Social star: Straker’s huge online following has helped shape his upcoming restaurant
(Picture: Press handout)Whisper it, but some people had a good pandemic. Thomas Straker, for one, had a very good time of it. When lockdown hit, the chef reckons he had about 900 followers on Instagram. Now across his socials, he’s closing in on 400,000, and it all started with a thwarted sailing trip.
“I got this amazing gig with a billionaire on his superyacht but lockdown came and so we went to their house in Connecticut, the old Rockefeller mansion,” he says. “It was meant to be a couple of days but we were there for three-and-a-half months. I was only cooking for a family of five and a few staff, so I had all these free afternoons. I started making videos — and then I came back with about 15,000 followers…”
