NYC private chefs are becoming social media stars

NYC’s private chefs are going public — and becoming social media stars.

While lands for the elite have traditionally toiled in the dark, churning out egg-white omelets, smoothies and processed dinners for the one percent, they’ve recently discovered that foodies are hungry to watch videos about their work lives .

“It’s this kind of secret underground world that not a lot of people have access to,” said Meredith Hayden, a private chef who broke out on social media and signed a lucrative cookbook deal. “And it’s a little less staged than your average cooking video, where it’s just a chef on a set … I’m a professional chef at home.”

Hayden, 28, was one of the first private chefs to really hit the Internet.

She previously worked in marketing at Condé Nast while attending the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) at night, hoping to eventually land a recipe developer job at Bon Appétit.

But in 2020, Hayden was fired and started working as a personal chef for designer Joseph Altuzarra and his husband, Seth Weissman.

Around that time, she started her @WishboneKitchen Instagram account, posting pictures of the beautiful dishes she made. But Hayden didn’t go viral until the following year, when she posted a video depicting her weekend as a private chef in the Hamptons, shopping at the market and cooking multiple meals.

The Williamsburg resident now has 2.2 million followers on TikTok and 1.2 million on Instagram.

Last year, she signed a “major” deal — defined as over $500,00 by Publishers Marketplace — for a cookbook, which is due out in May 2025.

“In a month, I do what I would have done in a year [at Condé or as a private chef]Hayden said. “It’s life-changing.”

Private chef Olivia Tiedemann also signed a cookbook deal for over $500,000 thanks, in part, to her social media fame.

The 27-year-old Bay Ridge, Brooklyn native went to the acclaimed Ballymaloe cooking school in Ireland and worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in the city for years. But she got burned out and started a private chef for a change.

Tiedemann’s latest summer gig in the Hamptons featured breakfast and lunch for her two bosses, along with four-course dinners laid out for them and their friends four nights a week.

“It’s like a 15-hour day … three or four days a week,” said Tiedemann, who lives in Park Slope.

On Instagram, she has attracted 4.4 million followers, along with guest stars Giada de Laurentiis and Benny Blanco, with her unique style – punk rock music, fast editing, dropping F-bombs and giving the camera the thumbs up. with her Twiggy style. lashes and displaying rapid-fire knife skills as he prepares steak tartare or homemade mushroom gnocchi.

Tiedemann was worried that her most recent clients—a man who worked in music and his model wife—might not like her breaking out on Instagram while she worked for them, but the opposite turned out to be true.

“They thought it was so cute,” she said.

Maddy DeVita, 25, got her first private chef gig because the client — a midtown Manhattan family with two young children and a popular fashion label — liked her social media savvy.

She ran chef Daniel Boulud’s social media account while attending culinary school and also started her own @HandMeTheFork Instagram account.

Her first post to go viral was a Reel on “egg day” at ICE, where students learn how to cook eggs to perfection in every way.

“It’s always the ones you least expect to perform well,” DeVita said. The Reel went on to receive more than a million views, and DeVita currently has more than half a million followers on Instagram.

Another surprise? One percent like raw seafood.

“They would have sushi or something like that every day if I served them,” she said. “I was like … ‘Do they have to eat so much raw fish, there’s like health concerns with mercury poisoning, right?’