On the penultimate episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” Kim Kardashian walked right into a rental mansion on Lake Tahoe.
“Did I not say no to those cookies?” she snapped, gesturing towards an artfully organized show of selfmade animal cookies. “Like, they must be taken away. I gained 15 kilos!”
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“Like, it is a joke,” she mentioned, choosing up the tiered serving tray. “I’m going to throw them in the bathroom.”
Kardashian’s youthful sister Kendall Jenner moved to cease her. “OK, nicely then management your self, Kim, as a result of I like them!” she yelled.
The provenance of these all-too-tempting cookies was not mentioned on the present. Their creator, Khristianne Uy, was hiding off-camera in the kitchen. The private chef, who prefers the moniker Chef Okay, spent years engaged on the margins of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” in addition to the household’s latest actuality program on Hulu, “The Kardashians.” But now, she is entering into the body — on TikTok.
In just a little greater than two months, Chef Okay, 40, has racked up greater than 100,000 followers on the platform, sharing the meals — and cookies — she makes for her well-known purchasers, which she says have included Charlize Theron, James Cameron, Ryan Seacrest, Sean Combs and Charlie Sheen.
In June, Chef Okay was catering a birthday journey for a shopper when he pulled her into one of his social media movies. “At the finish of the final dinner he goes, ‘Chef, do a TikTok with me!’ ” she mentioned on a Zoom name from her personal spare white kitchen in Los Angeles. “I do know that is going to sound horrible, however I used to be like, ‘What’s TikTok?’ ”
Since then, Chef Okay, who has brief, darkish hair and a constellation of tattoos on her neck and arms, has been importing her personal “day in the life” type movies. One of her first posts, a behind-the-scenes video of her making Chinese rooster salads, taco bowls and chocolate chip cookies for Kylie Jenner at her Kylie Cosmetics workplace, has greater than 8 million views.
She additionally shared a clip of Kardashian’s on-camera animal-cookie freakout with the caption “When you by accident make Kim Okay achieve 15 kilos.”
Kardashian apologized for that, by the approach. “She was so variety, I want they’d have aired it,” Chef Okay mentioned. At the finish of the journey, she recalled that Kardashian walked as much as her and mentioned, “Chef, I’m so sorry, I didn’t imply to say that about your cookies — they’re nice. They’re actually good, I simply haven’t any self-control.” All was forgiven.
‘No Eggs, No Sweet Potatoes, No Gluten’
As she manages her personal rising profile, Chef Okay remains to be coping with the every day calls for of her high-profile clientele. When we spoke, she had simply labored a 19-hour day catering a Nineteen Fifties-diner-themed twenty first birthday celebration for Dr. Dre’s daughter Truly Young, in addition to one other private occasion. And she was on the point of embark on a multiday journey to Miami to cater to Philip Sarofim, a enterprise capitalist who used thus far Avril Lavigne and is a son of the late Texas billionaire Fayez Sarofim.
On high of her many private engagements, Chef Okay nonetheless repeatedly cooks for all the Kardashians and might recite their dietary restrictions and preferences with the command of a high-ranking navy officer.
The arms of Khristianne Uy, a private chef referred to as Chef Okay, in Sherman Oaks, Calif. (Source: Carlos Jaramillo/The New York Times)
“Scott: no dairy,” she started, referring to Kourtney Kardashian’s former accomplice, who remains to be a serious presence on the present. “Kourtney: relies on what the physician says — no eggs, vegan now, no candy potatoes, no gluten. Khloe: rooster, solely chicken. The youngsters: I memorize their dietary restrictions, too. Kendall: nothing spicy. Kim: no cilantro. Kylie: soup all the time.”
These sorts of disclosures have drawn followers extra deeply into her world, making “private chef” a paradoxically public function. The Kardashians have helped bolster her profile, too: Kourtney and her new husband, Travis Barker, have posted about her menus for his or her household dinners and youngsters’s birthday events on Instagram.
Sheen sings her praises. “Early on in our time collectively, I dared her to completely duplicate what I thought-about to be the best cheeseburger on planet Earth, the Five Guys — double bacon,” Sheen mentioned. “Less than 24 hours later, she served me one. I took one chunk and by no means went to Five Guys once more.”
Kourtney, Chef Okay mentioned, is an particularly massive fan of matcha, so she has created matcha cookies, matcha protein balls and matcha ice cream to go well with her tastes. Kourtney put the recipe for the protein balls on Poosh, her way of life website.
