Written in partnership with Dylan RodgersFood sharing has always been a social activity that has persisted throughout human history across all cultures and nations. Nevertheless, in recent years, the booming expansion of social media has brought food consumption to a whole new level, changing how we eat. Sharing recipes and recording daily meals on personal websites to Youtube, Instagram, and other internet platforms have resulted in a niche of food ambassadors living out their dreams and turning passions into reality, showcasing their creations for the world to see.
Food connoisseurs promote not only their opinions on cooking but also their lifestyle. We pulled the top 10 most influential food lovers from around the world who provide the best food advice and some fantastic, mouthwatering recipes to tantalize your taste buds. Some are bloggers who are creating a storm on social media with delicious food photographs and videos. Others are professional chefs who create delectable treats for the world to enjoy. They provide the best recipes, healthy eating strategies, stunning and mouthwatering photos, and endless inspiration for creativity.
1. Elizabeth Satkowski
Meet Liz Satkowski, a gluten-free mom, and kitchen genius. She is a mom, a blogger, and a culinary artist. With years of expertise preparing gluten-free meals for those she cares about, she is thrilled to share her gourmet discoveries with the rest of the world!
“Gluten Free Mom Colorado” was born out of Liz’s need to work as a stay-at-home parent after leaving a full-time profession in the health food sector. She wanted to continue assisting and supporting people as they adopted a gluten-free diet, by sharing her recipes and insights with everyone she can reach.
Liz is a mother of four, who loves creating delectable gluten-free dishes for her gluten-free children, one of whom has celiac disease. She enjoys sharing her experiences, and assisting others who are navigating a gluten-free lifestyle. She offers help and guidance to her audience by creating tasty gluten-free dishes, and uncovering new, and hidden gluten-free products, demonstrating that this diagnosis does not have to be a curse. There is a way to make delicious gluten free food!
Liz had to follow a gluten-free diet as a child because her mother and brothers were diagnosed with celiac disease. Her mother cooked amazing gluten-free recipes from scratch. Her world changed years later when she had her first child, Landon, who was born prematurely. When Landon was two, he began to have a variety of health issues. That’s when he was diagnosed with celiac disease, and that marked the beginning of Liz’s gluten-free journey in her own home.
In the future, Liz hopes to offer gluten free cooking and baking classes. She will continue to share countless more incredible gluten-free recipes, many with dairy free options, and guide others through the murky waters of the gluten-free lifestyle. She also adds that since celiac disease runs in their family, their diet is a medical necessity. Liz has always desired to help others. Having grown up with excellent gluten-free food, she offers her audience the promise of culinary adventures where she’ll use simple, fresh ingredients, and transform them into sophisticated and elegant gluten free meals for the everyday home cook.
2. Chuah Chiew See
Born on a beautiful island in Penang, Malaysia, Chuah Chiew See is a unique engineer turned baker. She is also a successful author and a recipe/content creator who is considered an authority and an essential English resource for sourdough baking in Asia. The sourdough concoctions on her YouTube channel “Autumn Kitchen” are well-known worldwide, and she loves sharing her journey and experiences as a passionate home baker. In addition, her book “Autumn Baking – Natural Yeast” is an Amazon best-seller. What distinguishes Chiew See’s baking from the rest is her usage of natural yeast. The book covers more approachable hand-mixing methods, from classic sourdough to sweet bread and other Asian baked products.
As an analytical and rational person from a young age, Chiew See thrived in the mechanical engineering department during her university years, spending the next decade working in mechanical engineering. She opted to retire in 2009 to focus on her health and home because she no longer needed the stress of managing her work schedule and family duties. She then decided to try her hand at home baking, discovering that many home bakers experience challenges and failures. Since Chiew See has the mindset for problem-solving, she enjoyed experimenting and testing different variables to solve baking difficulties. She soon ended up sharing her results and experiences with other bakers, initiating her Facebook page, “Autumn Baking Diary,” and Instagram handle, “autumn.kitchen”.
Chiew See’s baked goods are not for sale and are only meant to be enjoyed by her family and friends. She explains that baking is just a hobby she enjoys doing in her spare time. She believes that running a bakery may cause a conflict between family and profession; it also violates her idea of abandoning her job to devote more time to her family. According to Chiew See, the goal behind baking is to share insights into her passion for baking while also assisting other bakers in receiving significant benefits from her social media feed. Since the release of “Autumn Baking – Natural Yeast,” she has amassed a sizable global social media following. She believes “talent is not everything; persistence is the key to success in everything we do.”
