Alfonso Ribeiro is a meat enthusiast, but when he’s in a snacking mood he likes to reach for something different.
“Weirdly enough, [my favorite snack is] fruit,” the Dancing With the Stars host, 53, exclusively reveals in the latest issue of Us Weekly. “I will snack on fruit as often as possible. Like we have grapes at the house just all the time.”
While fruit is great to munch on, Ribeiro prefers to have something hearty as his main course.
“I am a huge grass-fed, beautiful rib eye kind of guy,” he shares of his favorite meal. “So I’m sure a steak dinner would be my No. 1.”
Ribeiro adds that his wife, Angela Unkrich, typically prepares him a steak for his special birthday meal. However, on the couple’s first date, Ribeiro didn’t opt for a traditional steak dinner. Instead, the pair enjoyed a night out at an iconic Los Angeles Chinese food eatery.
“My first date with Angela, we went to a restaurant called Mr. Chow’s,” he recalls. “I ordered the chicken satay … Mr. Chow’s noodles, the squab with lettuce, Beijing chicken and their spicy beef.”
While Ribeiro enjoyed the chicken that evening, he says that wasn’t one of his favorite menu items to eat growing up.
“Chicken as a kid, [I] didn’t like it … obviously, [I] eat it now,” he tells Us. “No issues with it now but that would be the one thing that, like as a kid, my mom and dad were like, ‘You just wouldn’t eat chicken.’”
Ribeiro confesses that he ended up trying chicken after not having it for a certain amount of time. So when he decided to give it another try, he had a more pleasant reaction.
“Somebody put a good one in front of me, and was like, ‘Oh, this is good,’” he reflects. “I think as a kid, your taste buds change, your palate [is] different every seven years, and mine just changed, and I was good with it.”
In addition to chicken and steak, Ribeiro’s go-to comfort food is a good old burger.
“I’m right now trying to be healthy. So there’s not a lot of comfort food in the game,” he tells Us. “But, I love my burgers. [However], there’s not a lot of [those] in my life right now.”
When it’s time to get the cookout going, Ribeiro’s “top three” side dishes to pair with hot dogs and burgers are fruit salad, deviled eggs and baked macaroni and cheese — specifically the kind from Bob Evans.
“You can do anything you want with it,” he said of the mac and cheese brand. “You can put bacon in it, you can add whatever you want in it. It makes it just a great base for all of your mac and cheese, and the mashed potatoes and that kind of stuff.”
For more on Riberio, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, which now includes 12 additional pages, on stands now.
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