What Happens When A Chef Loses Her Sense Of Taste?

In this excerpt from Eat (Like) The Rich (out Sept. 15), Olivia Tiedemann sets the stage for her debut cookbook, a beginner-friendly guide to ruling the kitchen like a real chef. A restaurant industry veteran, Tiedemann worked as a private chef in the Hamptons in 2023, when she started posting cooking videos on TikTok. Her dry sense of humor and signature middle finger to the camera — not to mention the mouth-watering meals she prepared on camera — soon earned her a following. Today she has 1.1 million followers on TikTok and 4.3 million on Instagram. Ahead, check out a chapter from the upcoming book.

Content warning: This story mentions suicidal ideation.

When I was 19, I had just come back from a stint of incredibly broke traveling, and I just wanted to start working. I got a job in a restaurant because that’s the thing you do if you’re a lost young adult. There’s always a restaurant hiring. There’s always an entry-level position, and those jobs aren’t hard to get.

Starting this job was like walking into a new world. It was such a cool team, such a good vibe, and I was immediately drawn to the kitchen and also the chef, Tristen. Totally platonically — I remember that I would just watch him. He was a calm chef, not an angry chef. I met a lot of d*ckhead chefs, but this guy, he kind of made me want to be like him.

He was just so engulfed. Completely focused on making these really pretty plates and making sh*t that tasted really good and trying new things. You could tell he was in it truly for the craft. He loved what he was doing.

My parents would tell me stories of how, when I was little, my brothers would be running around doing this or that, and I would be in my room for days at a time without leaving, making sculptures and little paintings and little videos that I would force my siblings to be in. It was all I wanted to do, making things.

So when I saw Tristen working in the kitchen, I recognized this same desire in him immediately. I knew right away that I was going to lodge myself so far up his a** that he would never get rid of me. And that’s what I did. I became devoted to this man and to learning everything about what it was that he was doing and being the best possible employee to him. And fortunately, he was such a good person and a strong leader that he let me.

At first, I was a food runner. I wasn’t even really allowed to touch food yet. Tristen would let me pick fava beans and herbs, but mostly I was there to watch. He would show me things. He would talk to me. He would teach me. He took it really seriously. And I will never forget that. He used to call me Zoom Zoom, or Zoomy, because I would run all around that motherf*cking restaurant. Whatever it was he was asking me to do, it was going to happen in under three seconds. Anything. I was just so oddly devoted. I had never really been that way, but I was interested. And so I did. Until one day, he was like, “If you really, really want to be in the kitchen, you have to go to cooking school.” And I was like, “All right; I quit. Because I’m going to cooking school.” He was pissed. But actually happy. But pissed. And sad that I was leaving.

I left for cooking school, came back to NYC, and went to work. I kept working all over NYC at a bunch of different restaurants. Those stories are a lot less inspiring because most kitchens and most people and most environments are not like Tristen was, aside from a few shining stars — Chef Vincenzo, I see you — and I wish I knew that, maybe. But it’s done now.

I had some really f*cking hard years when I wanted nothing more than to be the best. It wasn’t about anybody else. It wasn’t about being better than the person next to me. It was about doing what I wanted to do and mastering it on whatever level it took to do that, in whatever time I got to do that. Because a lot of kitchen work is mundane sh*t. Day-to-day. You do the same thing over and over. I remember so many days during this time when I’d do sh*t extra quickly, run myself ragged to finish my prep list, work extra hard so that I would have the time — just a little bit of time — to make space to be creative, to try new things and play with spare ingredients, or to push myself in a different way. And I just kept doing that.

I spent years, almost five of them, so entirely consumed by this mission to be the best, to be better, to do more, to work more — and in some pretty toxic environments — that I slowly lost touch with everything else. Anything else that was ever a part of my life. My friends. My family. Myself. Relationships. I was severely f*cking depressed. More than I ever even knew. The professional kitchen isn’t really an environment where you’re hearing a lot of positivity. You’re around a lot of unhappy people. And I just became more and more unhappy until things were, honestly, pretty bleak.

Until one fateful f*cking day that it got even worse.

