'I'd lost my way in life but a simple diet change led me to fame' (2024)

Walking into Gaz Oakley’s converted town hall in the heart of rural Monmouthshire is like entering another world. There are few house numbers around and even Google Maps is useless at finding his hideout but a friendly neighbour a few hundred yards down the road points me in the direction. I’m finally here and it is without doubt the most aesthetically pleasing home I’ve ever seen.

“It’s earthy isn’t it?” 31-year-old plant-based celebrity chef and all-round cool dude Gaz says proudly as he talks through how he transformed the 19th-century hall into a unique home in three years. “It’s my dream kitchen – my pride and joy. Over the years I’ve become obsessed with things of the past and most of it is ancient in there – from old chopping boards and plates and bowls to my 100-year-old island, which is an old shopping counter. I bought a lot of it from flea markets locally.”

Earthy is just the word for the smokiness that fills the air and the aroma it exudes. “It’s copal,” he tells me – a tree resin and powerful incense used for meditation. At this point I’m overcome with total inadequacy in this guy’s presence but can’t help like him.

The walls are plastered in lime and hemp which he “fell in love with” during a trip to Mexico to film a documentary for his YouTube channel, which now has 1.63m subscribers looking for ideas on vegan cooking, living, and gardening. At a time when more people than ever are searching for ways to live an unprocessed plant-based lifestyle his huge following has afforded him the stunning old hall valued at more than £500,000, making his money mainly through brand deals and book sales.

It hasn't always been like this for Gaz. Originally from Cyncoed in Cardiff he attended Cardiff High School and struggled academically – only enjoying PE, art, and catering. He even fell out of love with cooking briefly in his late teens due to the pressures he faced in kitchens including at New House Country Hotel in Caerphilly and Le Gallois in Pontcann, before rediscovering his love of food and then content creation through veganism after a battle with body dysmorphia.

“I absolutely loved cooking in my teens and wanted to be like Marco Pierre White with three Michelin stars. But it didn’t work for me in that conventional environment. They were very long hours – 80-hour weeks sometimes – and I felt like if I made a mistake the world would swallow me up,” Gaz recalls of his time working in restaurants while sitting on the sofa in the lounge area of the open-plan ground floor, which is more like a church than a house. “It was too much pressure. I wasn’t eating properly and wasn’t looking after myself at all. I look at old pictures of myself and I look gaunt from that lifestyle. I decided to leave the industry for a totally different job in sales. It was a well-paid job at the time but I felt I had no purpose or passion in my life anymore.”

Looking for ways to feel good about himself he began religiously going to the gym and ate 5,000 calories a day on a meaty diet in the hope he’d achieve his then-dream physique. “I was obsessed with filling myself with a very highly calorific diet packed with meaty protein to build muscle as quickly as I could,” he recalls. “I was chasing happiness which never arrived. When I was a boy I was always the skinny kid and I was very conscious of the way I looked. I wanted to leave all that insecurity behind and felt I could do that by going to the gym and lifting weights but it wasn’t true. I was never happy with the way I looked even when I was two stone heavier than I am now. It was my plant-based diet and my change of lifestyle which got me away from that headspace. I’m thankful I’m not trying to be that person anymore. Now I just want to be fit and healthy and to be able to be in the garden, do some pull-ups, and run. That’s good enough for me.”

After hearing a radio interview with vegan musician Jme, Gaz looked up the videos of Gary Yourofsky which encouraged him to switch to a plant-based lifestyle. “I did it for ethical reasons but I also felt my body needed a detox for my health,” he explains. “After two or three weeks I felt great. The pains in my stomach had gone, I wasn’t getting ill, and I felt lighter. Mum and dad couldn’t believe the stuff I was cooking so I got a bit of confidence and started posting some of the meals on Instagram and within three months I’d gained 7,000 followers.”

He initially focused on recreating the flavours and textures he thought he’d miss after 20-plus years of eating meat. “The smokiness of bacon, the mapley barbecue flavours, the grilled effect you get on a steak – it’s those umami tastes you think about.” He says they are actually easy to do. “You get them from tomato paste, mushrooms, miso paste, and by taking your time to create bolder flavours.