Why do followers care about the minute particulars of the Kardashians’ diets? Chef Okay in contrast the curiosity in private cooks to the comparatively long-standing fascination with superstar hair and make-up artists. Today, a private chef is only one extra ingredient of the superstar ecosystem about which individuals are wanting to study extra.
And “with meals, it’s nonetheless untapped,” she mentioned. More individuals can relate to the act of cooking than spending three hours in a chair getting glam, she mentioned. Cooking is “the essence of the dwelling,” she mentioned. “That’s the place the coronary heart is.”
Chef Okay just isn’t the solely private chef to seek out fame online lately. Meredith Hayden, a private chef in the Hamptons, has gone viral on TikTok greater than as soon as this 12 months by sharing “day in the life” movies from her job catering to a rich household at their summer time dwelling. Using the deal with @wishbonekitchen, she has collected greater than 900,000 followers, a success so tantalizing that two of her purchasers, the style designer Joseph Altuzarra and his husband, Seth Weissman, determined to begin their very own account. Hayden, 26, helped Altuzarra get started by doing a “shopper reveal” video in July.
Hayden mentioned that Altuzarra and Weissman are supportive of her social media work and provides her loads of time to take pictures of her meals earlier than she serves them. “I bear in mind final summer time Joseph was like, ‘I obtained a hoop gentle, do you need to use it?’ ”
She attributed the success of her movies and private chef content material on the whole to the idea that the movies are aspirational on a pair of completely different ranges. “I’ll get feedback which are like, ‘I don’t know if I need to rent you or if I need to be you,’ ” she mentioned. “Some individuals aspire to have the ability to rent a private chef, and others are like, ‘I’m so jealous of you as a private chef dwelling that life and having that job.’ ”
Chef Okay remains to be determining what she needs to share together with her new followers. But she has tons of tales saved up from working for celebrities over the years.
Chef Okay has labored with some of the largest celebrities; now she’s taking heart stage. (Source: Carlos Jaramillo/The New York Times)
She started cooking early. After immigrating to California from the Philippines when she was 11, she started culinary college at 15 and made a profession working as a pastry chef at eating places in Los Angeles.
It was throughout a stint working at BOA Steakhouse in the mid-aughts (which by the way is now extremely popular with TikTokers) that she met her first shopper. From there, she started working for director James Cameron and “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller.
She speaks lovingly — virtually reverentially — about all of her purchasers. Nick Jonas is “one of the sweetest gents.” Charlize Theron: “Love her.” Ryan Seacrest was her “favourite shopper” and the “nicest man.” He was additionally the one to attach her with Kris Jenner, which started her journey working for the Kardashians.
Chef Okay additionally fondly recollects working for Sheen, regardless that she started at a tumultuous time in his private life. It was 2011, she mentioned, “when all that tiger blood factor occurred, he had simply finished the interview.”
But he turned out to be the nicest man who at all times requested for liverwurst sandwiches and rooster and dumplings, she mentioned. Fans assume that her moniker, Chef Okay, is said to her work with the Kardashians, however she mentioned Sheen was the one to begin calling her that, after he couldn’t work out the way to spell her identify on one of her checks.
She mentioned she cherished working for Sheen as a result of it additionally gave her the alternative to cook dinner for his ex-wife, Denise Richards, and their youngsters. “They lived down the avenue and would come over extra,” she mentioned. “It was like the youngsters consuming and smiling with their father and their mom, and I believed, wow, that is taking place by way of meals.”
It was throughout this time that Chef Okay obtained her first style of fame: She mentioned Richards related her with Patti Stanger, who at the time was internet hosting the actuality present “Millionaire Matchmaker” on Bravo. Chef Okay ended up showing on the present as its “first lesbian millionaire.” She additionally appeared on Season 1 of “The Taste,” an ABC cooking competitors present, which she received.
After these appearances, nevertheless, she obtained busier together with her private purchasers and retreated considerably from the public eye. Now, together with her new social media profile, she is keen to create a long-lasting model. She is contemplating writing a cookbook and has a beverage collaboration in the works. Mostly, although, she needs to point out followers at dwelling what it’s actually wish to work in a star’s kitchen.
“People don’t know what occurs in the again of home,” she mentioned. “There’s lots of grit, there’s lots of sacrifice, there’s lots that goes on for simply that 10 minutes of their lunch.”
This article initially appeared in The New York Times.
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