Chef K, who partnered with Rao’s Homemade, tells PEOPLE about how she “went from one guy boss to 20 girl bosses”
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Kourtney Kardashian with Travis Barker and Chef K
Khristianne Uy, more commonly known as Chef K, has been a chef to the stars for decades. Her celebrity roster is expansive, ranging from Charlize Theron, Salma Hayek and Justin Bieber, but her most well-known gig is with the Kardashian-Jenner family.
She credits Ryan Seacrest for setting her on this path. Uy made “breakfast, lunch and dinner” for the former American Idol host in California before moving with him to New York when he got the call to host Live with Kelly and Ryan in 2017.
“He asked me to move to New York and I did, because I admire him as a human being. It’s a rare thing to find someone like that,” she tells PEOPLE.
After about a year of living in the Big Apple, her father died and Uy wanted to move back to the West Coast.
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Chef K
“I told Mr. Seacrest I had to go back home and that it was my father’s dying wish for me to be close to my mom,” she recalls. “I thought he was going to get so upset because he just moved me out there, set me up with everything, and now I’m leaving. The first thing he said, I’ll never forget this was, ‘Chef, do you have anything lined up back home?’”
According to Uy, he immediately got on the phone, made a call and passed her the phone with Kris Jenner on the other line.
From that one phone call, “I went from one guy boss to 20 girl bosses,” she laughs.
Nearly a decade later, the Filipino chef has been working with the stars of The Kardashians for all their major events and holidays, watching the family grow along the way.
“I literally saw Mason and I didn’t recognize him! And it had only been a few months!” she says of Kourtney Kardashian’s eldest child. “Most of the kids now, they were not even seeds yet [when I started].”
The chef used to cook for the family on a more regular basis but during the pandemic she opened up a catering company with Kris’s blessing. Now, she cooks for their special occasions, like Kourtney’s bachelorette party.
Just this last Christmas, Uy helped recreate one of Kris’s favorite dishes through a partnership with Rao’s Homemade.
“One of Mrs. Jenner’s favorite dishes is an eggplant Parmesan, and I wanted to just put a twist on it without changing so much of the flavor profile that she likes,” she says. “So I just grilled some eggplants and then put some ricotta, put turkey filling, kind of give it a holiday vibe and braised it in Rao’s Homemade marinara.”
The Kardashian-Jenner holiday meals are different from the average household. Before a holiday like Christmas, Uy explains that there are three days of themed dinners that the family is all together for, like “Mexican Tuesday, Asian Wednesday, Italian Thursday.”
While she loves cooking for Easter and Christmas, it is the special, themed parties that Uy really looks forward to.
“The kids’ birthday parties’ themes are so creative, especially with North, who designs her own parties,” she says of Kim Kardashian’s daughter.
Uy shares videos of the intricate (and delicious looking) food from the family’s parties on her social media, like Khloé Kardashian’s youngest son Tatum’s space-themed birthday party or Kim’s son Saint’s soccer-filled celebration. Her Instagram and TikTok are filled with behind-the-scenes looks into her other celebrity client’s parties, too. As a result, she’s amassed nearly 300,000 followers across the two platforms.
“Everyone just sees, it’s a celebrity client. But no, at the end of the day, it’s humbling to know that we all eat the same thing,” she says. “And if I can help cook up good memories, I’ve done a good job.”
