Maddy Devita, known as @handmethefork, is the quintessential food influencer. She’s got that winning blend of otherworldly cooking skills and down-to-earth relatability, grounding her outrageously appetizing TikTok clips with real humanity.
But of her many claims to fame, perhaps her most salient was that she happened to already be pretty close to it.
Devita’s rose to TikTok virality earlier this year while documenting her time cheerfully toiling as a private chef for wealthy New Yorkers. That latter angle is crucial because stirring saucepans within a restaurant’s sterile silver kitchen would never hit nearly as hard as chopping veg inside an ostentatiously ornate abode.
Despite Devita’s professional stoicism — they don’t call ’em private chefs for nothin’ — viewers quickly sussed that her VIP clients were real estate and fashion moguls Todd and Rebecca Hassel Cohen.
The discovery was likely inevitable. There are a lot of ridiculous luxury homes in NYC but only one is this absurdly baroque .
But Devita’s then-unnamed clients gave the entire affair a tantalizing edge, a phenomenon indicative of a greater procession of celebrities’ chefs tending towards becoming celebrity chefs.
What makes their content truly captivating, especially on TikTok, is combo of talent and context, with a garnish of A-list intrigue.
These private chefs offer insider-y peeks behind an affluent velvet curtain, offering organic glimpses of exquisite interiors and food to match.
Viewers are invited to peruse the meals that the uber-rich eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner through the eyes of the person lovingly preparing each course, all made the more appealing by the no-frills authenticity. Add a light air of mystery — after all, who are these well-heeled clients? — to taste.
And, thus, a host of mouth-watering viral codes meld into an algorithm-friendly goulash that’s currently dominating For You pages. Luxury house tours meets prep with me meets high-level cooking content.
It’s critical that these flavors are balanced enough to tempt: The wealth angle guarantees aspiration and clickable extravagance — the vast spread required for a 12-person dinner party is fascinating enough at face value — while the chefs’ culinary school-honed skills ensure a showcase of enviable talent.
One of my colleagues put it like this: “It’s less like TikTok chefs becoming private chefs and more like private chefs are becoming TikTokers.”
Unlike with hobby chefs, these private chef videos encourage you to observe the subject and their surroundings as much as the food itself. It’s the same unassuming formula that makes things like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Real Housewives so engaging: We all wanna know what it’s like to live like the world’s wealthiest.
Further, these private chefs are embodying contemporary cooking cuture, itself a mixture of cuisine and celebrity. Except, in place of the poised hosts of the Bon Appétit test kitchen but or actors on The Bear, you’re watching IRL kitchen masters at work.
It makes them especially endearing, because you’re aware of just how hard they worked to earn their place at (or at least behind) the table.
And they’re becoming celebrity chefs in their own right.
After her impressive rise to fame earlier this year, Maddy Devita received invites to luxury events, paid social media posts and a collaboration with buzzy apron brand White Bark Workwear (though she no longer cooks for the Cohens).
Meredith Hayden of Wishbone Kitchen, one of the original celebrities’ chefs to transition to internet celebritydom, flits between Dior events and cooking for the Altuzarra family in the Hamptons. And stints for famous folks like Mindy Kaling and John Legend have earned Brooke Baevsky, known as Chef Bae, partnerships with Starbucks, Erewhon and Goop.
The delicious perks of celebrity by proxy.