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Published in the September 2014 issue

Even before I met Chrissy Teigen, I was aware that she was a woman of passionate opinions. Consider her Twitter feed:

• On gazpacho: "Don't tell me to make gazpacho aka cold salsa aka crap."

• On Donald Trump: "I literally pose half naked for a living and u are still the biggest attention whore I know."

• On food that is not from a pig: "The fish sucked because it wasn't pork."

Frankly, it's a bit intimidating. Will Esquire end up on her suck list? Will she tell me to "settle down," like she does her Twitter trolls?

But then Chrissy Teigen arrives at a Lower East Side New York restaurant with a beaming smile and a jaunty straw hat.

She pauses to talk to a fan, a woman who says, "I'm obsessed with you. There are zero people in the world that I'd say anything to at a restaurant, but I think you're hilarious."

A video interlude, partly shot with a flying drone...

preview for Chrissy Teigen Is a Woman We Love

Chrissy laughs generously at the woman's jokes and promises to send her ten dollars for saying kind things in front of a journalist.

"I'm much nicer in person than on Twitter," she says.

For those behind on their social media: Chrissy Teigen was born in Utah. Her mom is Thai and her dad is a midwesterner of Norwegian descent. She is married to singer John Legend, whom she met on a video shoot and has been with for eight years. They don't have kids yet, but she recently tweeted to him "Happy Father's Day to @johnlegend! (sugar daddy)" She was on the cover of this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, butt-to-butt-to-butt with Lily Aldridge and Nina Agdal on a beach. (This despite the fact that she's not a beach person and thinks "sand is disgusting. I get all Larry David at the beach and want every piece of sand off me.")

She has a show on MTV called Snack-Off on which she's a judge. It's sort of like Top Chef but with a dorm-fridge spin, such as making dishes out of Cheetos.

And she just did the photo shoot for Esquire that you see here, pushing a lawn mower in six-inch platform heels and getting snapped by a flying drone camera.

Chrissy orders a carafe of white wine for the two of us. It's 11:00 A.M. She explains she's a day drinker—she usually stops when it gets dark to avoid hangovers.

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And despite her Twitter feed, there is plenty that she loves. Her dogs, including her bulldog Puddy, who recently lost control of his bowels on a flight to Los Angeles and forced her to put his fecal matter in her purse and later hold his doggy butt over the toilet. She loves John Goodman. ("I feel like part of me will die when John Goodman dies.")

She likes cats, even though they are "the devil's children," and she's not sure why people choose them as pets. "People love to say, 'My cat is great. He's just like a dog.' I always think, Well, get a fucking dog!"

And food. She loves food.

I know it's a cliché when supermodels say they love food and eat whatever they want and mysteriously never gain weight. But Chrissy actually adores food.

She believes American cheese is the most "underrated cheese."

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She loves Del Taco—though not so much Chipotle. "If I'm going to eat fast food, I'm going to McDonald's. I don't need to pretend."

She loves food enough to hate diets, like the Master Cleanse she went on years ago. "I looked at a Wheat Thin one day and got teary-eyed. You know those cartoons where the head of somebody becomes a turkey? That Wheat Thin looked like a fucking turkey. My mouth was watering."

She's fit but not stick-thin. She's what the fashion press calls "curvy." Though perhaps not curvy enough for her own taste. Chrissy says she's not a fan of her butt, which she believes is not substantial enough.

"I didn't know butts were a thing until I was twenty-three. Then came Jennifer Lopez and people were like, 'That butt is great.' Now you have to have a butt. It sucks for me."

I tell her, as an objective journalist, that her butt looks above average to me.

"I have a little half-Asian butt, and the more I work out, the more I try to get it bigger, it's just going to get flatter and harder."

Maybe her part-Norwegian butt will come to the rescue?

No such luck. "That's concave."

We finish our wine and get the check. So what's next? Will she be going to the gym to work on her multicultural butt? No, she says. "I'm going home to make soup."

I thought it better not to suggest she revisit gazpacho.

PLUS: More photos (like this one) from our whole shoot with Chrissy!

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