Poppy O'Toole was born in Bromsgrove[1] on 17 January 1994[2] and has a younger brother and sister;[3] all three are of Irish descent.[1] She attended South Bromsgrove High School,[4] during which time she worked in the kitchens of a local pub and a care home. After leaving school, O'Toole undertook an apprenticeship under Glynn Purnell at his Birmingham restaurant Purnell's, where she worked her way up to chef de partie before moving on to Alex Claridge's Birmingham restaurant The Wilderness.[1] She worked as a sous chef for JPMorgan Chase and then for AllBright, a women's private members club in Mayfair.[5] She has stated that she experienced massive amounts of sexism from colleagues during this period.[6][5]
O'Toole was furloughed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was made redundant in August.[7][8] Following the former, she moved with her partner back in with her mother and began producing TikTok content under the name Poppy Cooks after being shown the platform by her younger siblings;[9] her first video was published on 1 April.[10] Her content mostly comprises recipes and posts calling out sexism.[11][12] She was subsequently dubbed the "Potato Queen" by social media[13] and the "High Priestess of Potato" by Nigella Lawson.[9] She released the cookbook The Food You Need in September 2021.[3]
In April 2022, O'Toole began appearing regularly on Saturday Kitchen.[14] An appearance in December 2023 attracted press attention after she accidentally mispronounced the word "whim" as "quim", an archaic name for a vulva;[9][15][16] the word subsequently trended on social media.[17] She co-presented Celeb Cooking School with Melvin Odoom and Giorgio Locatelli in September 2022[18] and appeared as a contestant on The Weakest Link in December 2022.[19] She then co-presented a series of Young MasterChef with Kerth Gumbs in 2023[4] and then a second series the following year with Big Has.[20] By the time of the second series, she had also appeared on Big Zuu's Big Eats.[21]
O'Toole released The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook in 2023;[22] similarly titled books with "Slow Cooker" and "One Pot" recipes followed in 2024 and 2025.[23][24] She then judged an episode of CBBC's Style It Out[25] and appeared as a guest chef on Jamie Oliver's Air Fryer Meals on Channel 4[26] before mentoring Linford Christie and Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu in the 2024 and 2025 series of Cooking with the Stars.[27][28] By the time of the last of these, she had judged an episode of Food Network's Last Bite Hotel[29] and been a contestant on that network's House of Knives.[30] She published the cookbook The Potato Book in February 2025.[31]
By August, four of her books had topped The Sunday Times Bestseller List.[32] O'Toole married her partner that month at Redditch registry office and then at a restaurant near Tenbury Wells in August 2025[32] and announced that she had given birth to a daughter in December 2025.[33] She judged an episode of Celebrity MasterChef in November[34] and partnered with Walkers in January 2026 to help judge submissions for a competition to create new crisp flavours.[35]
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