New Look…; is the new Masterchef Australia ‘diverse Aussie TV’.
12 years ago, Masterchef Australia crowned Julie Goodwin as the first-ever winner of the competition. Since then, 13 seasons have followed which showed a display of talent, grit and bloody delicious food. Recently the show decided to undergo a massive upgrade by swapping out the usual judges for the past 11 seasons; Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston.
When the trailer for Season 12 was released, I got the shock of my life to find three completely different faces. The first is Andy Allen, owner of Three Blue Ducks and the winner of Masterchef Australia Season 4. His distinct Australian accent and his general Aussie bloke nature is something that the show desperately needed. Since he was a former contestant, his fresh perspective could be insightful for the fellow contestants.
The second is Jock Zonfrillo, a Scottish-Italian chef who is also the owner of Orana. He is known for championing the usage of Australian Native ingredients as well as for starting a new worry beads line. Caim. For the pièce de résistance, we have Melissa Leong. She is a Singaporean- Australian food critic who is known for being on the Chef’s Line and for her incredible food blog. Honestly... the lineup of judges is sexy and bold as it brings a fresh breath of air to the show’s long history.
I remember bawling my eyes out when watching Brent disqualify himself from the competition to take care of his mental health. Jock, being a family man himself could instantly relate to Brent’s struggle. The show has talked about mental health struggles especially since two of the judges are open about their struggles. Melissa Leong has frequently spoken about her struggles with anxiety and depression as well as going for therapy. Jock on the other hand has spoken about his anxiety and he carries worry beads as a result. Brent is not the only instance when we have seen struggles with mental health. Dani Venn also spoke about the immense pressure to prove that she was deserving of the immunity pin and broke down during an elimination cook, in which she ended up going home. Dani was comforted by Melissa, who too shares a similar battle with depression and anxiety as she faced it during her teens and has been outspoken about it.
The amount of empathy
A thing I have noticed more of is the increment of Asian dishes being presented. In Season 12 alone, we have seen cooks like Brendan Pang who consistently presents dishes from his Chinese and Mauritian heritage, Poh Ling Yeow who cooks Malaysian fusion food and even Ben Ungermann who embraced his Indonesian heritage this season. What made me so emotional about these two seasons is the bravery that many of the cooks had to share their stories.
Kishwar Chowdhury, an Bengali- Australian stay-at-home mom who takes great pride in cooking dishes that combine both of her backgrounds. During the challenge in the Northern Territory, she got everyone teared up when she spoke of the importance of combining her Bengali-Australian background in her cooking. She made a hariyali chicken with Australian native ingredients which were thoroughly enjoyed by the judges.
The show has also displayed plenty of queer representation. In Season 12, several of the contestants have come out of the closet like Brendan and Reece. However, more representation was seen in Season 13 with the Muskequeers being a popular name amongst fans of the new season. Connor Curran, Tom Levick, Dan Dumbrell, Jess Hodge, Trent Vu, Eric Mao and Scott Bagnell are all proud of their queer identities and have even spoken about it on the show. Dan has spoken about his Scottish husband and Connor has also spoken about what the increase in queer representation means for the show.
However, the show has many faults that don’t make it any different compared to its previous seasons. One of them was in Season 12 when the pressure test involved Benjamin Cooper’s, Jungle Curry. The bottom 4 for the previous cook had to cook the dish without a recipe which is a first for the competition
The thing that angered a lot of the fans, myself included was the fact that Sarah Tiong went home on initially relying on her instincts but instead made it too gentrified. She had to make drastic alterations in the fear of going home. The problem is that a South-East Asian is supposed to make a curry that is based on a white man’s palette. This seems to be a tad bit hypocritical considering that the show claims to praise diverse cooking. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was Melissa Leong, an Asian judge who claims to celebrate this kind of cuisine is putting this guy’s dish on a pedestal simply because it’s from a top restaurant by a top chef
That episode also radiated massive creepy vibes when Benjamin told Brendan to ‘smile more’ because Brendan ‘seems to be a cheeky guy.’ While this can be seen as Benjamin trying to be friendly, this is the equivalent of telling a woman to smile despite being under immense stress. Brendan, an introvert by nature, looked extremely uncomfortable by Cooper’s remarks.
The next incident that angered fans was the elimination of the show’s favourite, Khanh Ong. He went home on cooking a refined version of KhO GỪNG ( Vietnamese peasant chicken). Vietnamese cooking is known to be a very homely style of cuisine and the fact that it was supposedly meant to be an easy challenge for Khanh because ‘Vietnamese cuisine has French elements’ is highly problematic.
The judges did not have any hesitation to eliminate him. While his dish had intense flavour, it was not refined enough as Jock found a huge ribcage on the quail and the guest judge, Charlie also mentioned that the sauce should have been thicker instead of watery. Having eaten some form of this dish before from a Vietnamese restaurant, this is highly inaccurate. The dish is meant to be saucy as it is to be eaten with rice.
So, while we can praise the improvements that Masterchef Australia has undergone, we have to stop putting it on a pedestal for Australian TV doing the bare minimum. Putting an Asian judge on the show does not mean that it is a done deal, diversity takes time and so much more can be done to make the show truly practice what they preach.
