Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain is either a great ally or the biggest nightmare for contestants on “The Taste.”

Known for his outspoken manner and no holds barred approach to feedback, “The Taste” judge Anthony Bourdain is going to be a hard one to please, but if contestants get him on their side, they’ll be cooking with gas.

After the three audition episodes, each of the four judges on the new cooking show have picked their teams made up of both homecooks and professionals.

Where British homecook champion Nigella Lawson favoured those who follow in her tradition, chef Ludo Lefebvre preferred French cooks and Brian Malarkey chose chefs and cooks he deemed bold.

Bourdain, on the other hand didn’t have a specific type he was looking for to fill his team.

"[My chefs] were all very different," Bourdain told Zap2it. "I just responded to certain spoons and I visualized a person. I thought, 'Who could have made this wonderful thing? I am interested in that, and this is the sort of person I'd like on my team.' Who it was cooking surprised me, let's put it that way.”

Bourdain has had an extensive and varied career that began when he fell in love with food in France. Bourdain graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978, and went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City leading to becoming the executive chef at the high-end Brasserie Les Halles. His career has taken him all over the world, into the publishing world his 2000 New York Times bestselling book “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,”  and on the small screen on various cooking shows including “No Reservation.”

So what should chefs avoid when cooking for the notoriously opinionated chef?

• Don’t feel like you need to shy away from offal or untraditional ingredients. He’s revealed he’s eaten sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and a whole cobra – beating heart, blood, bile, and meat – in Vietnam.
• Don’t you dare play Billy Joel (He wrote in his book “Kitchen Confidential “ that playing of music by Billy Joel in his kitchen was grounds for immediate firing).
• Don’t cook to “Dancing Queen” either! On a 2006 episode of “No Reservations” that took place in Sweden, he made it exceedingly clear that he’s not a fan of ABBA.
• And if you’re preparing vegetarian or vegan food, watch out. He’s not a fan!

In Tuesday’s episode, judges will begin mentoring their teams as they tackle the first challenge – comfort food.

The judges won’t necessarily have a sense of their teams' culinary composition quite yet so the big question remains: Will the judges end up voting off members of their own  teams in the blind taste test?

Check out more photos of the silver-haired celebrity chef!

“The Taste” airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on CTV. Full episodes are also available online at CTV.ca.

About Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Lindsay Zier-Vogel has been working for CTV.ca since 2008. Lindsay’s highlights include interviewing the famed American choreographer Bill T. Jones and Canadian prima ballerina Karen Kain, as well as covering the Juno Awards. Follow her on Twitter!