Meredith Hayden On Wishbone Kitchen, Cookbooks, & TikTok

Meredith Hayden spends a lot of time in kitchens. Whether she’s in her apartment in New York City or at her barn in the Hamptons, she’s often found leaning over the stove — cooking, developing recipes, or creating content for the 2.3 million people who follow her TikTok account, Wishbone Kitchen.

“A ton of people are surprised to find out that I don’t have this massive team to offload onto,” the 29-year-old says. “I've dipped my toe into working with other people in this space, but I just find that I enjoy the work so much that I don’t necessarily want to give it to somebody else.”

Hayden first gained traction on TikTok in the summer of 2022, when she began posting from her job as a private chef in the Hamptons, three years after graduating from the Institute of Culinary Education (she attended classes at night). At the time, she was living with roommates in an apartment above Buvette, a French restaurant in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan. At the end of that summer, she had over a million followers and was offered her first brand deal with Febr...