Thomasina Miers


Thomasina Jean "Tommi" Miers, OBE is an English cook, writer and television presenter. She is the co-founder of the Wahaca chain of Mexican street food restaurants.

Early life

Thomasina Jean "Tommi" Miers was born in February 1976 in Cheltenham, the daughter of Probyn Miers, a joiner and furniture maker, formerly a management consultant and Niki Miers, of Guiting Power, Cheltenham. She grew up in "a big rambling house" at Acton, West London. The Miers family, landed gentry originally of Aldingham, Cumbria, owned the Ynyspenwllch estate in Glamorganshire until the time of her grandfather, Cmdr Richard Eustace Probyn Miers, RN. Miers has a twin brother, Dighton, and a sister, Talulah.
She studied at St Paul's Girls' School and Ballymaloe Cookery School and worked as a freelance cook and writer, with influences from time spent in Mexico.

Career

In 2005, Miers won the BBC TV cookery competition MasterChef, "impressing judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace with her bold and, at times, eccentric cooking style".
She has made two series of cookery programmes for Channel 4 with co-presenter Guy Grieve: Wild Gourmets in 2007 and A Cook's Tour of Spain in 2008. In 2011, she presented Mexican Food Made Simple for Channel 5.
She is co-editor with Annabel Buckingham of the cookbook Soup Kitchen. She has also written Cook: Smart Seasonal Recipes for Hungry People, The Wild Gourmets: Adventures in Food and Freedom, with Guy Grieve, and Mexican Food Made Simple.
Miers co-founded Wahaca, which became a chain of Mexican "street food" restaurants, alongside Mark Selby in 2006. The company opened its first restaurant in London's Covent Garden in August 2007 and in October 2008 a second opened at Westfield London. In 2011, Wahaca launched their first mobile street kitchen, selling Mexican street food on the streets of London. As of December 2017, Wahaca had 25 branches.

Personal life

Miers is married to Mark Williams, a fund manager at Liontrust Asset Management and they have three daughters.