Monica Galetti

Some chefs arrive with a shout. Monica Galetti arrived with a steady, unblinking look that could stop a room, and a technique so exact that a whole generation of British cooks learned to fear and adore her in equal measure. Born in the South Pacific, trained in New Zealand and forged over sixteen years in one of London’s most demanding kitchens, she has spent her career proving that precision and warmth are not opposites.

Today she is one of the most recognisable faces in British food: a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals, co-presenter of Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby, the author of four cookbooks and, since May 2026, executive chef of 130 Primrose, a Primrose Hill restaurant that trains people affected by homelessness and people in addiction recovery. This is the story of how a girl from Upolu became one of the most respected chefs in London.

TL;DR

• Born Monica Faʻafiti on 26 August 1975 in Pago Pago, American Samoa, and raised in Wellington, New Zealand, from the age of eight.
• Moved to London in 1999 and worked her way up at Michel Roux Jr’s two-Michelin-star Le Gavroche, becoming the first woman to hold a senior sous-chef post there.
• Judge on BBC Two’s MasterChef: The Professionals from 2009 to 2021, and again from 2023.
• Opened the Fitzrovia restaurant Mere with her husband David Galetti in 2017; it ran until April 2024.
• Executive chef and trustee at 130 Primrose, the social enterprise restaurant that opened on 8 May 2026.
• Author of Monica’s Kitchen, The Skills and At Home, with a fourth book, Gathering, published in October 2026.

Monica Galetti key facts

Monica Galetti: career timeline

A Pacific childhood and a Wellington kitchen

Monica Faʻafiti was born in Pago Pago on 26 August 1975 and spent her earliest years on Upolu, the Samoan island where two aunts raised her while her mother worked in Auckland. It was a childhood steeped in food as a communal act rather than a career: the umu, the earth oven lined with hot stones; taro and breadfruit; whole fish wrapped in leaves; coconut cream poured over almost everything. In Samoan life, food is how a family says welcome, and she absorbed that lesson long before she ever picked up a chef’s knife.

At eight she flew to Wellington to join her parents and five siblings, a move she has spoken about openly as one of the hardest of her life. New Zealand meant a new climate, a new accent and a busy household to feed. She attended Naenae College in the Hutt Valley, and it was there, in a school kitchen rather than a restaurant one, that the idea of cooking for a living first took hold.

Learning the trade in the Hutt Valley

In the early 1990s she enrolled at the Central Institute of Technology in Upper Hutt for a diploma in hospitality, then took a job at Timothy’s, a restaurant in Lower Hutt. Her boss did something unusually generous: he entered her into cooking competitions and sent her abroad to compete, to Australia, the United States and Europe. Those trips did two things. They showed her how big the profession really was, and they gave her the nerve to aim at the very top of it.

Back in Wellington she was already a chef de partie, a solid mid-level position with a clear path upwards. Instead of settling into it, she posted her CV to the best restaurateurs she could name in London and waited. One of them replied.

Le Gavroche: sixteen years in the toughest classroom in London

The reply came from Michel Roux Jr, and the offer was, on paper, a demotion: first commis at Le Gavroche, the Mayfair institution his father Albert and uncle Michel had opened in 1967 and which held two Michelin stars. Accepting meant going backwards in title and in pay. She accepted anyway and moved to London in 1999, aged twenty-four, with almost nobody she knew in the city.

What followed was a masterclass in French classicism delivered at speed. She moved through the sections one by one, learned the mother sauces, the butchery, the pastry discipline and the choreography of a brigade at full tilt, and kept climbing. By the time she left in 2015 she was senior sous-chef, the first woman to hold a position that senior at Le Gavroche, and in practice the person running the pass whenever Roux was elsewhere.

She has always been generous about what that kitchen gave her, and Roux has been equally generous in return, describing her publicly as one of the finest chefs he has worked alongside. Master and protégée, for sixteen years. Very few working relationships in British cooking have lasted that long or produced that much.

Le Gavroche des Tropiques

While still based in Mayfair she was handed a project of her own: launching Le Gavroche des Tropiques in Mauritius as head chef. It was her first experience of building a kitchen from nothing, of hiring and training a team in a place where the produce, the climate and the rhythm of service were all different. Tropical fruit, reef fish, humidity that fights your pastry. The experience would matter a great deal later, both at Mere and in the way she thinks about mentoring young cooks.

MasterChef: The Professionals and the most famous skills test on television

In 2009 the BBC asked her to run the skills tests on MasterChef: The Professionals. The format handed her the technical rounds: fillet this, turn that, make a hollandaise while the clock runs down and the country watches. Her calm, exacting manner quickly became the emotional centre of the show. Contestants dreaded her tests and treasured her approval, often in the same thirty seconds.

She judged from 2009 to 2021, stepped away in 2022 to give her time to her family and her restaurant team, and returned in 2023. By 2026 she had eighteen years of the programme behind her, which makes her one of the longest serving judges in British competitive cooking and, for a lot of young chefs, the first professional standard they ever measured themselves against.

Television also took her travelling. Since 2017 she has co-presented Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby, working real shifts alongside the staff of extraordinary hotels around the world, first with Giles Coren and later with Rob Rinder. The series suits her exactly, because she is far more interested in the people doing the work than in the thread count of the sheets.

Mere, the restaurant named for her mother

In January 2017 she and David Galetti, the French born sommelier she had met at Le Gavroche, opened Mere on Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, backed by Westbury Street Holdings chairman Alastair Storey. The name is a double play: mère is French for mother, and Mere was also the name of her own mother. Naming a first restaurant after the woman who fed you is about as clear a mission statement as a chef can make.

