Anne Burrell's Evolution Over The Years

Easily recognizable by her signature wild platinum blond hair, Anne Burrell was a culinary television celebrity who spent years on several Food Network shows. Away from the small screen, Burrell was a professional chef with a flair for rustic Italian cuisine who cooked at prestigious restaurants in both Italy and New York City throughout the course of her career.

Over the years, Burrell earned a reputation for her competitive nature. She loved to win and did so plenty of times — including "Chopped All-Stars" and several seasons of "Worst Cooks in America" as a mentor, solidifying her role as a celebrated figure in foodie pop culture. But it was a long journey for Burrell, with surprises both good and bad along the way. Let's explore how the culinary icon went from her small-town life in Central New York State to being a big-time Food Network icon over the course of several decades.

Anne Burrell hailed from the lakeside village of Cazenovia in Madison County, New York. With its tree-lined streets and chapel spire that rises into the blue sky in the center of town, Cazenovia looks a bit like something straight out of a Frank Capra movie.

Burrell herself admitted that she didn't put in much effort at grade school, high school, or college. In her 2011 book "Cook Like a Rock Star," Burrell wrote, "When I was in grade school, high school, even college, I just wasn't interested in school; I did as little as I could to get by." She did, however, discover a passion for cooking at an early age. Burrell grew up with a mother who loved to cook and a big garden, which helped develop her appreciation for good food.

She also spent a lot of time as a child watching Julia Child create French cuisine on PBS. Burrell started watching Julia Child's PBS cooking show at 3 years old. Decades later, Burrell told Closer Weekly that Childs was still her idol. "I sort of feel simpatico with Julia because we are both these big, kooky, loud ladies with a particular outlook on things, but with a definite joy in what we do," she explained.

While she may not have liked school, Anne Burrell went far with her studies. In college, she earned a degree in English and communications. After graduating, she started working for a physician headhunter company. However, she was unhappy with the role and left after a year. Already tired of the corporate world, it wasn't long before Burrell's interest in cooking began to resurface.

Becoming a celebrity chef wasn't exactly a common career path at the time. Even her father wasn't sure it was the right choice. "You wanna do what? A girl like you wants to go to work in a kitchen?" Burrell told MSNBC. If she hadn't pursued cooking, Burrell claimed that she saw herself potentially becoming a therapist, claiming that there are similarities between therapy and cooking. "Sometimes I feel like, as a chef, I am a therapist because there is so much wrapped up in food — emotion, family, holidays, body image," she told Closer Weekly.

Even before becoming a professional chef, Anne Burrell always loved the restaurant business. When she was in college, she took a job as a waitress and found that there was a sense of community working in the industry. "The people were just so fun, the camaraderie was great, and I loved the hospitality aspect," she told Closer Weekly.

That's why it made so much sense when, after leaving the corporate world, Burrell decided to attend the Culinary Institute of America, a prestigious culinary arts school in New York. There, Burrell honed her talents in the kitchen and developed her style of cooking rustic food with simple ingredients, which would later become her trademark. "I loved every minute of being a student at CIA," she told the Culinary Institute of America. "I couldn't learn fast enough, couldn't do enough, couldn't work hard enough."

After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Anne Burrell moved to Italy to take classes at the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners. It was during this exciting period that Burrell learned just how different authentic Italian food was from the dishes she was used to eating back home. During the course of her education in Italy, she got to work as an apprentice in both La Taverna del Lupo in Umbria and La Bottega del 30. The latter is a Michelin-starred restaurant in Villa a Sesta.

Surrounded by the beauty of the Italian landscape, including dense groves of olive trees and acres upon acres of vineyards on the rolling Sienese hills, you may think it would be easy to get distracted. However, Burrell was extremely focused on her goals and worked in Italian kitchens for free to learn as much as possible. The time she spent there served Burrell well, as she absorbed a lot of the local culture — including how important culinary principles are to everyday life in Italy. 

