DIEGO ALARY. At just 25 years old, the young chef lived several lives before reinventing the codes of cuisine with TikTok sauce.
[Mis à jour le 23 octobre 2022 à 20h53] Originally from Ivry-sur-Seine in the Paris region, chef Diego Alary stood out in the 11th season of Top Chef in 2020, when he was a member of the kitchen brigade. Michel Sarran and the youngest of the show. Childthe young chef did not want to be a cook at all but rather intended to be professional footballer. Only, a shin injury fibula during a match will change his fate. “I was 14 and it took me a year to walk again,” he told Ouest France. “It was a complicated period. I was not made for school, so I had to find something else”. Today with nearly 3 million subscribers, he is the most followed cook in the world on TikTok. His biography in our file below.
Born March 20, 1997 in Ivry-sur-Seine in Val-de-Marne (94) in the Île-de-France region, Diego Alary started his football career. At the age of 7, he joined the US Ivry club (Union Sportive d’Ivry), based in Ivry-sur-Seine, as a defender, where he rubbed shoulders with players like Kylian Mbappé and Jonathan Ikoné. At 14, he joined the training club CFFP (French Football Federation), but during a match against Brétigny-sur-Orge, he fractured his tibia and fibula and found himself in a wheelchair for a year. This is how his training as a professional footballer ends.
The young Diego Alary starts a rebellion and makes his parents of Portuguese and Spanish origin see all the colors. While he was fleeing school, he reoriented himself in 2012 in the kitchen. On the advice of his mother, he left for a one-month internship in the restaurant of John Imbert, winner of the 3rd edition of Top Chef, before following a bakery course then a pastry course at the Palais de l’Élysée. He then passed a CAP at the Ferrandi school, completing his apprenticeship with William Ledeuil, in Ze Kitchen Gallery.
Diego Alary then worked as a clerk in Guy Savoy’s three-starred restaurant at the Hôtel de la Monnaie. He became chef of the Parisian restaurant Simone at the age of 19. After the age of 20, he joined the three-starred chef Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée, as demi-chef de partie. In 2019, he is the chef of the bistronomic restaurant The Whistling Fathers.
After joining the 11th season of Top Chef in 2020, he works in the restaurant in the summer To Share of Jean Imbert and Pharell Williams in Saint-Tropez. In the summer of 2021, he signs the restaurant menu Wanderlust in Paris. His dazzling success on the TikTok social network even allowed him to release, from October 2021, two cookbooks with fun, clever and inexpensive recipes.
In 2020, Diego Alary joins the 11th season of Top Chef. Among the 15 participating candidates, he is the youngest candidate. First framed by Philippe Etchebest at the start of the competition, he then joined Michel Sarran’s brigade. Known for his boundless energy and his “Vamos!” expressive, Diego Alary impresses the jurors with his very personal cuisine, but unfortunately he will not reach the podium, but 5th in the competition.
It was in September 2020 that Diego Alary took his first steps on the TikTok social network by posting on its account a video of her tequila flambé guacamole recipe, garnering over a million views in just 24 hours! Today, Diego Alary has more than 3 million subscribers on TikTok thanks to his viral, short and educational videos of recipes for aperitifs, dishes and desserts. He has become in a few months the most followed French chef on TikTok.