“It reconnected my passion for cooking. I remember thinking I’d made it and I quit my sales job and decided to put all my efforts into cooking and posting on social media. I got into debt at the start. About a year in I was spending money without earning much at all. But I knew if I wanted to take it seriously I was going to need all the camera and video equipment to make the food look as good as possible. Thankfully mum and dad said I could live back with them basically rent-free so I didn’t have any bills hanging over me. I owe so much to them. To this day they work with me and I couldn’t do what I do without them. Some of my relationships went downhill at the time – my social life wasn’t great. But in truth I’d not had much of a social life since I left school because I’d been working so many hours in kitchens.

“I was getting so much attention and so many questions that it felt like a natural progression to go on YouTube and start explaining how I made the food but I had no experience at all of video-making. I rented an Airbnb in Tenby for a cooking show I wanted to do and we went down there with all the kit but as soon as the camera started rolling I froze. I hated it to start with but as the days went on I started loosening up a bit and just focusing on doing the cooking and talking through what I was doing. At the end of the day I was talking through my greatest passion so it didn’t have to be as hard as I was making out.

“I was going to stop doing it a few years ago but I was at a food festival one day and a lady stopped me and said some of my recipes had saved her first plant-based Christmas. It meant so much to me. No-one had told me anything like that before. It gave me a real boost. That was six years ago and I didn’t really look back from that point.”

During the three years it took to work on the hall he filmed almost all of his videos outside in the garden which overlooks a huge green expanse. There isn’t a soul in sight. “I probably should have settled down with a woman before I moved here,” he laughs. “There are more sheep and cows than people. I don’t mind that so much in terms of not going on as many nights out. I don’t drink a lot at all. I cringe at some of the things I used to do after having a drink. I’d much rather not drink and be able to feel good the following morning and get in the garden or go for a hike or a run or get in the garage for a workout.”

It’s a far cry from his London flat where he moved from Cardiff to be closer to his three-man film crew and brands. “It was just for convenience really,” he remembers. “My channel was taking off and I was being asked to attend events in London every other week and was staying in hotels and living out of a suitcase. I enjoyed London to a point but when the lockdowns happened it became really hard. I craved my own space with a garden and my own gym, which were all closed at the time due to Covid. I actually didn’t view this place – I just went for it when it came up because it offered those two things I was after. I’ve enjoyed making myself a sanctuary here. My gym is in the garage and my office is the kitchen. It can be a bit lonely out here at times but I’m lucky my job is very social and I’ve met some amazing people locally. I speak to people in the bakery and the café and there’s a real sense of community here which helps.”

His recipes rely almost solely on what he grows on the land outside. In the summer months 90% of what he eats he grows himself here “from watermelon, kale, and cabbages to the hottest chillies in the world and everything in between”. “I’d really never need to leave if I didn’t want to,” he laughs. “I’m growing everything you could think of in the garden. In the summer I don’t generally go to the supermarket. If I do ever go it’d be for rice, bananas, and chickpeas – although I am trying to grow chickpeas too this year. It’s a very cheap way of living once you’ve parted with the initial cost of starting. One single plant of kale can produce from the end of May to the following April. Kale seeds are less than a pound and can give you kale for the best part of a year. Most people these days have house plants so I often tell people to just treat it like a houseplant in your garden and it’ll give you so much back – not only cost-wise but mentally too. The mental health aspect of growing your own and being outside with your hands in the soil has changed my life completely. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when living in London at all but being out here and learning about growing my own has been the best cure for me. I’ve since realised you really don’t need a big space or even a garden to do it. I wish I’d started much earlier.

“Now is the perfect time to sow your seeds or to buy a seedling to plant into compost. Start small with your favourite ingredient and sow a handful of seeds and water them every now and then. It’s as easy as that and is so rewarding. You might find something that really enriches your life.”

