How Meghan Markle rebranded from burger-flipping seductress...who wanted to start a website called Spoon Me, Fork Me... to wholesome Netflix luxury lifestyle guru

Food influencers come in many different forms. One might throw on a pair of denim hotpants with a shirt unbuttoned to the bra and lick her fingers suggestively while flipping burgers. Another might dress in refined cream cashmere and sprinkle edible flowers onto pure white icing while chatting with A-list friends.

The surprise though, is that these two might be one and the same person: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, whose cooking and entertaining Netflix show – With Love, Meghan – starts streaming on March 4. Her new lifestyle brand As Ever, formerly American Riviera Orchard, will go live on a website at around the same time.

A dozen years certainly has changed Meghan. The denim phase dates back to a sex-drenched video for the magazine brand Men’s Health, in which the newly-minted star of TV series Suits discussed whether she would have sex outdoors (‘I would say yea,’ she giggled) and shared her food tips, including the rather basic ‘hack’ of adding a dollop of shop-bought hot sriracha sauce to shop-bought ketchup.

Back then, Meghan was prized for her physical perfection. ‘Grilling never looked so hot’ was how the Men’s Health website described her performance in the video which was released in 2013. But maybe that video started something. It was around the same time that she first considered launching a ‘foodie’ website that would help burnish her image.

It was to be called ‘Spoon me, Fork me’ – a vulgar piece of provocation which she thankfully had second thoughts about. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, whose cooking and entertaining Netflix show – With Love, Meghan – starts streaming on March 4 and will coincide with her new lifestyle brand As Ever, formerly American Riviera Orchard, which will go live on a website at around the same time.

Twelve years ago, Meghan posed in a sex-drenched video for the magazine brand Men's Health (pictured), in which the newly-minted star of TV series Suits discussed whether she would have sex outdoors ('I would say yea,' she giggled) and shared her food tips.

Instead, the following year she moved into her fedoras-and-tapas ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ phase with the launch of her blog, The Tig. This was a more sophisticated affair all round, talking about acai bowls and eating salt cod fritters on the Caribbean island of St Barts; the actress Men’s Health droolingly dubbed the ‘ultimate guys’ girl’ had relaunched herself as a stylish, well-connected and cultured feminist. Meghan the budding Instagram influencer shared many recipes over the three years of The Tig.

There was an emphasis on burgers and cheese – and an enthusiasm for ‘motherf***ing fantastic crave-worthy food’ which seems slightly surprising now. For, in her reboot, the Insta-girl who swooned over street food has become the quintessential, sophisticated hostess, who wafts around a well-ordered garden carrying a trug of perfect salad vegetables, and then pours her own candles.

Today, she’s ‘in pursuit of joy’ with other millionaires, or millionaires’ wives, and it’s all about the detail – tiny mint leaves arranged just-so and swirls of fruit in ice cubes. In the trailer for With Love, Meghan, she says: ‘I’ve always loved taking something pretty ordinary and elevating it. Surprising people with moments that let them know I was really thinking of them.’.

According to a source who has seen the Netflix series, it’s not a collection of recipes but leans into the lifestyle and the how-to of hostessing. As we prepare to get to know Meghan the Foodie part III, the fact is that there is rather more to her culinary journey than many realise.

Despite the eyebrow-raising shoot, Meghan found a calling and decided to launch a food blog - not called Spoon me, Fork me as was the original intention, but The Tig. Meghan's current venture couldn't be further from her first blog - gone is the Insta-girl who swooned over street food.

Her first solo project on joining the Royal Family was championing a collection of recipes she cooked alongside women made homeless by the Grenfell Tower fire. Meghan made an official visit to the Hubb Community Kitchen in January 2018. Later that year, in a foreword to Together: Our Community Cookbook, featuring recipes from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, she wrote about discovering at the Hubb ‘a place for women to laugh, grieve cry and cook together’.

Reminiscing about her childhood, she added that one of her favourite meals was ‘collard greens, black-eyed peas and cornbread... the smell of yellow onions simmering amongst a slow-cooked pot of greens from my grandma’s back garden’. Years before she met Prince Harry, Meghan discussed producing a cookbook of her own with a US literary agency. Renowned agent Jonathan Shalit tells me that he remembers discussing a possible cookery and travel show with Meghan, whom he found ‘utterly charming’ when she was visiting London.