Rising food prices mean most families now have a sharp intake of breath when they see a restaurant or supermarket bill, but in the alternate universe inhabited by the rich and famous, no one apparently blinks an eye at a grocery shop that costs £2,250.
This and other revelations come from a new breed of online influencers: celebrity personal chefs.
Having your own dedicated cook – to keep strict tabs on your diet, fly in the best produce from around the world, or rustle up whatever you like, whenever you like – has nowadays become the norm for most celebs. And with their insights into how the make-up entrepreneur Kylie Jenner likes her pancakes or what presenter Maya Jama has in her smoothies, many of them have become social media stars in their own right.
While we’d all like to reduce sugar and processed foods, embracing the trend for healthier eating and cooking from scratch often takes money and time. Celebrities have a lot of the former but not much of the latter – hence the rise of the private chefs and their growing army of followers. Turns out, you can tell a lot about someone’s life from what they eat.
Here, thanks to their cooks, we reveal the kitchen secrets of some of the world’s biggest stars…
The detox smoothie prescribed by Paris Hilton’s chef
Chef Bae, real name Brooke Baevsky, is a private chef to some of California’s best-known celebs
Emma Roberts is one of the social media-famous chef’s clients
Chef Bae, real name Brooke Baevsky, is a private chef to some of California’s best-known celebs. Paris Hilton, 44, actress Emma Roberts, 34, Meghan Markle, 44, and John Legend, 46, have all used her culinary expertise.
On her website, she claims to have also worked for royal families and professional athletes, which is probably why she has 1.5million followers lapping up every word across her social media platforms – with 533,000 on TikTok alone.
The 29-year-old’s blonde curls and bouncy TV persona (she’s a regular on the US Food Network and also has her own gossipy YouTube channel Overheard Eats) belie a steely attention to detail. Chef Bae devises highly specific meal plans for clients based on blood tests and DNA analysis provided by clients.
Working with an unlimited budget, she is known for ‘dropping a mortgage payment’ on food shops, as she puts it. In one video, Chef Bae can be seen spending $3,000 (£2,260) in upscale LA supermarket Erewhon, where a jar of Chicken Noodle Soup costs $50 (£38).
At a celebrity kid’s Beverly Hills birthday party – costing $500,000 (£380,000) in total – she spent $2,900 (£2,200) on a menu of gluten-free super greens pesto pasta, mezze boards, fruit platters and vegetarian burgers with kale.
‘The food is all gluten-free, seed oil-free and refined sugar-free,’ she says. Indeed her ‘allergy-friendly’ recipes are some of her most-shared.
In a recent video of a ‘day in the life of a private chef’, Chef Bae is seen in actress Emma Roberts’s grand kitchen cooking spicy tuna, healthy ‘raw cookie dough’ and miso pasta.
‘I no longer need Nobu!’ declares Emma, referring to the popular Japanese restaurant.
Chef Bae’s signature specialty, however, is an arduous five-step ‘morning routine’, which she claims her clients ‘swear by’.
She starts her celebs off in the morning with hot water and lemon, followed by a fresh celery juice, which they must drink on an empty stomach an hour before eating.
Then she makes a morning detox smoothie with a concoction of supplements and vitamins, including B12, sprouted almond milk, deer antler serum, lemon balm, olive leaf and the tropical vine called cat’s claw. Full of fibre, she claims it supports the thyroid and metabolism and cleanses the liver, while also being rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds.
The next step is coconut water with creatine. And finally – and most palatably – her stars drink wild blueberry juice.
She also makes her own vegan, sugar-free protein bars that have 20g of protein, as well as ‘healthy cookie crisp cereal’, which she feeds ‘all her celebs’ kids’.
The ‘healing broth’ top British chef makes for Simon Cowell
Chloe-Charlotte Crampton was an actress beforea breast cancer diagnosis in 2021 made her radically rethink her career
For the past four years she has cooked for Simon Cowell at his LA home
One of the dishes she prepares for the music mogul is a ‘cancer-fighting miracle broth’
British cook Chloe-Charlotte Crampton, 36, has taken an unconventional route to private cheffing. Trained as an actress, she appeared in a Hollyoaks spin-off series before a breast cancer diagnosis in 2021 made her radically rethink her career. Having learned about healthy eating and anti-inflammatory foods, she is now a nutrition coach and online influencer with 114,000 Instagram followers.
‘When everything felt out of control, I focused on the one thing I could control – what I put in my body,’ she says.
For the past four years she has cooked for Simon Cowell, 66, and his wife, Lauren Silverman, at their LA home.
One of the dishes she prepares for them is a ‘cancer-fighting miracle broth’ she describes as a ‘super healing, nourishing and just all-round magical elixir’. It contains onions, celery, mushrooms, carrots, turmeric and broccoli stems.
One of her posts shows her going to posh grocery store Erewhon ‘to pick up lunch and a green juice’; followed by Trader Joe’s for snacks and flowers; the upmarket supermarket Whole Foods for ‘organic produce and meats’; and the shoreside city of Santa Monica for seafood.
She also travels back to the UK to cook for celebrities in the Cotswolds. This month she has collaborated with high-end grocers Daylesford Organic on a dish for its wellness venue, The Club By Bamford. And she shops for ingredients at Marks & Spencer and rustles up omelettes, healthy muffins, coconut balls and large salads.
