TedIlan: Reality Without Pity

Great unholy Doppelgängers, possums!

Last season, the great Keckler of Television Without Pity nicknamed Ilan Hall "TedIlan" for his resemblance to, you guessed it, Ted Allen.

However, no one has ever really had any trouble telling the two apart. Or so we thought.

Imagine our surprise when we came across a report about Ted Allen attending the birthday party of Manhattan club impresario Noah Tepperberg. The "article" breathlessly reported that "[e]ven reality TV was in attendance and stopped for the flashbulbs as a handful of America's Next Top Model contestants and Ted Allen from Top Chef paraded by."

Ted Allen a fame-whore who consorts with Tyra's castoffs? Hardly seemed likely.

Imagine our relief, and our repulsion on Ted Allen's behalf, when the photographs revealed that it was Ilan Hall that the "reporter" was talking about. Ilan Hall a fame-whore who consorts with Tyra's castoffs? Totally believable. But oh the indignity of having all the photos captioned "Ted Allen."

So what else is Ilan doing with his time and adjudged Top Chef title? According to one person on Marcel Vigneron's MySpace page:

I was in Whole Foods, on the Lower East Side, in Manhattan where I live and Ilan was there, and he knocked over a whole sample tray, it flew in the air and cause a spectacle! It was really funny!

But surely impressive feats such as attending nightclub impresarios' birthday parties and knocking over sample trays at Whole Foods don't take up all of Ilan's time?

No, indeed. He also celebrates family birthdays, as faithful Amuse-Biatch reader Jessica related to us in what we hope will inaugurate a "Biatch on the Street" feature, where you, possums, our huddled masses yearning to be snarky, send in your sightings of cheftestants and judges alike.

Jessica writes:

My boyfriend Tim and I were in New York City for vacation..., and, being the rabid Top Chef fans that we are, we chose to spend some serious dough on a dinner at Craftsteak in the hopes of, if not catching a glimpse of Tom Colicchio, at least tasting his food...While exiting the restaurant, [Ilan Hall] and his party stopped to speak to some of the restaurant employees who were stationed behind us...We shook hands and Ilan sat down for the photo. He seemed enormously pleased to have been recognized and to be treated like a celebrity. [You don't say!--Ed.] We posed for the camera, he jokingly asked to share some of our table's complimentary paté, and then he had to be off to celebrate his sister's birthday...As for the sides of Ilan's head,...they were shaved into a kind of striped pattern. Horizontal lines - maybe two or three of them on each side....