Anne Burrell returned to New York after spending months working at restaurants in Italy. In the Big Apple, Burrell was a sous chef for Lidia Bastianich at the now-shuttered Felidia before cooking Mediterranean dishes over a wood fire grill at Savoy in SoHo, which has also since closed.

Her time in Italy, combined with her experience in New York restaurants, ultimately formed her style as a chef. However, it wasn't always easy. In an interview with Restaurant Girl, Burrell claimed that cooking at Felidia was one of the toughest jobs she ever had, "mostly because I put so much pressure on myself. It was my first job in NYC, and I was the only girl in the kitchen [besides] the pastry department. I was determined to work harder than the guys in the kitchen."

Burrell went on to share plenty of the lessons she learned during her time in professional kitchens with other chefs. Ultimately, Burrell doesn't subscribe to the excuse that cooking is hard to learn. "If you give people techniques, cooking is not an event, it's a piece of cake," she told Cleveland.com.

After Anne Burrell left her job at Savoy in SoHo, she returned to the place where it all started: culinary school. To be specific, Burrell went to the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) to teach others how to cook. She told Restaurant Girl she was burnt out from restaurants and needed a change, but that change had to still be about cooking. "[Teaching] really made me question cooking techniques and ask myself a lot of 'Why do I do this...' sort of thing,'" she explained. "I was able to answer these kinds of questions for myself. It made me decide what kind of cook I wanted to be."

Burrell taught at ICE for three years. Pining once again for the hustle and bustle of a busy kitchen, Burrell left ICE because she thought teaching was more of an end-of-career thing, and she felt she had a lot more to do professionally. She did, however, return to teach a hands-on cooking class to the public years later. Afterward, participants got to meet the spiky-haired star for a photo-op and a signed copy of her book, "Own Your Kitchen: Recipes to Inspire & Empower."

In 2007, Anne Burrell, along with restaurant owner Sasha Muniak, opened an Italian restaurant called Centro Vinoteca in the West Village of New York. Unfortunately, it was met with relatively mixed reviews. While some critics had good things to say about the food, one criticism was that the eatery was loud and lacked focus.

A year later, Burrell left Centro Vinoteca, reportedly due to her busy schedule. In 2009, however, she was named in a discrimination lawsuit. Her female co-workers accused the chef of making derogatory comments and claimed that they were later dismissed in retaliation. The case was eventually settled.

The trouble didn't end there for Centro Vinoteca, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009. That same year, the restaurant was temporarily closed by the city for apparently operating illegally. In 2013, Centro Vinoteca closed down for good.

After years as a star in the kitchen, Anne Burrell soon became a star on television, too. The Food Network has famously created many stockpot celebrities, even hosting a reality competition show dedicated to finding its next cooking show host. Chef Mario Batali was a frequent face on the network in the 2000s before facing allegations of sexual misconduct and starred in several seasons of the popular show "Iron Chef America," in which a guest chef competes against a culinary master.

Batali recruited Burrell as a sous chef on the show. She remained in the position for eight years and claimed that her time with Batali and Joe Bastianich on the show was a positive experience. "I learned so much from them," she told Total Food Service. "I would not be where I am today without either one of them. It was a great rite of passage to have those people in my corner." Food Network soon took notice of Burrell's potential, and a spiky-haired brand was born.

While Anne Burrell spent several years on the iconic Food Network series "Iron Chef America," the channel soon decided to showcase her on-screen talents and personality on other shows. In 2008, it gave her a show of her own called "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef." Then, in 2010, perhaps her most famous series, "Worst Cooks in America," premiered. This saw Burrell serve as a mentor to novice cooks to help them improve their culinary skills and avoid elimination.

However, at the beginning of Season 28 — which premiered in January 2025, five months before Burrell's passing — Burrell was strangely absent from the show. The Food Network gave no explanation, and fans became curious. Social media afforded no answers as to her absence, either. It seemed like even Burrell didn't know what was going on. When asked by a fan on Instagram why she was no longer on "Worst Cooks in America," considering the fact that it was "her show," Burrell replied, "Uuuuughhh...I know. And I don't know."

