Dubliner Anna Haugh on becoming co-host of MasterChef - RTÉ Lifestyle
Dominique Farrell
Journalist
As co-host of MasterChef, Anna Haugh talks to Donal O'Donoghue about being a mother and a chef, and how the knockbacks of the early days have made her who she is today.
Anna Haugh always believed she was destined to become two things: a chef and a mother.
"Cooking is in my bones," says the Dubliner who this month becomes the new co-host of the BBC’s flagship cooking show, MasterChef. "Cooking is a vocation. It’s how I very much identify myself as a person, and as time goes by, that is more and more the case."
In parallel with that career is her other love, being a mother to Oisin, who is 4½ and is, his mother says, a little demon for looking for dessert before eating his dinner. He also flatly rejects her artfully created meals in favour of pasta and olive oil.
She sees a thread between the role of mother and the priorities of a head chef; the art of running an efficient kitchen, the knack of keeping a happy home. With her TV star in the ascendancy, the 45-year-old is unlikely to ever lose contact with all that has got her to where she is now.
When I speak to the chef-owner at Myrtle restaurant in London’s Chelsea, the video call is initially sketchy. At one point, there are three 'Annas’ on the call before the chef emerges from the buffering blackout, smiling under a crystal blue London sky.
Following a morning of meetings, she is taking a day off from her restaurant, Myrtle, named after the doyenne of Irish food, the late Myrtle Allen of Ballymaloe (Myrtle is also the name of her pet dog).
"After this, I’m going to get my gruaige done, spoil myself," she says. "Both Myrtles are great," she adds. "The dog will sometimes come to work with me, and my little wine bar (The Wee Sister Wine Bar is just alongside the restaurant) is also doing well." Myrtle, which she opened in Chelsea in 2019, serves up modern European cuisine with an Irish twist, including courses titled Salmon of Knowledge and Carrageen Mousse, but in recent years, she has increasingly become a fixture on TV.
In advance of the interview, I’m told by her publicist that she can say very little about the new season of MasterChef, which she co-hosts with Grace Dent. There is a BBC embargo in place, so no spoilers and certainly no mention of her predecessors, Gregg Wallace and John Torode, who were dropped from the show last summer following investigations into their conduct.
"I’m very proud and very excited with Grace and myself at the top of our game, so it’s a nice collaboration," she says, choosing her words carefully. She’s not buying the significance of two female co-presenters on the flagship production.
"It’s not the fact that it’s two women but rather that it’s people who should get the job, who do get the job," she says, someone who has earned her stripes in professional kitchens and on TV. She previously guest-hosted MasterChef and helmed the 2025 BBC series, Anna Haugh’s Big Irish Food Tour.
It’s a pity she’s restricted on what she can say about the show, because she has long been critical of bad behaviour in the kitchen, unafraid in her early career to stand up for the rights of junior staff.
At Myrtle, she has created a culture with zero tolerance for abuse, emphasising the importance of respect.
"Some people have a good internal moral compass; others might forget it now and again, but my job as a leader is not to let that slip. When I occasionally raise my voice, looking for something, I get a look, and I think, ‘Jesus, I just raised my voice, so am I not allowed to do anything?’" she laughs. "So I’d say, ‘Come on, guys!’. A sense of humour is important, but I believe I have created an atmosphere where staff can raise an eyebrow when I raise my voice. And it’s important that all members of staff, from the most junior, are treated the same. It’s all about empowerment, leading by example."
Was she shocked by the recent revelations at the world-renowned Copenhagen restaurant Noma, where head chef and co-founder, René Redzepi, following a New York Times exposé, apologised for a history of abusive behaviour and resigned?
"No," she says. "If you look at the sous chef in any kitchen, that will tell you what kind of leader the head chef is. Now, there are exceptions to that rule, but if the chefs around the head chef look like they are burned to a crisp, well, that says it all. When I saw the sous chef at Noma many years ago, I just thought ‘Whoa!’ There are plenty of kitchens not running as they should, so this news about Noma is not unique, and those stories are not going away."
She has worked under celebrated head chefs including Shane Osborn and Gordon Ramsay, never experienced abuse from them. "Gordon is a great leader, and while he has made a career out of the TV character, his success is much more than that."
Her success, she says, was shaped by many factors. "I believe that so much in life is connected, and as you get older, you can look back and see that path you followed," she says.
"So many stars aligned for me to find this career as a chef. Liz Dunne, my best friend’s mother, was crucial in that respect. My mother sowed so many seeds, teaching me all about cooking. Then Liz showed me that it could be a career.