3. José Antonio Méndez Guillén
Born in Tamaulipas, Mexico, Chef Antonio Méndez is a gifted professional famous for his Mediterranean cuisine and peculiar art of cooking. He is a natural when it comes to cooking various cuisines and offers a magical touch when he cooks on wood and open fire. With a significant following on his social media handles, his audience loves his fantastic cooking videos and delectable food recipes – they call him the rockstar chef.
As an opinion leader, he has mastered the culinary niche and established trust within the online food community as a fantastic food connoisseur. Recently, Chef Méndez won the prestigious Palmas de Oro 2022 award that paid homage to Influential international Personalities in art, communications, the public sector, business, sports, and medicine.
While he has mentored and founded multiple businesses, including meat boutiques and restaurants, Chef Méndez considers his YouTube channel the source of his success as one of the most influential chefs ever. He has landed several national and international cooking engagements due to the informative content on his channel. He aims to travel the world and bring real, flavorful Mediterranean food to every part of the globe.
Having parents in the law field, specifically his mother, a well-known Mexican Politician, and a lawyer, he started studying Law before moving to a military institute in San Antonio, Texas. His father’s hobbies inspired him – a great hunter and fisherman who taught him how to hunt and fish. His love for cooking was born there, which is why he decided to study gastronomy in Europe, mastering the art of cooking. Compared to the prominent competition, he has become an internet celebrity with his particular cooking style of delivering the recipes in his videos. He creates rich and fascinating content, and his humorous comments and quips set him apart from the competition.
With a vibrant and energetic personality, Chef Méndez is known for his positive vibes and delicious recipes. In the future, he plans to open new mezcal-based restaurants in Vegas and California and carry on his culinary journey in the USA.
4. LeAnne Shor
Affectionate and nurturing; these words aptly describe artisanal baker, content creator, and full-time mother of four, LeAnne Shor. She is the driving force behind Lion’s Bread, an online platform full of innovative artisanal recipes for home bakers. LeAnne developed this platform to share her proven baking recipes with the world. With over 17 years of professional and household kitchen expertise, her main purpose is to educate bakers of all levels on innovative methods and skills for baking the most fabulous treats at home. Her work has been featured in Taste of Home, Country Living, Martha Stewart, Today Food, and more.
LeAnne was born in California to American-Israeli parents, whose cultural influence is always reflected in the way she looks at food.
LeAnne’s baking journey started in 2008 while she worked on Martha’s Vineyard, marketing her family’s award-winning Challah bread. “Lion’s Bread” was coined after she earned the nickname “Lion” while working at the Chilmark Store. The traditional braided bread would sell out almost immediately, and she knew she was on to something.
Her mother’s food was her initial source of inspiration. She adored the fact that they always had a hot dinner and scratch-made goodies on the table. This fostered in her a profound respect for the value of home-cooked meals. LeAnne realized that life behind a desk wasn’t the right fit for her after college and a brief stint in the corporate sector. She needed a creative outlet and discovered baking. She began working in a beautiful bakery in California because culinary school was out of the question. She was able to work her way up within a few years, gaining practical skills from people who had been baking and decorating for decades.
Her viral sourdough starter tutorial reached millions of people around the world in 2020, bringing everyone together in the kitchen. Her followers love her detailed recipes because they can recreate her delicious bakes in their own homes. LeAnne was also featured on in the Julia Child issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine for joint work with Kerrygold USA. She is currently partnering with some of her favorite brands, which is a dream come true.
After feeling the need to get away from the hustle of New York City Life in 2017, LeAnne and her husband fled the rush and hustle for a gentler pace and more breathing space. They transformed their home in the Pocono Mountains into a micro-farm, complete with free-range hens and a vegetable and fruit garden.
In the future, LeAnne plans to have her own cooking show, sharing her incredible life and love for great food with her audience – she believes that a good meal is one of life’s greatest and simplest pleasures. She wants her viewers to share her recipes with family and friends because, in her words, “community starts at the table.”
5. Dorentina Kameraj and Chef Ilirian
Chef Ilirian, AKA Ilirian Kameraj, is a New York-based culinary aficionado who wowed the internet with his excellent cooking throughout the pandemic. What distinguishes him is that he is a 5-year-old Great Neck kid who discovered his love for baking as a toddler. Winning followers worldwide for culinary skills is difficult for any chef; however, being famous for cooking comes naturally to this phenomenally talented five-year-old.
