Celebrity chef Rachel Khoo's Kensal Green flat: the £665k property is for sale complete with filming kitchen and live-work studio

Croydon-born food writer and broadcaster Rachel Khoo is selling the ingeniously designed north-west London flat she used for filming and recipe testing.

Now married with two young children and based in Sweden, where she wrote her cookbook The Little Swedish Kitchen, Khoo used the Kensal Green property as a two-bedroom home as well as her office and test kitchen.

The entire live-work space is cleverly carved from a 572sqft Victorian garden flat, bought in 2016 for £535,000.

Something of a small-space aficionado, with her brand built on her ability to cook, blog and film in tiny flats, Khoo’s first book and later BBC television series was called The Little Paris Kitchen. The concept was based around a supper club for two guests that Khoo ran in her Belleville apartment and advertised on Twitter.

She later decamped to a one-bedroom Hoxton flat that converted to an office for six when required, thanks to flexible furniture. From there, Khoo moved to Kensal Green where she bought and renovated the flat she’s now selling for £665,000.

She knocked through the walls of the front room and bedroom to create a large studio and knocked the kitchen, small living room and bathroom together to create another big room at the back of the flat. She also added a wraparound extension, increasing the space by a third.

Because the rooms needed to multitask as both living and work space, Khoo added multifunctional furniture. The front studio has a bookcase that incorporates flap-down desks and can also swing out across the middle of the space to divide it into two bedrooms – one with a fold-down bed and the other with a bed in a velvet box seat.

She added a bathroom in the centre of the apartment, hidden behind a reclaimed telephone box door and boasting mirrored panels, a small roll-top clawfoot bath, rainwater shower and tiled floor.

“For the design of this home I wanted to focus on functionality and beauty, a home designed for urban living,” says Khoo.

“I think lockdown restrictions are making Londoners re-evaluate the functionality of their homes and any ‘wasted space’ such as bedrooms that could be more flexible, an element of European design that I love.”

The kitchen is the centrepiece of the flat, used for both cooking and filming with bespoke mint green deVOL cabinets, matching tiling from Milagros and reclaimed school science lab counter tops in Iroko wood, from Retrouvious.

“I have hosted everything from cookery workshops, to brunches for food writers, to dinners for my friends,” says Khoo. “I think this apartment is perfect for a young professional who wants an adaptable live-work space, or someone who adores cooking and wants a statement kitchen to call their own. As a chef the kitchen is the most important room for me, and this kitchen is truly the heart of the home.”

Ed Burchett of Dexters, which is managing the sale, says the estate agent is anticipating a very high level of interest from buyers attracted by the remote working-friendly set-up.

“This is the rare opportunity to purchase a home with a magnificent kitchen designed by an internationally acclaimed chef, perfect for all those buyers who have discovered a passion for baking or cooking during the lockdown restrictions.

"In addition, with lockdown restrictions leading to a rise in ‘telecommuting’ and working from home, buyers will be looking for spaces that are adaptable and well-designed for ever-changing home working needs.”