Ruby Tandoh

Ruby Alice Tandoh (born 1992) is a British baker, columnist, author, and former model. Her father worked for the Royal Mail and her mother was a school administrator. Her paternal grandfather came from Ghana.

The Great British Bake Off Tandoh competed in the fourth series (2013) of The Great British Bake Off (GBBO) at age twenty, making her the youngest competitor in the series at the time. She reached the all-women final, with Kimberley Wilson and Frances Quinn.

Before the final episode, Tandoh was considered the favourite to win by London bookmakers. However, she attracted noticeable antipathy among some viewers, especially online. or that she was too self-deprecating; or even that she hit back at her critics (calling one Twitter poster a "bitter old witch").

Tandoh was one of the runners-up to Quinn, who made a three-tier wedding cake inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream which the judges said "beat the other two guys hands down". For the fifth series (2014) of GBBO, which included the youngest-ever contestant, seventeen-year-old Martha Collison, the BBC specifically warned contestants how to ignore online trolls in response to the unprecedented abuse that Tandoh received.

By 2021, Tandoh said that she could no longer watch the series, despite still appreciating it, and that the theme song made her feel sick.

Writing career Tandoh has written several books: Crumb: The Baking Book (2014), Flavour: Eat What You Love (2016), Eat Up!: Food, Appetite, Eating What You Want (2018), Cook as You Are (2021), and All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now (2025). Eat Up! explores aspects of food culture, such as eating disorders (which Tandoh suffered from in her teenage years), the wellness craze, food snobbery, and pleasure of food.

Eat Up! addresses culinary culture from a social justice point of view, including the colonialist origins of tea, the classism associated with sugar, and food-associated body shaming. It also covered the dangers of exclusion diets and eating disorders, encouraging the unconditional enjoyment of food. It met positive reviews from Kirkus Reviews, which called it "engrossing", and a mixed one from i newspaper, which questioned its preferring tinned ingredients to raw ones.

Tandoh wrote for The Guardian, but announced in June 2018 that she would stop, citing the "elitist" nature of the industry. By March the following year she was again writing occasional articles for the paper.

Along with her wife, Leah Pritchard, Tandoh published the one-off mental health zine Do What You Want in 2017.

Eater said that Cook as You Are "is an exercise in creating room for every kind of recipe and every kind of cook", noting the lack of any photography. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes the book as "focus[ing] on flexible, mostly low-effort, daily cooking, with charming illustrations of various down-to-earth home settings". The book was named to several best-of lists.

Public conflicts and criticism

Tandoh's online criticisms of and conflicts with fellow chefs, often via Twitter, have drawn extensive news coverage. Tandoh responded, calling Blanc an idiot.

During Tandoh's stint on Great British Bake Off, comments had been made that she flirted with Paul Hollywood to gain favour. After coming out in 2015, Tandoh responded to these accusations with a statement on Twitter.

In January 2017, Tandoh referred to wellness bloggers, and specifically food writer Ella Mills, as "dangerous". In a series of tweets later in April 2017, Tandoh criticised multiple celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver, Lorraine Pascale, the Hairy Bikers, and Tom Kerridge, for what she called elitism, selfishness, and fatphobia. In May of that year, Tandoh criticised chefs Nigella Lawson, Kerridge, and Anthony Bourdain for supporting boring and privileged cooking. In June, Tandoh jointly and separately criticised chefs Oliver, Nigel Slater, Lawson, the Hairy Bikers, and Hollywood for not speaking up before the 2017 United Kingdom general election. In August she further criticised Hollywood for blocking her on Twitter.

In 2018, Tandoh criticised former Made in Chelsea reality show contestant Lucy Watson, who had released a vegan cookbook in 2017, for tweeting that "most people" should be vegan. Tandoh listed reasons why people might not be able to be vegan, and said that Watson was writing from a position of social privilege. Watson replied by accusing Tandoh of taking offence because her own cookbook contained meat and dairy recipes. An editorial by Ella Griffiths in The Independent supported Tandoh.

In 2020, Tandoh joined a chorus of voices criticising the Horizon episode about "The Restaurant That Burns Off Calories", first tweeting, then writing in The Guardian, that it would encourage fat-shaming and disordered eating. Host Fred Sirieix replied by sarcastically thanking her for drawing attention to the episode.

Personal life Tandoh has said that she accepted being queer soon after she came to terms with her relationship to food. She wrote in Eat Up! that before then she had denied herself both food and meaningful relationships. This drew extensive media attention, much of it reporting that she had announced she was gay.

In a 2018 interview with The Times, Tandoh identified herself as bisexual, saying that she had previously had boyfriends. She later said that she felt fortunate to have met Pritchard shortly after accepting her bisexuality.

In 2025, The Times reported that Tandoh was living with a partner whose identity she preferred to keep private.

Tandoh has spoken out about her struggles with eating disorders, criticising the body shaming common in "wellness" culture and advocating a healthier, more positive approach to food writing. She was voted the Great British Bake Offs favourite past contestant by the Radio Times audience in 2016.