When I arrive to see Corre Larkin — the popular home-cook content creator known to legion of followers as Coco — she’s putting the finishing touches on a croque monsieur, which she’s turning into a madame with a flawlessly fried egg. “In a perfect world, this would be gruyere,” she explained into the camera, “but it’s an imperfect world so I’m using a really good cheddar.” She says that her approach to cooking is to “use what you have.”
This, at its heart, is the philosophy of Larkin’s work. Her spontaneous, relatable and personal approach to cooking has propelled her from a niche content creator to a full-time media star. Her videos are shot in her own home in Newport Beach, using her own phone and dishware (stunning pieces she has found over the years, be it from a vintage London shop or an estate sale a few blocks away) and are often created on the fly based on what her family wants to eat for dinner. It’s an unrehearsed yet seemingly effortless style that makes both Larkin and her recipes feel accessible and attainable.
The unlikely rise of a home cook
Larkin’s path to finding success in the food content world is anything but conventional. Raised in Orange County, she played volleyball at Brown University before spending a decade in London. Here she learned to cook, where she watched hours of Nigella Lawson, James Martin, Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and other television-bound cooks who ruled food programming in the days before cooking competitions had a stranglehold on the industry.
“That’s where I learned to cook,” she said, “where I learned about eating seasonally.” But her life before social media was defined by her business acumen — specifically, in recruitment and later in manufacturing bullet proof glass for military vehicles. “There was no creative side of it,” she said. “No creative anything.”
By 2018, Larkin found herself feeling a dearth of creativity. As many entrepreneurs do, she started a new venture, Corre Marie, a vintage and antique business, buying and selling rugs and decor she hand-plucked from estate sales. This, as she explained, was her first foray into the finicky world of content creation. She’d sell items to customers using her Instagram Stories, which helped hone her skills in photography, lighting and comfortable on-camera presence. “I think years of honing that made it so that when I transitioned over here, I could do the same thing with food,” she said.
Her move to cooking for an audience was not a calculated pivot. It happened organically. Larkin had always cooked for family (one husband, two young children) and friends, posting recipes on her personal Instagram. But her friends who wanted a centralized location for her recipes encouraged her to start a dedicated page. So, in August 2022, she reluctantly created a TikTok account, with her initial plan to use it only to archive recipes. What happened next was a surprise, especially to her.
One of her very early videos, a pastina recipe, went viral. It was also, as anyone familiar with the dark swamp of commenters knows all too well, a trial by fire, with a bounty of people telling her they loved it and a barrage of people saying she was making it wrong. “I had seen this lady cook this pastina dish, and she had explained how pastina can be either the little baby stars or any small pasta, so I made mine with alphabet pasta,” she recalled.
The video was a hit and also a learning lesson from day one. “It was my first foray of anything going viral and people just yelling at you and I learned very early that anytime any content goes viral, you get the good, the bad and the ugly,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Giving her a crash course in the unpredictable nature of online fame, it also taught her another key lesson: Stay true to yourself. She refused to change her methods to appeal to a handful of angry commenters, a move that would ultimately set her apart.
From hobby to full-time career
What started only a few years ago as a side project for pals skyrocketed into a full-time job. About a year ago, after selling her former business, Larkin decided to treat her content creation as a career. She started working seven days a week, often filming two videos a day. This prolific output of inarguably choice recipes (her French panade recipe is what first hooked me), combined with her authenticity launched her to rapid growth.
Larkin’s cooking style is rooted in what she calls peasant food, a term that might confuse American viewers. “It means taking and making something very good with very little,” she said. “Cooking regionally and seasonally … and wasting nothing.” She says she doesn’t invent new recipes every day; instead, she tweaks and modifies classic dishes she finds in cookbooks (Larkin is a voracious cookbook reader), online or from followers. “Because I can’t follow a recipe, every recipe I make is a tweak of it,”’ she said.
Some of her most popular recipes, inspired by “peasant” French and Italian dishes you won’t find at restaurants, include pasta con patate (which garnered more than 6 million views), charred cabbage and sausage paccheri and chicken thighs with 40 garlic cloves. Larkin also pulls from other culinary spaces, like a simple egg-rice dish she makes on at least three times a week for her kids, the military-born creamed chipped beef on toast. (which, in glorious vulgar parlance, also goes by another name) and caldo des res.
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Coco Larkin Cooks is also a masterclass in cross-platform strategy. When she heard the chatter about a potential TikTok ban, she decided to diversify by moving to Instagram and YouTube. And white she already had a personal Instagram account, the idea of creating one for the masses appeared daunting at first.
“I would look over on Instagram and I would see it and I would think, ‘This is not for me. It’s beautiful. It’s pretty. There’s music in the background. It’s got lighting. It looks like someone professional took these photos. Everyone looks good.’ On Instagram, it felt like you had to have your makeup done even if you’re cooking. I thought if I had to do that, I would never cook.”
But in July 2024, she opened her Instagram @cocolarkincooks. In one year she has gained 749,000 followers — and counting — which leads her TikTok of 485,000 followers.
She noted an important difference between the platforms: while TikTok is her preferred content-consumption app, Instagram is where she has a closer relationship with her fans. She said she answers nearly every direct message (I direct messaged her for this story, without having to go through any public relations rigmarole) and hosts a weekly “Ask Me Anything” session on Mondays. “It can be about cooking and it could not be about cooking, Instagram is where I find a more intimate relationship with people.” (Being a fellow Bravo aficionado, I was elated to discover that Larkin also does live commentary during “Real Housewives” seasons).
Also, Larkin’s tech setup is surprisingly simple: an iPhone 12 (she prefers it to the 14), a tripod and a ring light. While many food content creators scramble with overproduced videos, especially those born out of legacy media, Larkin proves that, like her food, simpler is better.
While Larkin’s recipes and unaffectedly charming presence are reasons enough to like and subscribe, I would be remiss not to point out her dishware. The blue-and-white Delft plate I ate her croque madame from was a stunner. An antique mother-of-pearl ice cream dish is used as a salt cellar. And her collection of Maiolica dishware, brought back from her travels abroad, proved a sight to behold for this design geek.
On the rise
With a cookbook on the horizon and a desire for longer-form content, Larkin is thinking bigger. When asked what she sees in the future, she envisions her own series, perhaps a travel show that would take her audience on a journey to different food locales.
Aspiring creators seek advice all the time and her response is sharp and to the point: “You either have to educate people or entertain people. If you’re really good, you can do both, but at least one or the other, and you can’t be boring.” Larkin also advises them not to get “sucked” into trends. “I remember at the beginning, people saying to me, ‘You should do ASMR, it’s blowing up.’ I’m like, ‘I get it.’ OK, I’m sure I might have a million followers by now if I had done ASMR or whatever. I can’t do it because I don’t want to do it.”
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Larkin’s success isn’t just about good food — and don’t you forget it, her food is very good — it’s about good business. She took a personal passion, applied the skills she had fine tuned over decades in a different industry and built a budding creative empire from the studs up. Take heed, hobbyists: She’s a testament to the notion that a hobby, when combined with a blend of talent, humility and a keen sense of self, can turn into a fulfilling career. For all of her million-plus followers, the one-woman operation of Coco Larkin is a relieving reminder that, at its heart, great content is born from a simple and sincere place, even at home.