Maarten Gibson: From Corporate Cubicle to Cooking on Camera

Maarten's relationship with cooking started early and out of practicality. Both his parents worked, and from around age eight to fourteen he was home alone enough that he had to cook his own lunches before heading out for the afternoon. He started simple, with basic pastas, but he had the freedom to explore. By the time he was 14 or 15, he was the designated cook at sleepovers with friends.

It was not formal training, but it was real practice. The kind of repetition that quietly builds instinct. He did not think of it as the start of a career, but it laid the foundation for everything that came after.

The shift toward taking cooking more seriously came after his family moved from France to Spain when Maarten was 15. Living away from France for the first time, he suddenly understood how good French food really was. The missing felt productive. He started experimenting at home, trying to recreate the dishes he had taken for granted, and his palate began to evolve.

His parents helped fuel that curiosity. His father travelled a lot in his life, and this brought a wide range of cuisines into the home, particularly Indian and Asian flavors. The pantry was stocked, the influences were diverse, and Maarten had the freedom to experiment.

"My dad's a big chef, so I think he definitely inspired me and encouraged me to pick up cooking," he says.

His family also spent half a year in India when he was seven, an experience that influenced him in ways he could not appreciate until later. The spice tolerance came with time, but the foundation was already there.

Maarten's style has evolved over the years. He spent three years travelling in his early twenties, which deepened his exposure to Asian and South American cuisines. Today, he describes his cooking as rooted in French technique but built around bold flavors, whether spicy, salty, or umami-rich. The combination is what gets to him.

"French technique and spice, bold flavors," he says. "I wouldn't write it as fusion food, but maybe that is slightly what I like doing."

If he had to choose one dish to eat for the rest of his life, it would be spaghetti bolognese. He has thought about this question seriously. "It's a dish which is simple yet also incredibly complicated," he says. "You can whip it up in 20 minutes on a weeknight, or you could have a ragu cooking on the stove for two or three days." It is the kind of dish you could spend a lifetime improving and never quite master, which is exactly why he loves it.

When Maarten develops a recipe, he splits the process into two categories. The first is the recipes he stores up over time on his phone, dishes that inspired him during a meal somewhere and that he eventually pulls out of the vault to reinterpret. A Vietnamese tofu dish he had years ago and recently revisited is one example.

The second category is the recipes he creates more deliberately, building flavor profiles from scratch and refining over multiple attempts. "People have this idea that recipes are, you come up with a recipe one day and it's perfect," he says. "That's not the case. It's like you have to expect it won't work on the first try. You have to tweak." His advice to anyone wanting to develop their own recipes is simple: do not be scared, and play around.

One of the things that defines Maarten's content is his willingness to share failures. When he started his series From Corporate to Chef, he posted videos of dishes that did not work, including an early attempt at filleting a fish that he describes bluntly as having gone badly. He posted it anyway.

"Everyone has this idea that cooking is perfect, but it really isn't," he says. "There's a lot of mess-ups, even when you work in a professional kitchen."

That honesty extends to his current work. He is happy to share recipes that are not fully perfected, both because he believes in transparency and because it gives his audience room to experiment and make changes themselves.

In a space full of polished perfection, his commitment to sharing the imperfect version stands out. It is also genuinely useful for people trying to learn.

Maarten is candid about how much more work content creation involves than most people realize. Cooking with a camera changes the entire kitchen workflow. Between repositioning the tripod, remembering to press record, and the small disasters along the way (he has dropped his phone in food before), every step of a recipe becomes two steps.

A single short video can take him anywhere from two to eight hours to film, and longer for recipes that require overnight marinades. Editing has been its own learning curve. When he started about eight months ago, a one-minute video took him roughly ten hours to edit. He has since cut that to around four. The skill compounds. The work, however, does not get any less demanding.

The decision to leave corporate life was not impulsive, but it was not easy either. Maarten spent three years in his full-time role and has just handed in his notice. He does not yet have a fully defined plan, but he has ideas. He wants to start his own business, something food-related, possibly online, possibly involving a restaurant or in-person cooking down the line.

"I've made that decision recently to have a career switch," he says. "Whatever I put my mind to, I can do. I've taken the step to try building a future or life which aligns more with my values and my passions."

He acknowledges it is a scary step. The stability of a steady income is hard to walk away from. But, as he puts it, life is short, and risk is part of the deal.

Maarten lives just outside Lisbon in a coastal town called Ericeira, where fresh seafood and traditional Portuguese cooking dominate. White fish on the barbecue, simple quality ingredients, nothing flashy. When he wants something more adventurous, he drives 40 minutes into Lisbon, where the food scene has been transformed by immigration from around the world. The combination of quiet local cooking and bustling city variety suits him perfectly.

He also spends significant time in London for work, which gives him access to one of the most diverse food scenes anywhere. Between Lisbon, London, and the years of travel that shaped his palate, his idea of home cooking has always been multi-continental.

Maarten's advice to anyone reading his story is shaped by his entire approach to food. "Experiment. Be open-minded to anything. There are a lot of ingredients that I thought I would never eat and now I really enjoy them," he says.

"Never stop experimenting. Never stop eating. Never stop cooking."

It is the same philosophy that took him from a self-taught teenage cook in Spain to a content creator with a growing audience and a career he is building intentionally. The willingness to try, fail, adjust, and try again is the through line.

Maarten Gibson's food page is built on craft, curiosity, and the kind of honest cooking that lets people see the process rather than just the finished plate. He is a self-taught cook with the discipline of someone who has had to figure it all out himself, and the openness of someone who genuinely loves what he does. The career switch is just the next step in a story that started in a French kitchen when he was eight years old.

Explore Maarten's recipes on Chefadora at chefadora.com/@bigfatcook and follow him on Instagram at @big_fat_cook. His work brings French technique, bold flavors, and a refreshingly honest approach to home cooking, one mess-up and one masterpiece at a time.

Posted on 27 May 2026