Career
He began his cooking career at the age of 16, after leaving school to attend catering college. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1991. A year later he began working at Le Pont de la Tour and Quaglinos's as a sous chef for the Conran Group under Terence Conran. When he first met Conran, Torode asked his fellow chefs who that "nutter" was, as he'd arrived in the kitchen wearing a coffee stained shirt and clutching a bag of figs asking for them to be put on the menu. In later interviews, Torode described Conran as a "genius". Whilst working at Quaglino's, Torode first met Gregg Wallace, whose company supplied the vegetables for the restaurant.
He cooked on ITV1's This Morning in 1996, and continued in that role until 2000. Torode later described the reason for his departure as "because they wanted me to cook cheap food. I said that’s not what I do. I cook good food that is accessible. I made a decision that I would never cook on television again. I didn’t want to be “the celebrity chef”." In 1998, his cookbook The Mezzo Cookbook won the James Beard Foundation Award for "Best Food Photography". He opened his own restaurant in Smithfield, London in 2000, called Smiths of Smithfields. After a year, he opened a second restaurant, called Cafeteria, near Notting Hill Gate. Cafeteria closed after eight months with Torode suffering a financial loss; he later described his experience of Cafeteria: "I got everything wrong".
In 2005, the BBC television show MasterChef was re-launched with an updated format and with Torode and Wallace as presenters replacing Gary Rhodes. Torode was chosen instead of food critic AA Gill. The show was such a success that by 2011, it had been sold to 25 countries and was the most successful food-related television show worldwide. Torode has said in interviews that he enjoys that the show is unscripted and that the cameras are just there to capture the genuine interactions between the judges and the contestants. The show subsequently spawned a spin-off, also hosted by Torode and Wallace, called Celebrity MasterChef. In October 2009, Torode opened a restaurant near New Spitalfields Market in London, called The Luxe. Turnover on his two restaurants reached £9.2 million in 2010.
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