User:Daytona2/Thomasina Miers

My Secret Life: Thomasina Miers, chef & food broadcaster

Thomasina "Tommi" Miers was born in Cheltenham in February 1976. A former Masterchef winner, she spent a year working in Mexico before opening her restaurant Wahaca in London's Charing Cross. She now has several cookery books to her name; the latest, The Wild Gourmets, co-written with Guy Grieve (Bloomsbury, £20), accompanies her recent Channel Four series of the same name

Sister Talulah Miers

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/my-secret-life-thomasina-miers-chef--food-broadcaster-744903.html

1st vist outside Europe aged 18 - Oaxaca fell in love with Mexican food

Wahaca 140 seat Covent Garden

The Times Aug 07

Masterchef 05

Thomasina Miers – winner of BBC 2’s 2005 MasterChef competition - is a cook, food writer and campaigner. Her work has taken her around the world, from cheese-making in West Cork, and selling bread in Villandry in London, to opening a large restaurant and cocktail bar in Mexico City. She jointly edited the hit cookbook Soup with Annabel Buckingham and is now back in London running her own business catering for private dinner parties. Her first solo book, entitled Cook, will be published later this year.

I first met Thomasina at a party a while ago, when she was still gathering recipes for her hugely successful book Soup Kitchen. It was her commitment to the cause, energy and unstoppable attitude that ensured the book’s success. It’s the same irrepressible attitude that helped her become the 2005 winner of BBC2’s Masterchef and enter the world of cookery writing.

“About five years ago I was on the wrong career path,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do and was a bit depressed. I met Clarissa Dickson-Wright and I was telling her that I literally didn’t know what to do with my life. She said that you should always follow your passion and suggested I went to a cookery school called Ballymaloe. So I went there for three months and stayed on and worked in farmers’ markets and made cheese and just hung out in Ireland and realised that actually I probably could make a living out of food somehow.

“I didn’t know what, though. I came back and worked a food store called Villandry, in Great Portland Street. I set up their wholesale bread business and a market for them at Henrietta Green’s Covent Garden. I did a lot of their marketing and then I started doing a book with someone I met who wanted us to help with a charity event. We started talking about other charity things and came up with this mad idea of doing a book of soup recipes from well-known chefs, which we had no idea would actually work.

“It took two years. (started 2003)

Soup 5 Sep 2005

http://www.agalinks.com/465_824.htm

Cook 2 Oct 2006

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-uk&field-author=Thomasina%20Miers

Ballymaloe 2001

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:ycdabKdwx2oJ:www.cookingisfun.ie/pages/news.php+Ballymaloe+Miers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk

After stints as a VAT consultant & model failed to grab her fancy

http://www.squaremeal.co.uk/restaurants/london/view/84630

Back in London in 2005, she had no job, no boyfriend and huge debts. "I was 29 and going nowhere." She entered Masterchef "for the ride" - and won.

Part of the prize was six months in a proper chef 's kitchen. She was offered Le Gavroche but a friend told her she'd hate it. She went along to Skye Gyngell's Petersham Nurseries and fell in love with the restaurant.

Today Miers lives in Shepherd's Bush with her boyfriend.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/restaurants/article-23411902-details/The+Wild+Gourmet/article.do

Her parents, Niki and Probyn, live on the outskirts of Guiting Power.

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=231771&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231774&contentPK=19623815&folderPk=108867&pNodeId=231888 22/1/8

grew up in Guiting Power

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=231771&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231774&contentPK=20283789&folderPk=108867&pNodeId=231888