"Other things too: my first-year apprenticeship was in the Salthill Hotel, where I opened packets of dehydrated mixes and put them in water. The head chef told me that for my second-year apprenticeship, I should ask my tutor to send me to a place where everything was home-made. I ended up in L’Ecrivain. So, success is not just about winning but also the troughs and what you do in those troughs to rise back up. And, of course, your beginnings."
Her childhood in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght sounds idyllic: she and her three siblings accompanying her father to food markets, her mother cooking all meals from scratch, a home alive with music and activity. She laughs at this picture, which she herself is guilty of embellishing.
"Sometimes my sisters give me an awful ribbing at the way I’ve painted those days, or it has been presented in the media," she says. "But my parents were very strict. My father certainly did not want me to be a chef. Both parents were, naturally, worried about their children’s future, so while they said we could be anything we wanted to be, it had to be in a specific list of jobs. They have always been very open-minded about most issues, but when we were young, it was bish-bash-bosh, and while we grew up eating the best of food, you don’t really appreciate it as a child."
Her father hoped she would go to university, but the kitchen claimed her. After working under Derry Clarke at the prestigious L’Ecrivain in Dublin, where 60% of the kitchen staff were female, she relocated to London, where the prevailing prejudice in the industry was "women can’t cook."
She saw abuse heaped on junior staff, with an attitude she describes as ‘Break them down to build them back up again’. "The kitchens were hard, but I was seeing food that I couldn’t imagine," she recalls. "I wasn’t looking for glory or to be a head chef; I just wanted to understand that when I made something, and it worked, why was that the case and could I repeat it? I’ve had thousands of knockbacks in my career, plenty of times when I’d sit at the end of my bed and cry, but the next morning you’d get up, and things are so much better. I’ve always had that desire and determination inside me."
Her other desire was to be a mother, and Oisin was born in 2021 following a lengthy IVF journey. "Oisin’s father and I are not together any more, but we co-parent Oisin," she says.
"It’s an absolute privilege to be a mother. Of course, not everyone wants to be a mother, and we live in a time when people can decide whether they want to have a family or not.
"Back in the day, the value of a woman was ‘How many babies can you produce?’ Women were asked things like ‘When are you going to have a baby?’ or ‘Will you go again?’ rather than just enjoying being a parent. Everyone has their own limits as to how many children they’d like to have. I’d still love to have more children, but I think it’s right to acknowledge that while I always knew that I wanted to be a mother, not every woman does."
She was told in her early days as a chef in London that if she ever got pregnant, she would be asked to leave the job. "I don’t think that has changed much," she says now. "Every so often, I will talk with other business owners about maternity plans and arrangements. While they are polite, they get irritated with maternity leave. It’s a headache they don’t want, having to hire someone else to cover.
"I think that is so short-sighted. When a person becomes a parent, you also become very good at prioritising and time management. You are also a better leader, having to deal with someone who can’t speak and can be very demanding. You also begin to better understand adult behaviour. When they are in the kitchen, mothers give it their all, and I think that the industry is very far behind with its views on maternity leave and related matters."
Is Oisin a good eater? "He terrorises me," she says and laughs. "I’ll get out a cookbook, he’ll pick the dish, and I’ll make it identical to the picture, even down to the type of bowl it’s baked in. But he’ll be like ‘Nah!’ It’s almost like being gaslighted by your four-year-old. I raised him on my lap, so he ate everything I did, but one day, he turned into that child who only eats pasta with olive oil and Parmesan or chicken, mash and peas, but he is good at eating fruit and veg.
"But I don’t fight with him about food. If he wants it, fine; if he doesn’t, that’s grand. No stress about it. One day, the penny will drop, and he will see the true delight of food. So, any parent out there who is freaking out that their child is only eating pasta, don’t worry, that will change. So long as they get fruit and veg and protein. Just try to avoid the ultra-processed stuff."
With so many plates spinning, she is careful not to lose sight of the twin loves that define her: motherhood and cookery. The lessons she is learning as a parent percolate into how she works as a head chef.
"I’m very against people calling younger generations ‘snowflakes’ because it’s not their fault. If they have been spoilt, somebody spoiled them, and yet we blame the young adult. We might think we are doing the right thing by making life easy for our children, but that little bit of stress creates robustness and strength.
"Oysters are a perfect example of this. If you farm oysters in water that doesn’t move with the tide, they will grow and be fine, but if you try to transport them, they will die. Whereas, if you grow your oysters wild, they will be stressed, but they will also be more resistant. And you can transport them all over the world."
Sounds like the story of Anna Haugh right there.