Date: February 12, 2019
Ballymaloe Alumni News….
Where are they now?....
Thomasina Miers, Tommi to all her friends, did the January 12 Week Certificate course in 2002 here at the Ballymaloe Cookery School, she then went on to win Masterchef UK in 2005.
With a passion for Mexican food and artisan producers she co-founded the Wahaca chain of Mexican restaurants, winners of SRA’s most Sustainable food group, three years in a row. She has six best selling cookbooks, has presented various cookery programmes on TV and is a regular on radio programmes. Tommi and her husband Mark have three daughters and she has recently been awarded an OBE for her work in the food industry.
“My real start in food came from a meeting with the late Clarissa Dixon Wright when I was 26 and was really kind of struggling to know what to do, she found out that I was totally passionate about food and said, “The first place you need to go is Ballymaloe Cookery School”. Tommi describes the experience as an epiphany. “…there I learned more than just recipes. They teach a total philosophy about food, about the importance of food ingredients, about the footprint food has on the Earth, about how things are grown and sourced and how food can be eaten in ways that are completely sustainable and holistic…”