Like many other families, Illirian and his mother, Dorrentia Kameraj, also turned to food and cooking to comfort each other during the distress of Covid19. He was just two then and suddenly interested in baking, surprising his mother by perfectly cracking eggs single-handedly. Where most children don’t have the aptitude for staying consistent for hours at a task, Illirian would stand by his mother, helping her prep and chop. The social media hype started after Dorentina started posting her son’s videos on TikTok – he now has 8 million followers on TikTok, 130k on Instagram, and 1 million on his YouTube channel, Illirian Cooks. He also earned a spot on The Today Show, appearing live with Hoda and Jenna at three years old.
While many are just there for fame and fortune, Dorentina says their main goal is to make people laugh and give them something fun to enjoy, as Illirian is different from the rest of the child bakers and cooks. He is a little loud, chaotic, and crazy, but that makes him who he is. Furthermore, unlike other child prodigies his age, she shares that Ilirian was never keen on cooking simple dishes; he always insisted on trying more advanced items like chicken or salmon, mastering complex dishes grown adults struggle with.
In the future, Illirian wishes to become a better cook and baker and to work independently as he grows older because he has a passion for cooking. While he has accomplished more than many children his age could ever hope for, his mother, Dorentina, does not believe in imposing her views on her children. She wishes Illirian the best and hopes to support him in all his future endeavors.
6. Culinary Ginger
Janette Fuschi is the recipe developer and resident redhead behind the food blog ‘Culinary Ginger’. She is a wife, chef, food blogger, entrepreneur, photographer and advocate for non-processed, from-scratch cooking. Growing up in England, Janette benefited from helping her mother with traditional home cooking and where she developed her love of cooking. Her enthusiasm drove her to culinary school, where her once hobby has been transformed into a professional creator of recipes and food content. Over the years, she continued to explore and create unique, yet simple meals at home.
She created Culinary Ginger in 2013 at her husband’s suggestion to list her original recipes online so he could choose one when asked “what do you want for dinner?”. She designed her own website to function as a food journal where she could store her various innovative recipes, documenting it all through self-taught photography and video skills. These simple, yet delicious recipes began to garner attention as more and more people recognized her steadfast culinary practices. In addition to many classic British recipes from her home country, Janette creates recipes inspired by her travels and her own twist on classics. To help make the recipes easy to follow, she includes videos and step-by-step details so readers can follow the exact technique to the smallest detail, making the process simple and easy.
Culinary Ginger enjoys a considerable following on the blog and social media handles like Pinterest,Instagram and Facebook. Janette pioneers an organic, supportive community and views all her followers’ good remarks and experiences as motivation to keep going. Her ambition is to broaden her community to continue showing people that home cooking can be straightforward, enjoyable, and creative. Her ultimate goal is to make cooking at home simple and approachable for everyone.
7. Chelsea Price
Desserts are a well-loved part of a meal, guaranteed to garner a wow factor if made right. For a novice, the recipes may seem daunting with complicated steps, but following a good baker can change the game and make the recipes more accessible. Chelsea Price is one such baker, entrepreneur, food blogger, recipe creator, mom, and wife living in Utah. Her venture “Priceless Bakes” provides easily accessible recipes for various desserts, with detailed steps outlined to make it less tricky and intimidating.
Growing up with parents who achieved their goals despite their humble circumstances, Price fully knows the value of hard work, discipline, and dedication to one’s aspirations. From a very early age, she was aware that her dreams require actions to materialize into reality. This knowledge and a passion for making desserts became precursors of her food blog and business “Priceless Bakes.” Price tended to explore the ‘why’ behind the science of baking. Growing up in a household where desserts were a staple, Price also wanted an enhanced nostalgic touch in her recipes. Both of these factors led to the creation of new recipes, adding a special Chelsea Price touch to the already existing recipes. Her mission was to assist those new to baking and who were having difficulty. She wanted to help people make desserts that would impress the audience or recreate their grandmother’s long-lost recipe. She hopes to simplify the art of baking through her recipes, food videos, and photography.
Currently, Price enjoys a considerable following on her social media handles like TikTok and Instagram. She has also been featured on shows like Good Things Utah and in KSL Studio 5. Her plans include working with famous food brands and writing recipes for acclaimed magazines in the future. She also aspires to bring her line of pre-packaged baking mixes and make them a household staple with the unique, delicious Priceless Bakes taste.