Chef K’s caviar and grilled cheese for the Kardashians
Chef K tends to ‘hide in the pantry’ when film crews come into her client’s kitchen
It’s Chef K who has catered for every Kardashian birthday party in the past ten years
Chef Khristianne Uy, also known as Chef K, cooks for one of the most famous families in the world – the Kardashian clan.
That in itself has made her globally famous, though she also has 367,000 followers of her own with TikTok posts such as: ‘My cookies made Kim Kardashian gain 15 pounds.’
Not that Chef K is a natural in the spotlight.
‘I do everything back of the house because I’m shy,’ says the 43-year-old. ‘Even when they’re filming The Kardashians, I hide in the pantry or duck down.’
But The Kardashians was in fact her second foray into reality TV, as Chef K, who moved to LA from the Philippines, has also appeared on US TV series The Millionaire Matchmaker.
Since 2015, however, she’s been very much part of the Kardashian clan, with Khloe calling her ‘the queen of cooking’ and Kris Jenner – to whom Chef K has a passing resemblance – taking her on camping trips with her own mobile ‘kitchen bus’.
It’s Chef K who has catered for every Kardashian birthday party in the past ten years, including those ‘themed’ by Kim Kardashian’s eldest daughter North, 12.
A ‘What I cook for Kylie Jenner’ video reveals menus including a chicken bowl with vegetables, a Chinese chicken salad and healthy banana bread. But Chef K also admits she’ll do ‘whatever [Kylie] wants’, too, of course.
The Kardashian clan like to eat hummus and pitta, caviar and mini pancakes. Kim, Khloe and Kris are apparently very ‘disciplined’ because they like to stay in shape – but when they indulge, it’s a grilled cheese on the menu.
She makes them a mango smoothie most days with collagen and chia seeds.
‘I have a small team of eight that helps me, and I like to keep it that way because it’s my name if something breaks or goes wrong,’ she says. And things do go wrong even to the most organised private chef.
‘I had an event and a team member forgot to close the refrigerator the night before,’ she confesses. ‘Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of fish flown in from Japan had gone bad. We went to every vendor we could think of to buy fish to make the event happen.’
Glow-up drinks and ‘healthy McDonald’s’ by Alec Baldwin’s chef
Earthy Jane, real name Jane Olivia, is best known as the cook for actors Adam Sandlerand Alec Baldwin
Earthy Jane prepares up to ten dishes per week for each celebrity she works for, including Adam Sandler, left, and Alec Baldwin
Arizona-born private ‘holistic chef’ Earthy Jane, real name Jane Olivia, is surely one of the most popular of all the private chef influencers, having amassed 3.4million followers. Indeed, she now offers chefs courses, hosts retreats and has her own ‘Food Friends Community’, offering exclusive recipes on her app for £150 a year.
As a private chef, the 25-year-old has a waiting list for clients, but is best known as the cook for actors Adam Sandler, 59, and Alec Baldwin, 67.
One recent social media post shows us around a celebrity kitchen (thought to be Sandler’s) with a fridge so large Earthy Jane can stand up in it. On its three walls of storage, one shelf is completely stocked with the low-sugar American fizzy drink Poppi.
Earth Jane prepares up to ten dishes per week for each celebrity. For Sandler, these can be anything from lasagne to a broccoli Caesar salad.
Most recently, for Alec Baldwin and his family, she made crispy salmon rice and BBQ chicken and vegetables.
She also makes her celebrity clients a skin-enhancing drink she calls a ‘glow-ade’, which includes four cups of washed kale, two cucumbers, four green apples, two cups of pineapple, four cups of spinach and ginger and turmeric root.
Another recent client asked for a ‘McDonald’s snack wrap’ so she made her own healthy version for them with marinated chicken breast, homemade honey BBQ sauce, and homemade gluten-free tortillas.
Manchester chef’s ‘bee glue’ for Maya Jama and Ruben Dias
By 10am, Diogo Prego is in his client’s apartment, cooking for the whole day
Diogo cooks everything from omelettes to fresh bone broth for Ruben Dias and his girlfriend, Maya Jama – and blends up a daily juice
Manchester City’s Ruben Dias, 28, doesn’t eat any sugar. His chef, Diogo Prego, 35, doesn’t let him (or any of the football players he cooks for) consume any processed sweet treats at all, but instead swears by a morning immunity juice.
Diogo trained as a chef in Portugal and for five years owned his own restaurant before getting to work with the City star in Manchester. He now has 388,000 followers, and a recent ‘day in the life’ Instagram post – including a recipe for mortadella and pistachio calzone – garnered 8.2million views. His dark good looks surely don’t hurt his follower numbers either.
Now a good friend of the Portuguese player, he also cooks for Dias’s girlfriend Maya Jama, 31.
Diogo’s day starts at 9.30am in The Butcher’s Quarter in Manchester, a high-end store incorporating an artisan butcher, cheesemonger, deli & wine shop.
By 10am, he is in Dias’s apartment cooking for the whole day.
He whips up a ham and cheese omelette along with avocado on toast, smoked salmon and an immunity juice for the footballer.
Diogo then cooks fresh bone broth, short crust pastry for a chicken and roquefort quiche, homemade protein bars which include spirulina and organic dark chocolate and homemade egg noodles.
His daily juice for Ruben and Maya consists of five oranges, 150g of ginger, 60g of turmeric, 5g of green pepper, 3tbsp of raw honey, 225ml of coconut water and four drops of propolis, or bee glue (a concoction honey bees produce by mixing saliva, beeswax and sap from tree buds).
