Ambition is just one ingredient needed to lift the coveted MasterChef: The Professionals crown; and Nikita Pathakji should know. The 2022 champion spills the beans on growing up in Derby and carving a career in fine dining
The demanding six-week MasterChef the Professionals cooking competition is much-loved – regularly receiving over five million avid viewers.
It pitches 32 of the UK’s most ambitious chefs against each other during an increasingly challenging series of tasks.
And to ramp-up the heat in the kitchen even more, watching them every step of the way is Michelin-starred celebrity chef Marcus Waring, acclaimed chef and restaurateur Anna Haugh, and celebrated MasterChef judge Greg Wallace.
And in Nikita Pathakji, Derbyshire can be proud of having ‘one of our own’ as the 16th champion chef and the first female winner in ten years.
‘Honestly, I still can’t put it into words, it was incredible,’ recalls Nikita on becoming the reigning champion.
‘It was about time that a woman won the show again. Two years ago there, wasn’t a single female semi-finalist and in 2022 there were four.
‘For me, it’s about women supporting other women as we understand the pressures of this industry.
‘It would be really lovely if I can be a role model and create an environment that women want to work in, taking into account people’s lifestyles.’
So just how did the 25-year-old, who grew up near Mickleover, find the tenacity to break through this glass ceiling? Her passion for food, she says, began at an early age.
‘My family, especially my mum, has always enjoyed cooking,’ recalls Nikita.
‘We lived in a great neighbourhood in Derbyshire with lots of families and as children we’d go from house to house eating. My parents loved to throw big parties which were usually centred around a pot of something really tasty.
‘I’d often watch my mum as she cooked, or she’d give me a piece of roti dough, a type of Indian flatbread, and I’d sit on the floor with my own little board and I’d roll and roll it. It’s a special memory.’
When Nikita’s dad Sona’s engineering job at Rolls-Royce in Derby took him, wife Rima and their two young daughters on secondment to Bangalore, new food horizons opened-up for nine-year-old Nikita.
It also triggered a love for travel, which has remained with her ever since.
‘Whilst in India my dad wanted us to experience China and Singapore, so we’d eat that style of food which we’d then recreate at home,’ she remembers.
‘He has a rule that you have to try something three times before deciding that you don’t like it.’
Returning to England, two years later, following their parents’ amicable divorce the girls remained in Derbyshire with their dad.
For the future chef, academia beckoned – her grandparents were doctors – and A-level studies in sciences and maths at Derby High School for Girls suggested Nikita would follow older sister Isha to university.
That was until she sent her sibling a freshly made batch of brownies, which ignited a spark that remains vivid to this day.
‘My sister said: “Oh my gosh these are so good; you’re really good at cooking,”’, says Nikita.
‘Having just come out of a particularly hard chemistry test at school, I went home and had a conversation with my dad.
‘My parents were both very supportive. “That’s fine,” they agreed, “but you if don’t want to go to university, having made this decision, you have to go for it”.’
And ‘go for it’ Nikita did. Taking a culinary apprenticeship at Westminster Kinsgway College, which gave her hands-on experience in classical fine dining at London’s Lanesborough Hotel.
Her food odyssey continuing at Bibendum, then at Core by Clare Smyth, and most recently at Kitchen W8, climbing the ranks to become junior sous chef.
Chef Phil Howard, the inspiration behind Kitchen W8, is someone whom she’s looked up to for a long time.
‘He made his name at The Square where he was awarded two Michelin stars. He left there and opened a restaurant which produces really tasty food with a great environment for both the diners and for the chefs,’ says Nikita.
‘I enjoy being in the main part of the kitchen because of the comradery and being in the thick of it. You can love food and love cooking but as a chef you also have to love the adrenalin of service and I get bored if I don’t experience this. It’s a lovely feeling working together to produce something great.
‘The hours are pretty gruelling so afterwards it’s clean down, go home, maybe have a beer and then bed if you’re in the next day at 8am.’
This was, Nikita observes, good preparation for the rigours of MasterChef.
Entering had been in her thoughts for a while, however in 2022, the time felt right to trust in her skills and put her own food out there for critique.
Being pre-recorded, Nikita’s small screen debut was kept hush-hush to all but her head chef Mark Kempson, and closest family. Unsurprisingly mum Rima, with whom she now lives, was the first on speed dial when the result was announced.
‘Personally, I didn’t feel the pressure of being on TV or the cameras, I just focused on the food I wanted to cook,’ she reflects. ‘The hardest part was cooking in front of the chef judges, you just want to achieve the title so badly.
‘Going to Marcus Waring’s restaurant had been my very first Michelin star dining experience aged 14, whilst visiting my mum in London. So, things came full circle for me.’
After crowning Nikita, Marcus commented: ‘She’s a chef that has grown right in front of our eyes. Her food has been sublime and she’s always come up with an amazing twist.’
Having sharpened her knives on the nerve-jangling skills test, Nikita whisked through a signature menu, before winning over taste buds in an invention test and putting her name on the line in front of a panel of revered food writers; all of which culminated in her hors d'oeuvre for finals week, which again displayed her emerging style of fine dining with classical techniques marrying flavours of Asia.
‘The Chef’s Table was probably the most thrilling and, at the same time, most terrifying round,’ she recalls.
‘You’re cooking for a room of over 20 of your idols; chefs with multiple Michelin stars between them, who you’ve looked up to during your whole career, which is quite intimidating.
‘Fortunately, it went well. I cooked octopus for them which was quite a risky dish, as I’d created it especially for the challenge.
‘To find out that there was a Japanese chef in the room and I was presenting him with a version of Japanese street food, it was a case of “what have a got myself into?’”
‘The chef’s table was also lovely because it was held at the restaurant where I got my first ever job in the kitchen. This really hit me as the car pulled up in front of the hotel.’
In a show-stopping final three-course menu, featuring cured sea bass, crispy chicken thighs with tortellini and a cardamom and custard tart, Nikita proved the crème de la crème ahead of rival chefs Charlie Jeffreys and Sagar Massey.
Yet since filming finished the three have kept in touch, including working together at events, an experience she’s really enjoyed.
‘It’s been the first time I’ve been able to try their food and to see what great chefs they are,’ she says.
‘MasterChef is such a unique experience, we really understand each other because of what we’ve been through together.’
Indeed, collaborations, private dinners, food festival demos, and guest residencies with past MasterChef: The Professionals winners are now flooding-in.
It means spinning plenty of plates, but having now left Restaurant W8 to focus on writing her own menus, for now Nikita is ‘enjoying the ride’ that her success has served-up.
‘The end goal is to have my own restaurant,’ she reveals.
‘I love London but it would be great to get back out into the countryside, such as I was used to in Derbyshire. I’ve got a dog, a golden labradoodle called Dexter, and I think he’d enjoy that!
‘So I’ll see where the opportunity pops up, whether that’s at home in the Midlands or further south.’
For someone currently taking driving lessons, when it comes to her chosen career, chef Nikita is already in the fast lane.
