After watching MasterChef Australia for over a decade now (christ), the idea of enduring a new episode and not being, at bare minimum, violently miffed about the judging panel feels extremely weird. It’s part of the show’s signature; engrained in its fabric. You get a cast of food hopefuls blindly hacking away at a giant fish on national TV, and in between that three idiots prowl around the kitchen; one trying gamely to turn two lines of colour about a cheese toastie into The Canterbury Tales, one murderously aggrieved about not being 6 feet tall, and the other recovering from the daily shock of waking up to discover that he is, in fact, British. And yet this year we’ve got three new people in those roles, and they’re all remarkably great. It’s weird. I’m not sure how I feel about it. And I’m even less sure after last night when, mid-judging, Melissa Leong answered the ringing phone of the restaurant they were filming in and actually took down a dinner reservation.
How strange and good is it to have three ostensibly normal people – as normal as TV judges can possibly be – swanning about a kitchen sowing horrendous doubt into the minds of hopeful cooks.
There’s Jock Zonfrillo, a Daddyesque Scot who, despite his apparent blind favouritism for anything pasta-related that former employee Laura cooks, gets misty eyed at the sight of a bottle of HP and kicks about a Thai restaurant challenge getting wistful about smoked haddock in a piece of newspaper from his bonnie wee home town.
Andy Allen, bless him, is probably just blokey enough to convince at least one site worker to switch his lunch order up from a jumbo sausage roll and a 440ml Mother can one of the salami, pesto, roasted pepper and provolone focaccia’s from the same bain marie, and honestly that’s worth the switch up just by itself.
But it’s Melissa Leong, an instant national treasure, who is the ace in the hole in this particular power trio.
In last night’s MasterChef – a team challenge at the outer suburban Thai Ute restaurant in Melbourne’s Ringwood East – Leong interrupted her own episode closing judging spiel to answer the restaurant’s ringing phone.
She just walked over there and picked it up.
And took a damned reservation for the actual restaurant they were filming in.
And didn’t even flinch when whatever lunatic on the other end of the line booked in a dinner reservation for FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON.
And she didn’t do it for a bit or because a producer told her to. Reportedly, Leong took the call because she didn’t want the restaurant to lose a potential booking.
What on earth did we do to deserve any of this. Why after a decade-plus of supporting those three other weird units do we now get to watch this show be run by three wholly positive angels?
This feels weird. I’m not sure I like it. MasterChef is supposed to make me feel grubby. I haven’t earned this. It makes me so happy and I’m deeply uncomfortable about it.
