Rachel Khoo

Early life

Khoo was born in Croydon, South London. She has a younger brother named Michael. She attended primary school in Bromley. Her paternal family were Chinese immigrants to Malaysia and were part of the Khoo Kongsi clanhouse located in George Town, Penang. Her father is Malaysian Chinese and emigrated from Ipoh to the UK at aged 16 in 1968, one year before the Malaysian riots. He later met and married her mother, an Austrian native. At 12, her father's job in IT forced the family to move to Bavaria, where they lived in the countryside outside Munich for four years. They returned to the UK when Rachel was 16. She attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, and earned a degree in art and design.

Early career

After graduating from university, Khoo initially worked in public relations for the luxury fashion retailer, Thomas Pink for two years. Looking for "adventure" in her life and with no knowledge of French, she quit her job at Thomas Pink and undertook a three-month patisserie course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in 2006. While living in Paris, she worked part-time as an au pair and sold perfume at the upscale department store, Printemps. After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu, she worked at the Parisian cookbook store and café, La Cocotte, where she ran baking workshops and served as the store's pastry chef .

While working at La Cocotte, she often attended cookery events for various book launches. American cookbook author Marc Grossman had Khoo test recipes for one of his books, and this encounter later led to a meeting with his editor. In 2010, Khoo received her first publishing deal for two French-language cookery books: Barres à céreales, muesli et granola maison and Pâtes à tartiner which were published by Marabout. Both of these were later translated into English as Rachel Khoo's Muesli and Granola, and Rachel Khoo's Sweet and Savory Pâtés. During this time, she also worked briefly in Germany as a freelancer for Volkswagen where she ran food-related events.

After successfully pitching UK publishers her concept for a new cookbook, Khoo opened a small restaurant to test recipes for her first English-language cookbook, The Little Paris Kitchen. Fit for just two diners at a time, she prepared and served food out of her Paris flat in the Belleville neighborhood. Using social media to advertise the restaurant, she quickly attracted a large fan base. Later, The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo, was commissioned as her first TV series with the BBC. Her restaurant closed before production began on the series. The six episode series was filmed in Khoo's Paris kitchen and in various spots around the city. It began airing on British TV on 19 March 2012. Eventually, the series was aired in international markets. The book, The Little Paris Kitchen, was released in 2012. It has been translated into several languages: Dutch, French, Italian, German, Danish, Latvian, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, American English and Norwegian. Both the cookbook and television series received critical and commercial acclaim. The cookbook became a bestseller, selling more than 120,000 copies. The television series was watched by over 1.5 million viewers in the UK.

2013 to 2014

Khoo released her second English-language cookbook, My Little French Kitchen, chronicling her travels across France, in September 2013, which was published by Michael Joseph. My Little French Kitchen sold upwards of 1,000 copies a week. In 2014, she completed filming two new cooking series for BBC Worldwide: Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook: London and Rachel Khoo's Kitchen Notebook: Cosmopolitan Cook. Both series aired in the UK and internationally. In Rachel Khoo's Kitchen Notebook: Cosmopolitan Cook, she visited various European and Eurasian cities, including Stockholm and Istanbul, and cooked dishes inspired by her travels. In August 2014, Rachel began her new writing her newest cookbook, Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook, which was later released in the UK on 12 February 2015. In November 2014, she travelled to Malaysia to film an episode of the series, "A Cook Abroad".

2015 to present

On 9 March 2015, BBC television aired "A Cook Abroad : Rachel Khoo's Malaysia", where she visited the home of her father's extended family and explored the cuisine of the country. Khoo filmed her fourth television series, Rachel Khoo's Kitchen Notebook: Melbourne, for several months beginning in February 2015. The series premiered in Australia on 23 July 2015 on the network, SBS.In February 2016, she was announced as a new judge on the Australian reality show cooking competition, "My Kitchen Rules", for the series' 7th season. Khoo filmed the program in 2015 while traveling throughout Australia. The new season began airing on Seven Network beginning on 1 February 2016. Khoo appears in 6 episodes of the program. Khoo launched "Khoollect", a lifestyle, fashion, and food-oriented online blog in February 2016.

In April 2016, Khoo travelled to Sydney to begin filming the reality TV cooking competition, Zumbo's Just Desserts, alongside famed pastry chef, Adriano Zumbo. The television series was commissioned by the Seven Network, and Khoo served as one of the judges. The program premiered in Australia on 22 August 2016.

In 2017 English punk band, Idles, released their album Brutalism, which featured a track called 'Rachel Khoo'

Personal life

In 2006, Khoo moved to Paris, where she lived for eight years. In 2014, she returned to London, settling in Hackney. In May 2015, she revealed that she became engaged in 2014; she married Robert Wicktorin in 2015. On February 2, 2017, she announced on her personal blog that she was pregnant in 2016 and later gave birth to her first child that same year. Khoo moved from Hackney in early 2016 and now resides in north West London and Stockholm. She speaks French and German.