Back in 2012, former "Queer Eye" and "Chopped" host Ted Allen caused controversy when he infamously told Romaine Patterson on his Sirius XM show, "I'm not going to put a label on Anne, but she is dating a woman right now" (via E! News).

This was a shock to fans — primarily because Allen seemingly revealed a celebrity's sexual orientation before they could do so themselves. A prompt response to Allen's statement was made by Burrell's PR team via Page Six. "Her significant other is a very private woman," the statement said. "They have been together for a couple of years and spend a lot of time together. It is no secret in the culinary world."

In addition to that statement, the rep also told the tabloid that Burrell was not offended by Allen's remarks and that she made no secret about it in the culinary world. A year after Allen's appearance on the Sirius XM show, Burrell announced her engagement to fellow chef Koren Grieveson. However, the couple never married and later split.

In 2017, Anne Burrell and her friend Phil Casaceli opened up a restaurant in Cobble Hill called Phil & Anne's Good Time Lounge. As you may have expected from Burrell's expertise, it served Mediterranean dishes with Italian influences. The interior was colorful and casual, with images of cars and guitars covering the walls. Despite the concept, the menu featured some surprising items, including one of Burrell's go-to fast food items: burgers. These were served with tater tots, which doesn't seem very Mediterranean, and was maybe one of the restaurant's problems. 

In a bit of culinary gossip, it is said that Burrell's first restaurant didn't necessarily flop due to quality or popularity reasons but because of the tension between her and her business partner. Shortly after Phil & Anne's Good Time Lounge closed, a representative for Burrell told Page Six, "Unfortunately, she and Phil have had differences of opinion during their business relationship that made running a restaurant together impossible. Phil and his representative have been unwilling to meet thus far to try to reconcile the situation." Casaceli, however, told Page Six that this was "an all-out lie."

In April 2020, Anne Burrell surprised fans by announcing her engagement to marketing and communications professional Stuart Claxton. With a master's degree in media management, Claxton worked for Guinness World Records, a job he sustained for 13 years, as well as working for TIME and Univision. The couple met in 2018 on Bumble, a dating app. Both claimed that they knew they were right for each other at once.

The pair tied the knot in October 2021 in Burrell's hometown of Cazenovia, New York. They hadn't lived together before getting married, but later spent a great deal of time together. "I have to say, I love being married," Burrell told People in April 2023. "We're together all the time because Stuart works from home. It's the being together all the time, but it's also the adventure together."

While it may not have been the primary focus of her television shows, Anne Burrell always had a great sense of humor. This was most evident in her reactions to novice cooks on her popular Food Network show, "Worst Cooks in America." It may not have been standup, but her short quips aimed at her befuddled mentees were always humorous. 

Perhaps it was this energy that caused Burrell to go from kitchen to comedy. In 2025, she announced she was taking comedy classes. Fans, still wondering why the celebrity chef was unexpectedly absent from the latest season of "Worst Cooks in America," were surprised to see Burrell share her latest career move via an Instagram post. "I know I have been kinda quiet of late," Burrell wrote, "BUT I am taking 'Improv for Actors' at [Second City New York City]." She claimed that the experience was helping her come out of her shell, with the move sparking praise from her followers.

On June 17, 2025, Anne Burrell passed away at her home in Brooklyn, New York. She was 55. Burrell's family said in a statement to People, "Though she is no longer with us, her warmth, spirit, and boundless love remain eternal." Burrell appeared to be taking a break from cooking and still pursuing comedy at the time of her death. In fact, the night before she passed, the Food Network chef performed in her first-ever improv show at The Second City in Brooklyn.

In the week before her passing, Burrell also visited fellow chef Elizabeth Falkner at Soho House. Falkner posted a picture on Instagram of the pair together just days before Burrell's death. Reminiscing about their earlier days as Food Network opponents, she wrote, "She was a fierce and fun culinary competitor and when we did 'Next Iron Chef' together years ago, we were competitive but we had fun too." It seems like Burrell's pursuit of fun continued to the end, with the star reportedly in high spirits the night of her first and final performance.