Martha Stewart is on the move.
The beloved celebrity chef is being ushered to her next appointment when she exclusively connects with Us Weekly. One of her luxuries, as she explains, is having a driver who regularly transports her between Manhattan and her famed estate in Bedford, New York.
Her driver’s purview briefly stretches when he’s sent quickly back inside at the start of our chat, once Stewart remembers she left without taking her vitamins.
Stewart knows more than most about expanding responsibilities, sharing much of her own life-tested advice in the 101 books she’s authored over the span of her 40+ year entertainment career. Before serving up advice about food, she served looks as a model and worked as a stockbroker. Light catering jobs in the seventies led to the release of her first cookbook in 1982, the recently re-issued Entertaining, which launched her onto a path of TV chef turned magazine editor-in-chief turned reality host turned houseware designer turned winemaker turned CBD gummy purveyor.
And of course, that’s not even half of it.
At one point, Stewart connected with Lee Schrager, who founded the South Beach Wine & Food Festival 25 years ago, and their collaborative friendship parlayed into Martha elevating many of those very same festivals with her presence. That partnership continues to this day, and on Saturday, February 21, the lifestyle guru will be hosting a lunch at Joe’s Stone Crab.
“Food has become so egalitarian, and the interest in food is so much more widespread than it was 25 years ago,” Stewart tells Us exclusively when reflecting on how food culture has evolved.
The public’s appetite for food — and Stewart — has grown voracious in the last quarter century. Is there a more marketable, more in demand octogenarian in our country? The lifestyle queen’s presence on a carpet provides an elegant stamp of approval, whether it’s the Art Party at NYC’s Whitney Museum, or the premiere for FX’s Love Story, the much-discussed Ryan Murphy project about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
And in the last couple of years she’s partnered with a mix of youthful and prestigious brands including American Eagle, Kohler, Goldbelly, BIC, and Liquid Death. Stewart has the luxury to work with partners she actually believes in, and while actually having a good time doing it. When detailing how impactful and educational the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival is, she lets on that she knows Miami is “a lot of fun” — but that doesn’t mean she’s more laid back these days.
“I care about everything even more than I used to,” Stewart says with a laugh. “I’m extremely fussy about details, I’m extremely fussy about taste and I’m extremely fussy that things be done as well as they can possibly be done.”
Stewart often finds herself mesmerized by TikTok creators in far away countries, who use smart cooking hacks on complicated dishes without “sacrificing quality or substance as a result.” She needs all the extra time she can get due to her admittedly crazy schedule. A friend and former employee, Louise Felix, revealed in a 2024 CNN docuseries that when Stewart started her catering business in the 70s, “she was somebody who could function on three hours of sleep.”
Incredibly, that hasn’t changed. Stewart reveals she’s still only getting three to four hours of sleep at night. She explains that she doesn’t sleep well, but knows she needs to rest so she’ll lie down to do research and read or watch videos, recent TV series and movies. Stewart acknowledges that from a medical professional’s standpoint this might not be the best for an individual, but adds that she might get an extra hour of sleep in the car during her commute.
With this little sleep, we were confused how anyone could look as good as Stewart does in her signature pouty lip selfies, and she happily detailed her nightly routine for Us.
“The main thing you do is cleanse your face thoroughly before you put on your serum and your night cream,” she says. “I use a very delicate camellia oil or there’s a couple companies that make some nice oils, like Tatcha. I put that all over my face, because I usually have an application of makeup during the day for a TV appearance or photo shoot, so I have mascara on and everything, and all of that is taken off with the oil and a very warm, wet face cloth. And then I put an icy cold cloth on my face, and then I put on my serum, and then I put on a good… the directions say like a pea-sized dollop of our Elm Biosciences Night Cream, I probably put 3 pea sizes [laughs] of night cream all over, all over my face and my neck and my décolleté.”
Stewart insists this night cream is transformative, helping with texture, firmness and general “prettiness” of the skin. She lists off several men who she says it’s worked magic on which I take as a low-key hint.
Stewart also says she gets a facial about every three weeks at Mario Badescu, who she has been visiting for the past 45 years.
Stewart does Reformer Pilates every other day with a private teacher at 6:30 A.M. She meets her trainer Shawn every morning she’s not doing Pilates at his studio, where they do “pretty heavy workouts with weights” that challenge but appeal to her.
Stewart’s longtime massage therapist who made house calls has frustratingly relocated to Michigan, so now she is forced to trek to Mount Kisco once or twice a week for an hour-long massage at an establishment that offers foot, leg, back and body work.
Stewart also insists she eats very well. “I don’t eat junk food,” she says. Someone handed a hungry Stewart a bag of potato chips when she was working at QVC the day before our chat, which she told Us didn’t interest her “at all.”
“I’m not that kind of snacker. I like good, tasty food,” she said.” If fans doubt Stewart’s aversion to junk food, she shared everything she ate for dinner the previous evening after someone dared to offer the domestic doyenne chips.
“I ate a can of very good sardines and half of a fresh mozzarella,” she said. “I ate an endive salad with fresh dressing that I made, some watermelon and some seeds of a whole pomegranate. I love pomegranates and eat one a day.”
If fans want to eat like the lifestyle goddess, she’ll be serving much more than pomegranate seeds and zero potato chips when she opens her second restaurant, The Bedford, at Foxwoods Resort Casino in March. The first location in Las Vegas offers dishes “inspired by Martha’s personal recipes and garden-fresh philosophy” and the new venue will do the same, but in Connecticut.
While no one has done life like Stewart has, many have tried. And for her part, the former TV host is not curious about anyone following in her footsteps.
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” she replies, when asked about the many female celebrity chefs pursuing the path she’s tread. “We just keep focusing on what we have to do. We still have a lot of ground to cover, a lot of projects to complete and new projects to start. That’s what I focus on, not focusing on who’s doing what. But good luck to them.”
