marshmallows as his least favorite foods is a big deal. It's safe to say Pépin might've been open to trying an old-school ambrosia salad — which contains both these foods — but he may not have gone back for a second bite.

Based on what we've seen from his long career, it seems Jacques Pépin is more open to using coconut than marshmallow; he's actually used coconut in his own recipes. For example, in his cookbook, "More Fast Food My Way", coconut milk is featured in his lamb curry and tapioca banana coconut pudding. It should be noted that in the KQED interview, he mentioned his issue was "too much" coconut, so it's not something he's entirely averse to.

As for marshmallow, his dislike of it goes further back than you might think. At a 2017 fundraising dinner in Seattle, Pépin confessed he wasn't a fan of the fluffy sweet (via The Seattle Times). When he spoke with Interview Magazine in 2012, "Marshmallows!" was his answer to a question about food whose popularity he never understood.

You can even go all the way back to the first season of Pépin's show with Julia Child, "Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home", and see the legends share a humorous exchange about his distaste for it. In the middle of preparing a Thanksgiving-like dinner, Child pointed out how the mashed sweet potatoes didn't have marshmallow in them. When Pépin told her he wasn't crazy about it, Child quipped, "That's 'cause you're French!" Given the hysterical way they were introduced to each other — with Child being described to Pépin by a mutual friend as having "a terrible voice" — that bit of banter over a food Pépin wasn't fond of was just another example of their incredible rapport.