Rachel Khoo: 'Some chefs have a few issues with my image...'

To work with food had always been Rachel’s ambition. At college at Central Saint Martins, students were encouraged to experiment in any medium, so for an architecture project she made her models in gingerbread. After college she wanted to work in food styling but ended up in the PR department at Thomas Pink, sending shirts to famous people on the blag, including once to the Rolling Stones and once to Woody Allen so he could give them to the cast and crew of Match Point.

Then, nearly seven years ago now, she quit her job at Thomas Pink and upped sticks to Paris on a whim. She enrolled on a course as a pastry chef, and worked in a bookshop with a café attached where the local food writers liked to launch their latest tomes, which meant she got to network like hell. One writer, Marc Grossman, an American living in Paris, got Rachel to test out his recipes as he wrote them and his editor asked her in for a meeting, which led to a couple of books of her own in 2010: one on muesli, granola and all things oaty; the other on teatime spreads with recipes such as homemade Nutella.

She emailed an editor at Penguin, asking for 30 minutes to present some ideas. They loved the Little Kitchen riff, bought the book and while testing out the recipes in her two-seat apartment/restaurant, she approached the BBC. The next thing she knew, she was the nation’s sweetheart. ‘People keep trying to buy my apartment,’ she says, surprised by her sudden fame. ‘And an 80-year-old English granny sent a letter to a café I mentioned in the book, saying, “I read that Rachel likes this café, so I just thought I’d send a letter because I really like Rachel.” ’

So, what’s her best aphrodisiac? ‘People say asparagus or oysters, but what if your date has an oyster allergy, what’s that going to be like?’ she replies. ‘The way you can make it seductive or romantic is finding out what they do and don’t like and making something really special. If your boyfriend’s into hamburgers, you can make him the most amazing hamburger.’ Aha, I pounce, did you seduce your boyfriend with a hamburger? ‘No, I didn’t, no,’ she stammers. ‘I have… I think the way I’ve done it in the past is always do a little bit of research and see what they like…’

So does that mean she’s dating? She looks at me warily. I have to ask, I protest, everyone wants to know how old you are, are you dating, how much your house is worth… She wrinkles her nose and looks briefly severe. ‘A gentleman should never ask those questions of a lady,’ she says. ‘I’ll answer the first one but not the second one. I’m 31.’

I am crestfallen. She relents and smiles briefly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve realised since being in the media eye that there’s a different class of questions you get as a woman rather than a man.’ Such as? ‘Am I getting married and will I have children?’ She looks at me beadily and I don’t dare ask. So what’s up next? She’s got the global launches, a new series in planning at the BBC and is presenting coverage of the Jubilee with Karl Lagerfeld for French tele-vision. I double-take – Karl… what?

‘Don’t ask me how I got that,’ she shrugs. ‘They’ve got me in London and him in Paris. Can you imagine? The presenter’s going to say, “I’m sorry, Karl, we’re going to have to stop you there, we’ve got to go to Rachel Khoo who’s live from London.” ’ She bursts out in a spontaneous bout of giggling. ‘Just as long as I don’t look like Bridget Jones.’ There is, I assure her, absolutely no chance of that.

The Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo is out now (Michael Joseph, £20)