Gaz Oakley is famous among vegans — and anyone who just likes delicious food — as the Avant-Garde Vegan. His YouTube cooking show has more than 1.4 million subscribers, and his three books to date — Vegan 100, Vegan Christmas, and Plants Only Kitchen — have all found a large and appreciative audience. He runs a pop-up restaurant called Nana O’s Comfort Food and has partnered with major names such as Wagamama and The Vurger Co. and his recipes have been featured in the likes of The Daily Telegraph (who have a cited him as a “star of the meat-free world”), Plant Based News, and The Jewish Chronicle.

Oakley hails from Cardiff in Wales. Taught to cook by his dad, he began working in kitchens at 15 and left school as soon as he could to work full-time. After several years of honing his skills, he switched to being a sales manager, and this allowed him time to take up fitness training. Through the rapper Jme, he discovered the work leading animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky and embraced veganism. Seeing the benefits, he encouraged his friends and family to do the same and found that they too became vegan. Inspired he decided to return to his love of cooking and use it as a form of activism.

That was in 2016. Today, Oakley is one of the go-to names for vegan recipes and inspiration, particularly in the UK. The lockdowns of 2020 saw his follower numbers rise as people, from strict vegans to curious carnivores, looked for new, healthy, and wholesome things to cook, and his pop-up restaurant is a major success wherever it lands.