The cooking was the fullest statement she had made about who she is. Classical French method underneath, South Pacific and New Zealand flavours on top. Oka, the Samoan dish of raw fish cured in coconut cream, appeared in a fine dining register with yellowtail kingfish, sliced jalapeño and shiso. Taro, tamarind and coconut sat comfortably beside French sauces. Desserts nodded to New Zealand childhood favourites such as hokey pokey. Downstairs, David built a wine list that ran from grand Burgundy to bottles nobody else in London was pouring.

Mere ran for seven years and served its last dinner on 16 April 2024. Seven years of independent fine dining in central London is a genuine achievement, and the restaurant remains the clearest expression of her cooking so far. Plenty of the chefs who passed through that kitchen are now running their own.

130 Primrose: a kitchen with a second job

In April 2026 came the announcement that brought her back to a London stove full time. She joined 130 Primrose, at 130 Regent’s Park Road in Primrose Hill, as executive chef and trustee. The restaurant is a social enterprise: alongside serving paying customers it hires and trains people who have experienced homelessness and people in addiction recovery, and gives them a real route into hospitality.

The building reopened on 8 May 2026 after a redesign, with a light filled brasserie on the ground floor and a cocktail bar downstairs following a few weeks later. Day to day service is run by head chef Eric Zhang while Galetti writes the menu, which is built on the best British seasonal produce with a Mediterranean lift and, in her own words, touches of her Samoan heritage still to come.

It is a role that fits the way she has always talked about kitchens. She spent sixteen years being trained by someone who believed in her, and she has spent the years since describing mentorship as the real currency of the job. At 130 Primrose, the training is not a side project. It is the point.

Carrying Samoa with her

Galetti serves as an ambassador for the Samoa Tourism Authority, and in early 2025 she returned to the islands in that role, spending time with local growers, fishermen and cooks and working with the culinary team at a new luxury retreat on menus built around Pacific ingredients. She has been consistent about this for years: the food she grew up with deserves a place on the world stage rather than a footnote in somebody else’s menu.

That thread runs straight into her fourth book. Gathering: A Celebration of Flavours from Polynesia and Beyond is published by HarperCollins in October 2026 and draws on her Polynesian roots and her travels through island cultures, reimagining traditional dishes for a home kitchen. After three books rooted in technique and family cooking, this is the one that goes all the way home.

Restaurants

Awards and honours

Watch Monica Galetti

See Monica in action in this video.

Signature dishes

Ask anyone who ate at Mere and the same plates come up. Oka, the Samoan cure of raw fish in coconut cream, was her calling card, given a fine dining polish with yellowtail kingfish, sliced jalapeño and shiso leaf. Her handling of taro and coconut showed the same instinct at work: a Pacific ingredient treated with French discipline and no sentimentality. On the sweet side she is a committed coconut obsessive, and a coconut ganache with peanut and caramel, along with a hokey pokey dessert that nodded straight back to her New Zealand childhood, became house favourites. On television she has become the nation’s authority on the fundamentals: a properly turned vegetable, a hollandaise that does not split, a soufflé that rises when it is asked to.

Cookbooks

Monica is the author of books including Monica’s Kitchen (2012), The Skills: How to Become an Expert Chef in Your Own Kitchen (2016), At Home: My Favourite Recipes for Family and Friends (2021), Gathering: A Celebration of Flavours from Polynesia and Beyond (2026).

Personal life

In 2004 she married David Galetti, the French born head sommelier she met at Le Gavroche and who later became her business partner at Mere. They have one daughter, born in 2006, and Galetti has been open about the fact that stepping back from MasterChef in 2022 was largely about being present at home during a demanding stretch for the family. They are based in London. She appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in January 2021, and in 2022 she was one of the judges of the Platinum Pudding Competition, the nationwide baking contest staged for the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Away from the stove she is a keen traveller, which the Amazing Hotels schedule feeds nicely, and an enthusiastic ambassador for Samoan food wherever she goes.

Monica in context

Monica Galetti is one of many chefs and food personalities profiled on Pickup Table 4, alongside Michel Roux Jr and Marcus Wareing.

Follow Monica Galetti

Monica Galetti · official site · Instagram

Monica Galetti FAQ

Where is Monica Galetti from?
She was born in Pago Pago, American Samoa, on 26 August 1975 and spent her early childhood on the Samoan island of Upolu. At the age of eight she moved to Wellington, New Zealand, where she grew up and trained as a chef. She has lived in London since 1999.

What restaurant does Monica Galetti run now?
Since May 2026 she has been executive chef and a trustee at 130 Primrose in Primrose Hill, north London, a social enterprise restaurant that trains people affected by homelessness and people in addiction recovery. Her previous restaurant, Mere in Fitzrovia, closed in April 2024.

How long was Monica Galetti at Le Gavroche?
Sixteen years. She joined Michel Roux Jr’s two-Michelin-star Mayfair restaurant as first commis in 1999 and left in 2015 as senior sous-chef, the first woman to hold a role that senior there.

Is Monica Galetti still a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals?
Yes. She judged the BBC series from 2009 to 2021, took a break in 2022 to focus on her family and her restaurant, and returned as a judge in 2023.

How many cookbooks has Monica Galetti written?
Four. Monica’s Kitchen (2012), The Skills (2016) and At Home (2021), followed by Gathering: A Celebration of Flavours from Polynesia and Beyond, published in October 2026.

Who is Monica Galetti married to?
She married the French born sommelier David Galetti in 2004. They met at Le Gavroche, where he was head sommelier, and later ran Mere together. They have one daughter, born in 2006.

Sources and further reading

This profile draws on reputable references including Wikipedia, her official site, The Caterer, Hot Dinners, The Guardian, Great British Chefs.