Three summers ago, Meredith Hayden, founder of Wishbone Kitchen, was working 17-hour shifts as a private chef for designer Joseph Altuzarra and his family at their Hamptons estate. She documented each grueling day online: 6 A.M. wake-ups, massive grocery hauls, prepping three elaborate multi-course meals a day, picking fresh produce from the backyard, cooking, plating each dish with the artistry of a seasoned chef, and cleaning up the kitchen at 10:30 P.M., before going to bed and getting up to do it all again for the Altuzarras—and for us, her audience of 2.3 million on TikTok and 1.3 million on Instagram.
Hundreds of recorded meals, a handful of celebrity guest appearances, and numerous social media brand deals (from everything between Walmart to Dior) later, Hayden, now 29, recently bought her own house in the Hamptons, where she plans to live there full-time with her Bernese Mountain dog (while keeping an apartment in New York City). In the short time span since Hayden's career as a chef exploded—as she was going from working in a Hamptons house to buying her own—she also managed to write her first cookbook, The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook, out May 6.
Hayden started her social media account, Wishbone Kitchen (a name inspired by the roast chicken her mom made weekly and the wishbone they'd traditionally pull apart together) in 2020, after completing her studies at the Institute of Culinary Education and working as a line cook at New York City's Charlie Bird for five months in 2019. She used her next job as an independent freelance private chef to create content for TikTok that generated as many as 28 million views per video—and a loyal following that has sold out every stop on her nationwide book tour.
Watching Hayden's videos feels like FaceTiming with a friend. |
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