1. John Douglas Torode was born on 23 July 1965 and is an Australian-British celebrity chef and TV presenter.
24 Facts About John Torode
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John Torode moved to the UK in the 1990s and began working at Conran Group's restaurants.
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John Torode is a restaurateur; former owner of the Luxe and a second restaurant, Smiths of Smithfield.
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John Torode has written a number of cookbooks, including Sydney to Seoul, My Kind of Food and John and Lisas Kitchen with his wife Lisa Faulkner.
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John Douglas Torode was born on 23 July 1965 as the youngest of three boys in Melbourne, Victoria, but, between the ages of four and ten, he lived in Maitland, New South Wales, with his brother Andrew, and his grandmother who taught him to cook.
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John Torode then lived in Edithvale, Melbourne, with his father and his brothers, though his father was frequently away from home because of work.
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John Torode's early cooking career started at Le Coq Au Vin restaurant in Aspendale and his later apprenticeship was at several establishments in Beaumaris, both in Melbourne.
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John Torode has said that the food in his childhood was fairly normal, and roast chicken remains one of his favourite dishes because of the connection to his childhood, although his favourite meal at that time was crumbed lamb cutlets.
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John Torode cooked on ITV's This Morning in 1996, and continued in that role until 2000.
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John Torode opened his former restaurant in Smithfield, London in 2000, called Smiths of Smithfield.
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John Torode has presented a show for the BBC Good Food channel in the UK alongside former Celebrity MasterChef contestant Hardeep Singh Kohli, called New British Kitchen.
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In 2001 John Torode shot a 12-part series for Taste CFN called Sea Breeze in which he travelled around the Balearic Islands cooking with local chefs and visiting popular tourist attractions.
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John Torode's Australia was recorded as having the largest viewing figures on Good Food in 2014.
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The episode explored the history and culture behind Argentina's great beef production and included John Torode joining a group of gauchos on a working livestock ranch, before ending at a restaurant in Mendoza where cooking beef is regarded as being an art form.
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In each location, John Torode looked for the most inspiring cooks, discovering the distinctive flavours of their country's cuisine.
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On 21 July 2022, John Torode's Ireland premiered on Food Network, the six-part series sees the chef discovering Ireland's varied cuisine.
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John Torode said in interviews that he enjoyed that the show is unscripted and that the cameras are just there to capture the genuine interactions between the judges and the contestants.
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In October 2009, John Torode opened a restaurant in Spitalfields market, Commercial street, London, called The Luxe.
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John Torode has co-presented Junior MasterChef, initially along with Nadia Sawalha, the former winner of Celebrity MasterChef, and more recently alongside Donal Skehan.
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John Torode has been a guest several times on BBC One's The One Show, Alan Carr: Chatty Man and The Graham Norton Show, and on ITV's Loose Women and This Morning.
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On 23 July 2014 John Torode was a guest on ITV4's The Cycle Show.
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John Torode was married to Jessica, in 2000, the mother of his son and daughter but was divorced in 2014 after separating in 2011.
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John Torode has been in a relationship with actress and Celebrity Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner since 2015.
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John Torode was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to food and charity.