I went to work on the line, and all through service the food kept coming back to the kitchen. Everything was either too salty or tasted like nothing. Plates of food were piled up on the window. Every server in the restaurant was in the kitchen with returns. I couldn’t understand it. Then there was this lightbulb moment: Holy f*cking sh*t. I can’t taste anything. I had COVID. I went home that night — which was honestly kind of nice, because it was probably the first time I’d taken off work for more than a day in years. If it hadn’t been legally mandated, I might still be chained to that stove. But when I came back, I still couldn’t taste anything. And then I couldn’t taste anything for a total of eight months.

I’d lost the only thing that really connected me to doing any of this at all. And then I was really depressed. I realized I had put my whole life into this. All of my time. And I might never taste again.

I walked out of work one day knowing I was never going to go there ever again. My father called me. He was talking about his job where he was working on a movie set in upstate New York as a grip. He builds sh*t. I think he could just tell something was off. I guess he knew I was miserable at this job. I probably hadn’t seen him in person in over a year. He said, you know, we’re looking for an art PA on the set. Do you want to do it?

Something about that question instilled this mentality of, Well, if I’m not going to exist tomorrow, it doesn’t really matter what I do today. Or tomorrow. I could go and do anything. There was no more pressure of What if it doesn’t work out? or What if I run out of money? or What if I fuck up? or What if they’re mad at me?

I was immediately freed from all of those thoughts. I was going to do whatever the f*ck I wanted to. Because if it all goes to sh*t, it couldn’t get worse. And if it got worse, I could leave this world at any time. So I just kept pushing the thought by one day. Every day. One day at a time.

I left an hour after I got off the phone. I packed up my sh*t. I left my girlfriend. I left my apartment. I didn’t immediately take my dog, but I did go back for her the next week. And I went out there, and I did it. And every single day, things got better. Every day my outlook changed. I became more connected to the fact that we are all experiencing a life, not just getting through it. I didn’t even know what that could look like. Being in a small box can make you think that you can’t do anything else until the day you just walk outside of it.

I didn’t know. I decided that I would not see tomorrow.

It was weird transitioning to a job that was corporate, where labor laws existed. Everybody seemed to be... totally fine. Doing their jobs and living their lives. It may have been my first experience in an environment that was calm and everybody was taken care of, and I didn’t know how to act. I had a hard time learning how to sit down during lunch. I had a hard time sitting down period. Weird little sh*t, like the fact that we had breaks, freaked me out. Slowly, this environment changed me. My stress levels went down, and things started to get good.

A few months into this job, I was cold-called by a friend of an aunt about a private chef job. The Bs were looking for a new private chef in the Hamptons. I wanted it bad, and I got it. It was everything I’d ever wanted. A place where I could kitchen stim free and safe with no budget or limit or angry f*cking Italian old man yelling in my face. None of the horror and the traumas and the heat and the time and the pressure and everybody hating each other. Suddenly I was in the most beautiful place in the world with people who were good and nice. I don’t think I had ever really seen a family or a life that looked like theirs, where everything was just... calm and beautiful and taken care of and I felt OK.

I didn’t know it, but when they first hired me, they weren’t sure about me. They were kind of calling it a trial. But when I showed up at their house, I was taking a serious gamble. I didn’t have a lot of money. I got rid of my apartment. I sold all of my furniture and belongings so that I could buy a car to get there with. I drove to the Hamptons with my clothes, my knives, and (eventually) my dog, with no idea where I would end up after the summer.

But they gave me their credit card and said, “Cook us whatever you want.” So I did. And they loved it. And they continued to love it, and they became like family to me. I worked for them that whole summer. In an environment where I was able to just be in my own f*cking world and do and make the things that I really wanted to in my own way while being paid more than anyone had ever paid me, with nobody else over my shoulder or in my ear or with their hands in my sh*t telling me do this, do that, or with a huge whole restaurant to think about. It was just, like, cook. It changed the person that I am, structurally.

So it all worked out.

By the end of that summer, I had grown so much by being allowed to do things my way, I decided to start recording myself cooking. And this is the part in the story where I met you.

So, yeah. I like to cook things. You like to cook things. Probably. I think that’s why we’re all gathered here today.

Try the recipes, or don’t. It’s your life. You can do anything you want to. I might recommend you eat like the rich, motherf*cker.

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.