Keep Your Eyes Peeled for Poppy O'Toole
Make it stand out
At the time of writing, it’s day 13 of Poppy O’Toole’s viral 25 Days of Potatoes AKA TaterTot day! Cushiony spuds — not to be confused with Poppy’s famous ‘Potato Pillows’ — are spiked with rock salt, and to the untrained eye bear a pleasing resemblance to the famous ‘15-Hour Potato’. The time-consuming tattie was Poppy’s most viral video of 2021 with a whopping 18 million views on TikTok and its own highlight reel on Instagram.
By now, Poppy’s rags-to-riches story is cemented in social media folklore, she’s a breath of fresh air in the often-stuffy foodie arena and a poster girl for TikTok’s star-making power. A fairytale for the modern era, Poppy’s ascent from pandemic redundancy and being rejected for a job at Iceland to celebrity chef and getting gifted trips to Barbados is what #dreams are made of. But unlike the now-famous recipes, her success isn’t easily replicated.
Like many millennials, Poppy started making TikTok videos during the pandemic. She’d moved back home with her family after losing her job as a Michelin-trained chef and was baffled by the amount of time her younger siblings were spending on the app. She joined as @poppycooks and started documenting the comfort food she made with her kid sibs, “I wasn’t really doing it for any other reason than to help in a time when I couldn’t actually do anything else than make some nice food.” When she started gaining traction, getting some nice comments and a few hundred followers, she thought, “Ok I’ll just do this until I get another job - weird that this is now my job,” she says.
The humble spud — along with her innate affability, branding savvy, and genuine culinary talent — is partly to thank for her success. The ultimate comfort food, Poppy stumbled on a winning formula with her decadent, butter-slathered lockdown spuds. “Let’s give them what they want, if they want to see potatoes, we’ll give ‘em potatoes,” thought Poppy when planning her social plan for the last month of the year and thus, 25 Days of Potatoes was born.
One year, a published book and over two million followers later; Poppy has gone from once again residing in the bedroom she grew up in, to living out her childhood fantasy. She was always play-acting in her own fantasy cooking shows, “but after the age of 10 you think, ‘well that’s that, I’m never going to make anything of my life.’” She’s joking, sure, but there’s an element of honesty in the self-deprecation.
“I can’t celebrate things like that” she answers when I ask how she marked the one million milestone; “I think I’ve got issues, birthdays, things like that, I’m not good at taking good news, so I was like ‘ok yeah, next potato recipe, let’s go’”. She’s gotten a bit better, managing to have “raised a glass” for hitting two million last month, but the pressure of overnight fame means she doesn’t give herself the chance to rest on her laurels.
“I love strangers, I get on best with people that I don’t know”
Aside from a social media obsession and tendency towards perfection, another typically millennial trope is addressing her own mental health. “I had my first ever panic attack during the pandemic. I didn’t know I was going to have one, I didn’t even know what it was, I thought I had Covid, I couldn’t breathe, I thought I’d have to go to the hospital,” recalls Poppy, somewhat thrown by her own vulnerable admission; “God, this is deep, but here we go, we’ll go for it”.
The experience changed her, away from the long hours and laborious work, she had time to reflect on everything she’d pushed aside. “I was in pressurised kitchens before, and you have to hold all this angst in, mistakes happen and you move on but you’re still holding onto that somewhere. Being able to reflect on that, get help for it and talk about it has been really good as I never had that before.”
“Everyone should be entitled to have fun with food and enjoy themselves.”
She’s quick to dismiss the idea that her fans might want to hear about this experience —“No one wants to take life advice from me, it’s chaotic.” — but it’s an area she’d breezily excel in having nurtured an online space that not only allows for mistakes but celebrates them. “I love strangers, I get on best with people that I don’t know — I should probably talk to my therapist about this — so it’s really nice having this community and being able to talk to anyone.” For now, however, her focus is on levelling the foodie playing field.
Despite eating being a pretty universal experience, it’s historically been steeped in snobbery - Poppy is quick to point out this is changing, reeling off a list of restaurants that offer à la carte tasting menus for around £40 that give diners a fine dining experience without the hefty bill and “ponciness”. It’s these off-the-cuff remarks that show her dedication to making good food accessible for all. “It’s changing and I think it should because everyone should be entitled to have fun with food and enjoy themselves.” She credits the TV programmes we grew up watching as putting food on a pedestal and she’s dedicated to knocking it down a peg or two. Her debut book breaks down recipes into — excuse the pun — bitesize chunks and her warm persona tinged with honest vulnerability is a far cry from the breathy upper-crust chefs of yore.
Talking of which, Nigella dubbed her the ‘High Priestess of Potatoes’, she’s chuffed with the accolade but she’ll be sticking to the Potato Queen. “Looking into what a priestess is, it’s not that good but it sounds good! It rolls off the tongue, it sounds great but what a priestess is…If Nigella says it, I don’t care, it sounds beautiful.”
She couldn’t read the review herself, “I had to get my boyfriend to read it, I was shaking. I nearly wet myself, it’s disgusting.” Poppy’s still just a chef at heart - something she has to remind herself of when the pressure to keep her audience engaged mounts. “People recognise me now, which is one of the most bizarre things. I’m so used to being in a kitchen, in the back making food for other people - there’s no face to a name, you’re anonymous. So to be at the front of everything but still not having left the kitchen — or even my own home — that’s not something I ever expected to happen,” she says, utterly open about the strange situation she’s found herself in. That’s not to say she doesn’t revel in her newfound fame and the lifestyle it’s afforded her, even if it has scuppered her Christmas traditions. Last year she was scrambling to pay for the ingredients to make her own chocolates to gift, now she has a heaving wishlist of presents and what potatoes to cook for Christmas dinner.
“I feel like people are like, ‘come on, you’re egging it now’, but I genuinely love potatoes and I get to eat them every day, it’s just the best job in the world!” gushes Poppy. Fame might’ve upended her life and certainly her festive tradition of getting sloshed every Christmas Eve — “I normally stumble in about 4 o’clock in the morning, wake up my little brother and sister from just rolling around - they think it’s Santa but they soon realise it’s just me, then I ruin Christmas morning because I won’t wake up.” — but it doesn’t seem to have changed her at all.
She throws off comments about feeling awkward around a lot of people when her mom inevitably invites half the neighbourhood around for Christmas Eve and when I ask where she’d be if she’d got that job in Iceland she unflinchingly responds: “Oh, I’d still be there. I’d be the night packer in Iceland if I’d filled out that form correctly. I’ll stay in a job for two years to make sure I do it properly, so I’d still be there.”
Without pausing she adds, “I’d be on the checkout in Iceland but I’d be more than happy, I’ve always been happy with what I’m doing because I’m very lucky with my situation with my little puggies and my partner, I’m content.” Nuggets of wisdom about being satisfied IRL rather than seeking validation from social media pepper Poppy’s chats, and I remind her there’s a career in the self-help arena should she tire of cooking. In typical Poppy fashion, she laughs it off, dropping the idea like, well, a hot potato.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Melanie Lehmann | CREATIVE DIRECTION: Ione Gamble | WRITER: Mischa Anouk Smith | STYLING: Neesha Tulsi Champaneria | MAKEUP: Grace Ellington | HAIR: Benjamin David | SET DESIGN: Lucy Cooper | PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT: Sally He | STYLING ASSISTANT: Naailah Khalifa | PRODUCTION MANAGER: Eden Young | PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Halima Jibril | VIDEOGRAPHER: Charlotte Amy Landrum
Poppy wears Valentino, shop the full party collection here.
