Career
Currently he is one of the hosts and contestants of The Best in Australia airing on LifeStyle Food in Australia and Vibrant TV Network in the United States. O'Donoghue was five years old when his family moved from England to Port Hedland. At the age of ten, his family moved to Perth.
On finishing school O'Donoghue was employed at a restaurant at Rottnest Island for the summer as a kitchen hand. As a result, he applied for and obtained an apprenticeship in a seafood restaurant in Nedlands called Jo Jo's. In his final year of high school at La Salle College in Midland he was head boy.
After qualifying as a chef O’Donoghue was promoted to Sous Chef at Jessica's Seafood Restaurant in Perth. This was followed by stints as Chef de Partie at Goodfella's restaurant in the Newtown area of Sydney and at the Tribeca restaurant in Double Bay, Sydney, where he was subsequently promoted to Sous Chef. In 1996 O'Donoghue travelled to the United Kingdom where he worked at The River Café before moving to become Head Chef at the Monte's Club in Knightsbridge with Jamie Oliver.
He is now the creative director of food for The Great Australian Pie Company based in the UK. O'Donoghue has also worked with Oliver as a consultant food stylist as well as assisting him with various outside catering functions, including cooking for Tony Blair and the Italian Prime Minister. O'Donoghue first started with a food show in Morocco for American , which was followed by an invitation to co-present a BBC2 ten part prime-time series The Best in April 2002, with an accompanying BBC book of the same name, and filmed an 8-part food and travel series for the ABC in Australia called Surfing the Menu, with Curtis Stone with an accompanying ABC book in early 2003. Other media Ben writes a regular food column ‘Ben's Basics’ for Olive Magazine as well as a regular column for Delicious Magazine in Australia.