‘Iron Chef America’ Star Dies Suddenly at 55

Anne Burrell, a fan favorite Food Network star who appeared on Iron Chef, Worst Cooks in America, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, and more, has died. She was 55.

Burrell’s family confirmed the news in a statement to People on Tuesday afternoon, revealing that the chef had died at home in Brooklyn earlier that day. They did not reveal her cause of death.

A cause of death has not been confirmed, however a law enforcement source told TMZ a 911 caller alerted police that Burrell had gone into cardiac arrest. She was reportedly found unresponsive in her home and was declared deceased shortly after.

Born in Cazenovia, New York, Burrell completed prestigious training at the Culinary Institute of America and the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners before rising to fame in 2005, when she appeared as sous chef to Mario Batali on the Food Network series Iron Chef.

Burrell soon became a Food Network staple, hosting two series, Secrets of A Restaurant Chef, from 2008 to 2012, and Chef Wanted with Anne Burrell from 2012 to 2013, and appearing on several more, including Chopped, Food Network Star, and Beat Bobby Flay.

However, she was best known to viewers for her stint on the cooking competition series Worst Cooks in America, in which she coached contestants with poor kitchen skills to create restaurant-quality meals.

Most recently, Burrell appeared as a guest judge on the new Food Network competition series House of Knives, which premiered in March.

Burrell was active on social media. Her final Instagram post, which she shared just five days before her death, was a photo of Burrell and artist/viral star Elizabeth Eaton Rosenthal, a.k.a. the Green Lady of Brooklyn.

Off-screen, Burrell had a successful career in restaurants, becoming the executive chef of the now-shuttered Centro Vinoteca in New York’s West Village in 2007. She later opened her own restaurant, Phil & Anne’s Good Time Lounge, in 2017, though it closed the following year.

Burrell was the author of two cookbooks, Cook Like A Rockstar and Own Your Kitchen: Recipes to Inspire and Empower, and worked with several charities, including the City Harvest Food Council and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, Burrell became the subject of multiple headlines after Chopped judge Ted Allen reportedly “outed” his fellow chef during a radio interview. “I am not going to put a label on Anne,” he said on Romaine Patterson’s Sirius XM show, “but she is dating a woman right now.”

Burrell took it all in stride. As her rep told Page Six at the time, “Anne doesn’t feel she was outed. She has made no secret of her relationship. Her significant other is a very private woman. They have been together for a couple of years and spend a lot of time together. It is no secret in the culinary world.”

That “very private woman” was fellow chef Koren Grieveson. She and Burrell began dating in 2010 and, in 2012, were engaged. While the exact date of their breakup isn’t clear, Burrell began dating her future husband, Stuart Claxton, after connecting on Bumble in 2018. The couple got engaged during the COVID lockdown in 2020, and were married the following year.

Burrell is survived by her husband, Claxton; her stepson, Javier; her mother, Marlene; her brother, Ben; her sister, Jane; her nieces, Isabella and Amelia, and her nephew, Nicolas. Isabella appeared with her aunt in a 2017 episode of Worst Cooks in America.

Burrell was also a longtime friend to several of her Food Network co-stars, including Chopped judge Alex Guarnaschelli and celebrity chef Rachael Ray.