Allegra McEvedy is one of the founding partners of Leon, the healthy fast-food restaurant that opened its first outlet in London's Carnaby Street in July 2004. She left the company in March 2009, though she remains a shareholder.
Allegra completed her classical French training at the Cordon Bleu School in London in 1991 and has worked at Green's, The Belvedere in Holland Park, The Groucho Club and The River Café in London, and at Rubicon in San Francisco. She also ran the kitchen at Robert De Niro's New York restaurant, Tribeca Grill. While in New York, she catered for a Democratic Party fundraiser, which involved personally cooking for then-President Clinton.
When she returned to London, Allegra joined The Good Cook group, initially as head chef of The Tabernacle, a community restaurant in Notting Hill, and later as head chef of The Good Cook in Kensington High Street. She was also the chef-in-residence at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts.
She now devotes much of her time to writing and consultancy and is the resident chef of the Guardian's G2 magazine. Allegra has written three cookbooks. Her first, The Good Cook, was published in March 2000. Her second, Allegra McEvedy's Colour Cookbook, won the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) 2007 Cookbook award in the Chefs and Restaurants category. Leon: Ingredients and Recipes was published in autumn 2008.
In May 2007, Allegra became one of the inaugural presenters, along with Nigel Slater and Katie Derham, of FoodRadio.com. Allegra appeared in the BBC Two series Food Poker in autumn 2007. A new BBC Two series, Economy Gastronomy, which she will present with Paul Merrett, will air in autumn 2009. A book that ties in with the series will also be published at the same time.