8. Lauren Allen
Meet Lauren Allen – owner and recipe developer of the popular food website TastesBetterfromScratch.com. With a passion for cooking from scratch and a background in journalism and new media design, Lauren started her website in 2009 to share her favorite recipes and cooking tips with the world.
Fast forward to today, ‘Tastes Better from Scratch’ has become a go-to destination for home cooks looking for delicious and easy-to-follow recipes. The website receives over 10 million pageviews each month and has been featured on major news outlets such as US Today, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, Country Living, Women’s Day, and Real Simple. Lauren’s passion for cooking and her dedication to her craft has also earned her an extensive following on social media.
For Lauren, it’s about helping people find joy in cooking from home. Her website features recipes, cooking videos, and free customizable meal plans, complete with shopping lists and make-ahead tips. In September 2022, Lauren published her first cookbook, Tastes Better from Scratch, Easy Recipes for Everyday Life, available online and in bookstores everywhere. The cookbook is a collection of 116 recipes, including classic and trusted recipes from her website and some new creations. There are also photos for each recipe and QR codes leading to a video of it being made.
Her background story is one of perseverance and hard work. She and her husband grew up together in Park City, Utah, and they moved to Missouri while her husband attended law school. With a baby on the way, Lauren decided to turn her hobby into a profession, and ‘Tastes Better from Scratch’ was born. The business has grown exponentially over the years, and Lauren now employs a team of women who can work from home and help support their own families.
Future ambitions and goals for Lauren include continuing to provide engaging material that encourages her audience to enjoy cooking and eating well while saving money. Additionally, she aims to expand her company so that she may produce another cookbook and recruit additional women who can work from home.
As a self-taught cook and recipe developer who has built an empire around her passion for cooking from scratch, Lauren will continue making waves in the food industry for years to come.
9. Sarah Holt
Sarah Holt is a food blogger and photographer from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, who seeks to provide her readers with delectable, savory dishes that can anyone can prepare quickly and easily. Her dishes are delicious and typically only require around 30 minutes to prepare.
She began creating dishes using natural, whole foods, and she loved it so much that she decided to post them on Facebook and Instagram for everyone to enjoy. She soon launched her company “Real Food with Sarah (RFWS)” in 2020 despite having no prior business experience, and it proved incredibly rewarding and beneficial. The idea behind her recipes is convenience and flavor, and she seeks to provide simple and quick dishes without compromising quality and taste.
Due to her father’s dual citizenship (Italian and British), Sarah had the opportunity to travel a lot while growing up. It exposed her to various cuisines and significantly contributed to her cooking skills, increasing her knowledge of different foods and drinks. Also, her mother, a chef-turned-home cook, taught her many things that gave her the expertise needed to initiate this journey.
Along with owning RFWS, she works as a freelance content creator for food and beverage companies, producing recipe ideas and capturing images and videos of food for them to use on websites, social media pages, and newsletters.
Sarah is working on growing her food photography business in order to assist companies in visually showcasing their products. In the near future, she aspires to create a cookbook so RFWS can reach a wider audience. She also aims to continue growing RFWS while exploring other cultures and cuisines worldwide!To learn more about RFWS, click here, and to listen to her podcast, click here. Also, follow her on Pinterest and Tiktok to watch her captivating content.
10. The Dining Dolls
Stephanie Garofano is a renowned food critic, influencer, and social media director. Her love for fine dining and authentic approach to food criticism has helped her gain a loyal following of fellow food enthusiasts who trust her knowledge and recommendations.
Founder of The Dining Dolls, Stephanie has ensured that her brand focuses on showcasing the best restaurants that offer originality, passion, and talent in their culinary experiences. Her success in social media marketing and content creation has led her to establish her own social media agency, Agency Lionne. It specializes in providing high-end content creation and marketing exclusively to its favorite restaurants in Los Angeles.
The Dining Dolls started over ten years ago on Instagram due to Stephanie’s passion for fine dining. She aimed to share her transformative dining experiences and knowledge with other food enthusiasts. Stephanie’s expertise and unique perspective on fine dining have garnered attention from various press articles, including Haven Lifestyles and KTLA. She is a highly sought-after influencer and brand ambassador.
Stephanie’s goals for the future include continuing to grow her brand by participating in shows, including hosting her cooking show. She also looks forward to expanding her marketing agency and her brand’s product line to more locations.
Watch Stephanie Garofano here on the YouTube channel Rockstar Eater, and click here to watch her on the TV channel called KTLA.
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