Katie Caldesi

Principal, La Cucina Caldesi

Renowned cookbook author, chef, recipe creator and teacher, Katie Caldesi developed a passion for cooking as a child.

Originally trained as a theatre designer, her career shifted in the mid-nineties when restaurateur Giancarlo Caldesi commissioned Katie to paint a large-scale fresco. Their meeting sparked a professional and life partnership that continues to this day. The Caldesis’ eponymous Marylebone Italian restaurant Caldesi in Marylebone opened its doors in 2002, they launched a cookery school, La Cucina Caldesi, two years later, followed by Caldesi in Campagna in Bray in 2007. In 2006 Return to Tuscany was aired, a BBC2 documentary about the couple opening a cookery school in London and Tuscany and getting married, you can see it here.

Since the series Katie has frequently been in the press for culinary and travel advice, been a guest-chef at countless food festivals and appeared on Saturday Kitchen and Sunday Brunch. She regularly gives talks on food for health and food history.

Katie has written 19 cookbooks and recently completed an MA in food anthropology. She and Giancarlo are particularly well known for their series of low-carb cookbooks aimed squarely at type 2 diabetics after Giancarlo was diagnosed himself and put the disease into remission through healthy eating. They host an annual wellness retreat in Türkiye and Katie founded The Good Kitchen Table link to open in new page, promoting healthy eating and wellness through recipes, science and lifestyle suggestions.

Favourite Italian recipe
Roast quail on saffron and Porcini risotto

Favourite Italian place
Our friends Livia and Nello’s smallholding in rural Tuscany

Name three fantasy dinner guests
Guy Garvey from Elbow (only if he sings to me while I cook for him), Dan Snow (so he can tell us about the period of history that my dishes are from) and Alan Davies (to make us laugh if it all goes wrong when I am distracted by Guy and Dan!).