That’s Slutty To You

Food and sex go together. That’s a principle for Slutty Cheff, the anonymous (and somehow still very hot) culinary woman and bestselling author. You may not be able to visualize her visage beyond her recipes, but her writing is steamy and adrenaline-fueled, making her hotness a palpable energy. The Londoner first sent heatwaves through the internet with cheeky, vulnerable Instagram captions about unrequited love, snogging, and cooking, which ultimately led to her memoir, Tart. Inside her debut book is a collection of unabashed yet deeply relatable reflections on eating, intimacy, and the sensual enlightenment that comes with both. Tart is heedless and raunchy, but really, it’s a poignant and honest account of growing up.

“Hi hi, Slutty!” I wrote in my last email to the author just before our interview. That’s what she told me to call her—Slutty. And honestly, it’s thrilling doing so. Slutty tells me that she chose her pseudonym because she didn’t want an online personal profile, and she needed to be able to write “filthy stuff with zero need to be self-conscious or tentative.” Her journey with writing started on Instagram out of earnest boredom. The more vulnerable she was, the more people cared. “I was in a weird depression, a bit lost. I started uploading pictures of food because I love cooking,” she says. Some of her early posts include a carousel of sad-boy dinners (starting with a ham-on-biscuit sandwich), a series of homemade meals with a caption explaining why she likes to cook when she’s sad, and a single photo of two whole, dead fish in a bucket titled, “when u tryna be sexy but he’s mad at you”.

Whenever Slutty is in any of the photos she shares, there’s an emoji cheeseburger over her face. “I wrote long satirical sex stories about random food or meals or restaurants, mainly to entertain myself.” As the old adage and law of the internet goes, if you’re having fun, they’re having fun; they being the audience. A following materialized, and so too did Slutty’s ascent as the food world’s most succulent star.

Along with the intentional choice to keep her identity underwraps, the chef admits her recent rise has been, for the most part, unplanned and free styled. Even the spelling of her last name, Cheff, just kind of happened: “It has two ‘f’s’ because the username with the single f slutty chef wasn’t available, someone else had it.” (It doesn’t come as surprising that, before entering the food space, the natural writer was working in marketing.) As Slutty began adding flavor to her photos by way of frisky descriptions, her followers expressed an insatiable hunger for more.

The first-ever photo on her grid, published in March of 2023, reveals a steak sandwich and a story about “long labia Lily” who was ashamed of her labia, and how the “tight pretentious sando” should be banished to make room for such imperfections. In October of that year, Slutty posted a photo of jam and toast with the handwriting “eat me on the bus” overlaid in scrappy, create-mode handwriting. The caption reads: “there is no greater feeling than standing on a dark glittery street in London and snogging someone.” It continues, “When it’s me snogging on the streets, I don’t give a fuck about your distain… When I am eating on the bus and my steaming slice wafts over to you and you side-eye me, a bit of my stomach growls in delight and you make my bus treat all the more tastier."

Despite anonymity, Slutty is no stranger to the dopamine-meets-deep-depression cocktail that’s often served alongside internet fame. “It was like ecstasy,” she says of the initial onslaught of chefs, writers, or fans that began following her work. “The validation was addictive, and it motivated me to pitch magazines and write longer form stuff. It made me think I could write well. I would be nothing without Instagram.” It’s a tale as old as social media. Once the high hits, cue the existential questioning. Intimidation and stagefright set in as her audience grew larger. Rather than writing her captions as “drunken sporadic thoughts” in Notes like she once did, Slutty took to Google Docs, the trepidation around posting growing with every suggested edit.

The tug-of-war between nurturing a budding social media following and throwing caution to the wind is still a theme for the Sunday Times bestselling author. “I am working hard on not caring. Caring is the cockblock of my creativity,” she says with certainty. “I find it depressing that social media is such a massive part of being creative now. Like, having a platform is almost essential if publishers or people with money are going to take a punt on you and make your dreams happen.” This is, perhaps, the most resented yet accepted fact of life for most of us creatives today. So when someone with power takes a bet on someone without virality, it’s like being reassured that pigs can fly.

Slutty had less than 1,000 followers when she was offered her book deal. The story goes (and often goes) like this: Among her followers was someone who worked at a book agency, who then showed their boss one of those infamous captions. Then came the DM from said book agency employee, asking the online persona if she would be open to a meeting. “I went thinking it would be some long-winded vague conversation, but they asked me if I wanted to write a book straight up. I said hell yeah I want to write a book.” Relieved that he wasn’t just “economically erect by a follower count,” she felt she could trust his instincts. The chef knows that social media was her launch pad, she is disenchanted by the internet. “There is oversensitivity, inauthenticity, capitalism, mass spread of misinformation, lukewarm ideas and shit graphic design,” she says. “It makes me sick if I have too much of it, like fizzy sweets.”

