Many, many food blogs have come and gone in the first two decades of the 21st century. But Recipe Tin Eats stands out as a food media phenomenon. Launched by Tokyo-born Australian, Nagi Maehashi, in 2014, the recipe site has become one of the most popular in Australia and has attracted followers from beyond our shores,  by 2025 reaching over 15 million people globally every week.

The success wasn’t an accident. While many food bloggers are enthusiastic amateurs, Maehashi set out to make it her career. A well-paid career. Before hitting the kitchen, she had spent 16 years in corporate finance with PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the “big four” accounting firms, and the multi-billion dollar global construction company Brookfield Multiplex. They were positions that demanded long hours and dedication, eventually leading to burnout.

However, it seems the same long hours and dedication were soon applied to her new career. Maehashi cooks each dish over and over again, trying out minor variations of ingredients and methods until she is satisfied that the recipe will work every time. She also does (or did) the photography herself and creates video tutorials so you can watch how a dish is made.  And you’ll notice that if you Google a recipe, chances are the Recipe Tin Eats version will be at the top of the first page. That’s no accident. Maehashi has spent a lot of time optimising her pages for the search engines.

Maehashi describes her food philosophy as “fast, creative, clever and fresh”. Her unassuming image belies her corporate background and obsessive attention to detail. Part of that image was her golden retriever, Dozer, who sadly died early in 2026. Dozer even appeared on the cover of the Recipe Tin Eats cookbooks, Dinner and Tonight. The first book, Dinner, broke records, quickly becoming the best-selling non-fiction book in Australia for 2022. Named a New York Times bestseller, it was awarded Book of the Year at the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards.

Some of the profits from Recipe Tin Eats go to support a registered charity, Recipe Tin Meals, which provides home-cooked meals for the community. The RecipeTin Eats has grown from a one-person operation into a team of approximately nine to ten, including a staff of four full-time chefs for the RecipeTin Meals food bank. There is also a video editor, assistant and administrative support.