Magdalena Gessler

Born in Komorów, Poland as Magdalena Daria Ikonowicz and known as Magda Gessler, she is a Polish television personality, restaurateur, and painter, best known for her work on Kuchenne rewolucje (2010), the Polish version of Kitchen Nightmares (2007). Her father was a Polish-Italian journalist Miroslaw Ikonowicz and her mother was a Russian chef Olga Borkowska. Her godfather was Ryszard Kapuscinski. Her younger brother Piotr Ikonowicz is a politician and a former member of the Parliament of Poland. She grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria and on Cuba. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. In the 1980s she was married to Volkhart Müller, a Madrid correspondent for "Der Spiegel". After his death in 1986, she returned to Poland, where she married restaurateur Piotr Gessler. She published a number of food-related books and articles, including those written for the Polish "Newsweek". Since 2010 she's been working on Kuchenne rewolucje (2010) and since 2012 she's been a judge on the Polish edition of MasterChef (2012). She's separated from her husband and her current partner is Waldemar Kozerawski, a doctor. She has two children, Tadeusz Müller and Lara Gessler.