One of his favourite recipes is his protein-packed barbecued “meatloaf” full of walnuts, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, and chickpeas and finished with caramelised barbecue sauce. Another is his seared watermelon “tuna salad” marinated in tahini, soy sauce, chilli flakes, limes, sriracha, ginger, and spring onions.

He lays out his meal plan for the day. “For breakfast I had a bowl of porridge with hemp and pumpkin seeds, peanut butter, goji berries, and maca powder. For lunch I’ve got simple Cuban-style black beans stewed down with some spices and chillies, which I’ll have with rice, vegetables, hemp seeds, and hot sauce. For dinner I’m making a vegetable stew with tahini dressing and sourdough. If I want a snack I’ll have dried fruit or whatever I’ve picked in the garden. Occasionally I’ll have some dark chocolate. I can’t have much sugar as it gives me a head rush because I haven’t eaten it regularly for years. Once in a blue moon I’ll go to Alex Gooch for a kouign-amann pastry which is to die for.

“Tahini, which is a sesame paste, is one of my favourite ingredients. Whip it up with some water and add lemon, cumin, and sea salt and it makes the best dressing. It’s brilliant with natural yoghurt – really refreshing. I like it served with aubergine or squash for a beautiful charred flavour. Set that aside and choose your favourite spice – maybe smoked paprika. Get that in a bowl and add some olive oil, maple syrup, salt and pepper, and some lemon juice. Whip that up. Then, ideally in a heavy-based frying pan, turn the heat up to the highest possible level and add a touch of oil and get the aubergines in there to char them and add a nice flavour and depth. Once they’ve changed in colour spread over that paprika dressing, put them in the oven for 30 minutes, and serve with the tahini dressing. That’s a really delicious meal. You could even sprinkle over some nuts.”

A mellow and relaxed chap, he is surprisingly animated when speaking of his disapproval of vegan cuisine in the UK. “I’m totally against fake meat and processed vegan foods. Fortunately I went vegan before that stuff became the norm. Restaurants generally are still poor at offering good-quality plant-based options. I’m rarely satisfied when I eat out and it’s a real shame because I’d love to do it more often but I nearly always just cook at home. Often I get really annoyed because I get vegan restaurants recommended to me and often I give them a go and they’re bad. I don’t want to be disrespectful with this but I often find fellow vegans will basically be satisfied when there are plenty of options for them on the menu and they feel full at the end of the night. But that’s not what food is about and we don’t deserve such a low bar. Going for food is about a story, an experience, culture, the setting, the flavours. I don’t think it’s about filling you up.”

He knows social media fame might not last forever and he plans to open his own eco retreat nearby with a restaurant attached. “I’d love to invite visitors to come foraging, hiking, cooking, and they could eat what they’d made on site in a restaurant of sorts. I think when you put something out there it’s more likely to become reality so I’ve no issue with saying it’s my dream to open a restaurant beside a retreat. When I was in London I wanted to open a restaurant there but then Covid happened and the restaurant industry still hasn’t recovered. So the timing wasn’t right but I count my blessings I didn’t do that then because when I moved out to the countryside here I realised I had no control over my life in London or Cardiff. Since moving here I’ve become obsessed with provenance and where my food comes from. The flavour between buying from the supermarket and growing your own is so far apart. So I’ve now realised if I want to have that restaurant it would never be in a conventional way. I’d need my own farm or gardens attached to it to grow the food myself. I can picture the retreat space and I’m trying to buy some land but it’s very difficult around here. It’s mostly tied up in farming and I’ve not found anyone who wants to sell.”

He hasn’t given up on a Michelin star or three either. “People might look at what I’ve done in leaving the industry to do YouTube and think I don’t have the minerals to build a successful restaurant. But I back myself – particularly in understanding food and growing my own. I think there’s room for a top restaurant which really understands and informs on the connection between the garden and the table. It’d be a place where you can see a clear story through food. And a key part of winning accolades is telling good stories through your cooking.” You can find out more about Gaz and see his recipes here.