Pre-mediation is not really Slutty’s thing, which might be what made her bookwriting experience more carefree than most. But compiling chapters was still no cakewalk. “The first few sample chapters I sent to my book agent were utter dogshite,” she admits. “He tells me now that he freaked out that it wasn't going to work. I’d only ever written on Instagram.” With some feedback and direction, the internet’s chosen culinary queen wrote Tart in just six months.

Upon reading Tart, it’s clear that the mystery writer is penning from experience (you actually can’t make this stuff up). She expands on love, limerence, chef daddies (for the uninitiated, Julius Roberts, Pierce Abernathy, Carmen of The Bear, Andy of Boiling Point, the list goes on), and the internet’s over-fetishizing of them. Slutty knows better than most, as a woman who has often been the only girl in the kitchen, that the chef daddy thing is overrated. “Maybe a few months ago there was talk of the soft-boy chef, but it’s already kind of done to be honest.” Slutty is right. We definitely did this up and down. But is there still room for hot boys making food online? “Chefs are just zeitgeisty as fuck. But the idea of chef daddies being the hottest thing in kitchens irks me because that isn’t really a thing.” Her words ring true. Since when did we group-decide that a man who cooks equals good man? “Chefs are hot, for sure,” Slutty clarifies. Her boyfriend is a chef and she “fancies the pants off him,” but it’s not his tattoos or muscles or tortured masculinity that makes him hot. “They are hot because of their passion and commitment to their craft,” she says. “That can look like billions of different people, not just white burly guys with stately noses and shit tattoos.”

Since Tart’s release and Slutty’s continual online rise, which is not unlike the rise of loaf of bread that has been kneaded and oiled to perfection before entering the oven, she has somehow managed to maintain her biggest secret: her name. The culinary enigma says she keeps her friend group tight and avoids gossipy circles. It can’t be easy to remain unknown as a hyper-online girl, but Slutty doesn’t get around all that much. “All my friends and family know, but they are good people, not shit talkers. I think lots of the London restaurant scene knows who I am, cooks and front of house or whatever, but it seems to have been kept a secret, which I love. That loyalty is representative of the type of people that worked in hospitality.”

The only liability in her life, the author says, is her dad. “He tells every other bastard on the street who I am,” she says. His lack of discretion is likely a product of being a proud father. The day Tart came out, the chef and her dad made a trip to Foyles, a bookstore in Charing Cross. Apparently, Mr. Slutty couldn’t help but announce, “[REAL NAME] LOOK LOOK, IT’S YOUR BOOK!” Luckily, no one seemed to be paying attention. “It’s a privilege and I love it,” the writer remarks on being able to say whatever she wants without her real name attached to it. “I grimace at the thought of having to do press or photoshoots with my actual face and being recognized. That makes me gag.” Recently, while at a pub, Slutty noticed four girls at an adjacent table talking about her book. “I was at the edge of my fucking seat waiting for them to slag me off,” she confesses. “They didn’t, luckily. But yeah, my anonymity is my sanctity.”

What’s next for Slutty? For the most part, more freestyling. Her writing continues, this time in the form of a new TV show, which is a film adaptation of Tart, and a second book. She’ll also do as most savvy online girls do and start a Substack (remember, followers count for something). And then there are the dreams that are still cooking. “I want to write a play. I want to make a cinematic and ethical porno. I also want to write a children’s book,” she adds. “I want to be a landlady with big bursting tits who sits by the bar all day, pulling pints and talking to the locals.” And then there are the days she wants to throw it all away and go back to the kitchen and work a day job. “As is life in your twenties, my thoughts and feelings and motivations are ever-changing,” she says.

At the very end of her book, Slutty writes that whenever she gets down, she remembers how lucky she is to experience food and sex. I ask her to tell me about one of those experiences and what made it feel worth living for. She details a meal had in a cozy pub, which takes place in the autumn or winter. The ceilings are low and the color red is in abundance. The lighting is warm. There's Guinness and several glasses of red wine. The food is simple with lots of butter. The recipe is old but the chef is young. The cabbage is seasoned and there are potatoes and cheese. The soon-after slog involves new sex with a familiar person. “It makes you bounce with feelings the next day,” she says of the experience. “Whether it is major regret or a heart so full it might explode, the next day you are reminded of what life is about: Love, pleasure and human connection.”