Quality Makers: Brooke Baevsky of Chef Bae

Let me start by saying I have neither TikTok nor Instagram. Yet, somehow, while I was quietly voyeuring one night on both platforms (until IG kicked me off), I came across Chef Bae’s TikTok. I was immediately hooked by her innovative, health-forward recipes and exclusive footage into what it’s like to be a celebrity private chef in LA. I was not alone! With almost a combined 600K followers on both TikTok and Instagram, Brooke Baevsky, the brains (and hands) behind it all, has taken LA (and Erewhon) by storm in her ability to transform any regular dish into something basically anyone can eat without feeling like they’ve sacrificed flavor or joy.

In between clients, events, and meal prep, she ran us through her journey thus far and how she plans to expand the Chef Bae empire in the coming year. Hint: It involves jumpsuits (IYKYK).

TQE: Okay, first things first: how did you get started as a private celebrity chef? 

BB: I studied Business, Product Development, and Food Science during my undergrad, and then had real-world experience working solely with food brands in the health-food sector. I decided to do a health-supportive culinary arts program for culinary school, which made for a super niche background that catered perfectly to people with specific dietary needs and concerns.

My first celebrity clients were professional athletes in the NFL and NBA, where they had to account for every single calorie and the quality of those calories. Then I started working with their wives, who were models and actresses and things just took off from there.

When you work with athletes, you’re also working with assistants, managers, and health coaches to curate a perfect diet for peak performance. I had to consider macros, calories, grams of protein, and food aversions, which helped me leverage my background in health-forward cooking. Most people in school get a more general degree learning fine culinary arts in various cuisines, but my training was making cheese out of nuts, the food science side of food, and how to eat for health and optimal performance. 

TQE: So, wait, when did private cheffing become your full-time gig?

BB: I’ve been a private chef for six years, but only in the past three years has it become my full-time job. I was doing corporate product development, helping huge brands and small health-and-wellness start ups on new products. 

I worked with Freshly, which produced meal kits and meal delivery services, doing their new food innovation and product development. I also did projects for Nestle and health-forward snack companies—all the while working on content. It was pretty simultaneous. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I took on private clients full-time, thanks to social media and being in the right cities for my skill set. 

TQE: Can you tell us the names of any of your clients?

BB: I’ve cooked for Mindy Kaling, Meghan Markle, Dan Reynolds, Christian McCaffrey, Chrissy Tiegen, Paris Hilton, LL Cool J…to name a few.

TQE: How did you decide to focus on more health-forward, “alternative” recipes?

BB: I grew up in a family that had a ton of food allergies and dietary restrictions—seven combined allergies among the five of us, in fact. I don’t know what happened there.

My creative outlet was always creating recipes in the kitchen that my entire family could enjoy together so we didn’t have to eat five different versions of dinner. Then I realized through the early days of social media that so many people would vocalize all of their dietary restrictions and there weren’t a ton of options that catered to them.

I figured this number was only going to grow, so I just focused on cooking food that catered to the top nine allergens and dietary restrictions like kosher, plant-based, paleo, and more because easily 50-to-100 million Americans have some kind of dietary need or aversion. 

I love breaking the stigma that health-forward, dietary-friendly food is anything but delicious,  indulgent, beautiful, or satisfying, and it just happens to be something everyone can and will want to eat. 

TQE: What are the most common dietary restrictions you come across with your clients?

BB: Being in LA, it’s safe to say I’ve definitely seen it all—allergies to cold water included (it’s called cold urticaria). But I would say gluten-free, dairy-free, and then—in terms of preferences—refined sugar and seed oil-free are very common. In terms of just ingredients, whole, unprocessed, organic ingredients are always a preference (and how I like to cook anyway).  

TQE: What is the hardest part about being a private chef? How do you manage having so many different clients with so many different requests and needs? 

BB: I would say the hardest part is that my job is definitely not a nine-to-five. Social media glamorizes it, but it’s a grind, it’s a hustle, and it’s non-stop. When I’m not lugging groceries, I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing crumbs off the floor at all of my events (which, by the way, I have to show up at the crack of dawn). That’s not accounting for all of the team management, cooking, baking, and prepping (which I used to do all myself).

Only recently have I brought on students from culinary school to help me. In terms of balancing all of my clients, I have about 35 clients I rotate between on specific days. I don’t have anyone full-time, so I'm able to book them for a specific date, but I would say the challenge used to be making sure they liked my food, and that I had catered to all of their needs and preferences.

As I’ve been doing this for longer, I’ve realized that most of my clients actually want to lean on my expertise and what I think they would like. So, now I have recipes that universally my clients would like, and I’ve gotten really good at knowing what questions to ask so as to narrow down what my clients are really asking for. “Are mushrooms mushy? Does cilantro taste like soap? An aversion to blue cheese? Do you like spicy food?” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah! You’re right! I don’t like peanuts! I like almonds.”

TQE:  What are some of your favorite dishes that you make—both for yourself and for your clients?

BB: Clients love my Divorce Me Chicken as well as my Oil-Free Pesto. Recently, I posted my Healthy Brookie Cookie Baes, which is a cookie-brownie combo aka a skillet slice of a brownie cookie. Insanity. 

TQE: What does a day-in-the-life of Chef Bae’s at-home cooking look like? Like, literally what do you eat in a day when you aren’t working?

BB: I would say when I’m not at a client’s house, I’m usually doing product development for a company, working on my own line of products (like my newly launched Jumpsuits!!) I’ll create my own recipe content, and then I have to do all of the project management for upcoming events or my client work. Let’s not forget menu planning, ingredient procurement, collaborations, and partnerships with brands.  I’ll also do a series with other content creators and news segments. 

Usually, I’ll just snack or pick at whatever I’m working on that day. When I’m at my client’s house, I never eat the food because usually it’s one of my most famous recipes that I’m honestly just sick of eating. They’re delicious, but when you’ve cooked them thousands of times, you don’t want them anymore!  I’ll eat a lot of healthy snack meals, a lot of veggies, and no refined grains or sugar. I’m dairy-free and soy-free.

Some days, I’ll have had such a long day that I’ll just open a can of chickpeas and hearts of palm and fall asleep because I just can’t.