Sabrina’s food

Who knew Persian food would be a thing? Not Sabrina Ghayour when an editor showed up to her London supper club. But almost a decade later, she’s published her sixth book, Persiana Everyday, and is changing dinner in households everywhere, including Kate Wilson’s own

- KATE WILSON

IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF SABRINA GHAYOUR, YOU CAN’T CALL YOURSELF A FOOD NERD. SORRY.

Sure, she might not have a UK restaurant chain or a cooking show or a range of signed kitchen utensils. She also didn’t start out like other food luminaries – with a column in The Guardian or a gig on the sauté station at a famous riverside restaurant in London. She started out as a blogger who dabbled in food, was retrenched from her job and had to pay the bills.

“I lost my job just as Thomas Keller was coming to Harrods to do a French Laundry pop-up for 250 pounds. And I thought ‘I’ve been waiting all year for this and I can’t afford that!’” Then I hosted my own supper club, that year, and I called it ‘The French Laundrette’. And he didn’t sue me, which was really nice, and then his chefs rocked up to it, which was nuts!”

Sabrina is the Iranian-born, London-based cook whose first book, Persiana, spent 10 weeks on the bestseller list back in 2014. She is the cook who could do for koftas and rice what Ottolenghi did for brinjals and tahini, what Nigella did for chocolate mousse cake. And her sixth book, Persiana Everyday, has all the makings of another bestseller as she continues her stealth trip to celebrity cook superstardom.