Poppy O'Toole | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 January 1994 |
| Known for | |
Poppy O'Toole (born 17 January 1994) is an English content creator and chef. Born in Bromsgrove, she spent several years working in restaurants before losing her job to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom and turning to TikTok. Since 2021, she has published five cookbooks, four of which have topped The Sunday Times Bestseller List. She has also made regular appearances on Saturday Kitchen, Celeb Cooking School, Young MasterChef, and Cooking with the Stars.
O'Toole was born on 17 January 1994 [1] in Bromsgrove [2] and has a younger brother and sister. [3] All three are of Irish descent. [2] Poppy 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, she undertook an apprenticeship under Glynn Purnell at his restaurant Purnell's and eventually worked her way up to the position of chef de partie before moving on to Alex Claridge's The Wilderness, [2] another Birmingham restaurant. She then worked as a sous chef for JPMorgan and then for AllBright, a women's private members club in Mayfair. [5] She has stated that she suffered from massive amounts of sexism from colleagues during this period. [6] [5]
O'Toole was furloughed in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom and made redundant in August; [7] [8] following the former, she and her partner moved back in with her mother. She 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] O'Toole released the cookbook The Food You Need in September 2021. [3]
From April 2022, she began appearing regularly on Saturday Kitchen. [14] An appearance in 2023 attracted press attention after she accidentally mispronounced the word 'whim' as quim, an archaic name for a person's vulva; [15] [16] [9] the word subsequently trended on social media. [17] She subsequently co-presented Celeb Cooking School with Melvin Odoom and Giorgio Locatelli in September 2022 [18] and appeared as a contestant in December 2022 on The Weakest Link. [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 subsequently 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] She then mentored Linford Christie and Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu in the 2024 and 2025 series of Cooking with the Stars. [27] [28] By the time of the latter, 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] O'Toole published the cookbook The Potato Book in February 2025; [31] by August 2025, four of her books had topped The Sunday Times Bestseller List. That month, she married her partner at Redditch registry office and then at a restaurant near Tenbury Wells. [32]