“Every bit of food you experience should be captivating."

Katie O. The Chef is a television personality and celebrity chef, the star of 87 episodes of her own show, Katie O’s Food Carnival, and the winner of TBS’s Rat in the Kitchen.

Her big break came in March 2013, when fitness icon Shea Vaughn, mother of actor Vince Vaughn, hired her to design a vegan, gluten-free menu for 1,300 guests at Shea’s celebrity fitness challenge. Shea discovered Katie that day, and she’s been a mentor and dear friend ever since. In June 2016, Katie launched her own woman-owned brand and TV show on Shea’s all-female streaming network. She filmed 87 half-hour episodes through December 2018, airing weekly on Woman on TV and on Comcast, and the show still streams today as a featured program on Woman on TV and on E360. Along the way she made celebrity appearances on Chicago TV and radio, was the featured celebrity chef at Chicago Social’s Burger Cook-Off, built her own culinary team, and designed and produced an Artisan Food Festival at the DuPage County Fairgrounds. In 2021 she competed on TBS’s Rat in the Kitchen, and won.

Truly a trendsetter, Katie is a wholly unique talent in the overcrowded food industry. Her all-encompassing knowledge of all things food, combined with her artistic passion and educated and extensive palate, and added to the fact that she feeds over 40,000 guests each year, has elevated Katie’s culinary designs to the rarefied air of creativity and flavor profiles that only the top chefs enjoy.  

As former Co-President, Co-Owner and Culinary Designer of the prominent High End Chicago caterer Kenmare Catering and Events, Katie created over 700 sensational menu items, and has designed menus for over 2,500 high-end events over her career. Katie’s clients include US Presidents, celebrities, major corporations, international not for profit groups and high profile weddings, as well as for countless less famous but equally important self-proclaimed “foodies.”  

Today, Katie O. The Chef is a celebrity culinary artist and chef, a best-selling cookbook author, and the name behind elite, fully customized luxury culinary experiences. Vegan and gluten-free cuisine is her signature specialty and the foundation of everything she creates: bright, bold, artistic food that no one would ever call a compromise.