Rachel Khoo reveals why she was determined not to work in restaurants when she started out in food industry
My Little Paris Kitchen star Rachel Khoo has presented some hugely successful TV shows, and featured as a judge on Great British Menu and Great Australian Bake Off - but one thing she tends to avoid is working in restaurants.
While other celeb chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay started out in the food industry by working in commercial kitchens before going on to run their own eateries, Khoo says early on she thought working in a restaurant would be ‘a real slog’, choosing to carve out a more unique career path instead.
It comes as Khoo helps launch two new Kettle crisp flavours as part of her partnership with the brand. The Honey Dijon Mustard and Brie & Caramelised Onion crisps - which I can attest are very good - are available at major UK retailers from this month.
They’re inspired by the years Khoo spent living in Paris, where she relocated aged 26 without knowing the language, training in pâtissière at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu.
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She had a simple reason for focusing on honing her technical skills rather than learning through working in a restaurant - commercial kitchens simply weren’t as ‘cool’ back then.
Speaking to Tyla, she said: “I'd worked in restaurants as a waitress, and I'd seen how hard it was in the kitchen. It's tough. It's a real slog. I didn't like the atmosphere.
“And back then, we're talking late 90s, early Noughties. Now, it's a little bit cool, you think of The Bear, you think of Boiling Point.”
I mean, neither of those TV shows make it look that appealing to work in a commercial kitchen - but Khoo says being a chef now has more ‘rock and roll’ glamour.
She continued: “For me, it was like, ‘You know what? I don't necessarily want to run a restaurant, but I want to be creative with food.’
”It was learning those technical skills I could do at culinary school, of making a pain au chocolat, all the French patisserie that I wanted to learn.
“I did end up working in a restaurant, worked in a couple, but it wasn't what I ultimately wanted to go for.”
Khoo did end up opening a restaurant in Paris, dubbed 'the smallest in the city' since it could only accommodate two diners, who would eat in a cosy corner of her own apartment while she whipped up dinner mere metres away. It was the focus of The Little Paris Kitchen - and viewers will know it had a very different vibe to Jeremy Allen White and Stephen Graham's chaotic kitchen antics.
Of course, being in Paris gave Khoo access to a completely different food culture, which she said was very different to the UK.
“When I lived in Paris, I had a market on a Wednesday and Saturday. I had my veg guy, I had my butcher, I had my wine guy, the fish guy, and you'd have a little banter.
“When you go to the supermarket, you just pick up the ingredients, you even do self-checkout.
“[In Paris] it's really, really lovely. It takes a bit longer, but you feel good, you have that human interaction.”
Even the kids eat better.
“At school in the canteen, they have a main course, a salad, a side, a cheese course and a dessert. I grew up on jacket potatoes and baked beans. It wasn't quite the same in Croydon.”
The one culture shock was that the French are clear there is a time and a place to snack.
Khoo said: “You don't eat on the street. When I first moved to Paris, I was an au pair to a French family. I'd go pick up the kids, and we'd get a baguette for dinner, and it would be warm.
“And I'm saying to the kids, ‘Oh, why don't we nibble a little bit off the top?’ No. It’s not the done thing. So they have certain etiquettes.”
Fortunately snacking on the street this side of the channel isn’t such a faux pas, so you can tuck into Kettle’s new Parisian-inspired flavours on the go without getting any dirty looks.
Khoo worked alongside Kettle in developing the flavours, explaining: “I got to eat loads of chips, like fresh off the fryer, see the whole process, and then also meet all the people behind it.
“I met the farmer, saw the potatoes in the field, some of the harvesting. They wouldn't let me go on the tractor.
“They have some ladies who are hand frying it, and they've been doing it for over a decade.”
KETTLE® Chips launches brand-new French Flavours made with KETTLE® Chef and best-selling author Rachel Khoo. Available in Waitrose and Morrisons now.
Topics: Food and Drink, Celebrity
Simon Fearn