It’s that time of year, the time when Seven trots out daddy bear Manu Feildel and activated nut Pete Evans so they can pass judgement on the amateur cooks of the nation as they serve up rack of lamb after rack of lamb. The time when culinary dictators assert themselves and everyday Aussies strive to achieve their true blue bloody food dreams. The time for plating up and mouthfeel and other dubious restaurant terms that sound in no way sexual. It’s My Kitchen Rules time. God, how I’ve missed it.
Season eight kicked off last night, with the first of many, many instant restaurant rounds, and the show came in flaming hot. In the space of an hour, we were introduced to what might be the most villainous MKR villain in recent memory, and teased with the prospect of a will-they-or-won’t-they romance for a pair of opposing teammates. (They definitely will, you guys). There was also some food in the mix, but yeah, sure, we’ll get to that. So who are the new contestants? Glad you asked.
Tim & Kyle are this season’s token blokey blokes, and I’m on board. The producers probably peed their pants a bit when they met man-mountain Kyle – he looks like he fell off a distant branch of the Hemsworth family tree, he has a sexy lumberjack beard, he eats the leftover food off everyone’s plates because he’s a growing boy, and he makes romantic goo-goo eyes at Bek. If anything, I feel bad for Tim. It must be cold there in Kyle’s shadow, to never have sunlight on his face …
I’m going to go ahead and call it right now – as the str8 Aussie bloke version of Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, Tim and Kyle will make it pretty far this year.
Hi Kyle …
WA besties Bek & Ash are single and ready to mingle, and from the moment vet surgeon Bek lays eyes on handsome lumberjack bartender Kyle it’s game on. She spends all night flirting with him hard – like, flirting expert Rebecca LaRue hard – and the nation’s hearts are all aflutter. Bek says she’d swipe right on Kyle. Neither she nor Ash would swipe right on Tim. Poor Tim. Can you even imagine what’s going to happen when the producers engineer it so these two teams have to cook against each-other?
#FacesOfMKR
Then we have Amy & Tyson. Oh, you guys. It must be really soul-destroying to be the MKR team who gets the villain edit – I’m sure the producers wear you down psychologically and prod you into saying horrible, vindictive things about the other contestants and their dishes, so they can edit the hours of footage down to a snappy montage of hate. Still, though, sous vide-loving Uber driver Tyson seems like a real piece of work.
He’s a fussy eater, he’s “confident verging on arrogant” with his palate, he talks down to the worthless peons at the table, he witheringly says that a plate of meat and two veg isn’t a “competition dish”, and he doesn’t even understand the other contestants’ Tinder jokes because he isn’t on social media. Ugh, Tyson, I don’t want to drink the cordial that MKR is forcing on me but you’re making it very easy to hate you right now.
Karen & Roz are this year’s token cougars and I can totally see myself sinking premix Bundy and Cokes with them. They work in a maternity ward and they are here to DELIVER this year in the competition – WORDPLAY! Karen met her husband at a Jimmy Barnes concert, Roz cracks off-colour jokes about how the two of them are “breast friends”, and I’m pretty sure they threatened to serve up a boob milk creme brulee at some point. I’m totally here for these two.
There’s not a lot to say about Sydney besties David & Betty right now. They start a lot of sentences with the word “hashtag” but otherwise seem pretty nice. They’re not getting the villain edit or the romance edit which means they’re probably going to get the dark-horses-who-emerge-as-good-cooks edit. We’ll see.
Damo & Caz are a super likeable young couple, and they’re from Tassie, which is a pretty big My Kitchen Rules power play, so they’re definitely in this to win it. They’re the first to cook in this year’s instant restaurant bracket, and if there’s one thing that that Pete and Manu bloody love, it’s beautiful fresh produce from the Apple Isle. That’ll definitely be the running theme of tonight’s cook, then.
If Kyle wasn’t enough to get the loins of the nation throbbing, we also get a little bit of Henry the sexy truffle farmer. Damo and Caz ‘spontaneously’ decide to drive an hour out of their way just so they can visit him at his idyllic property, and look, to whichever of the MKR producers set this up, I am eternally grateful. Just watch.
Damn, Henry. I’d sniff you out with my sensitive pig nose and grate you over a hot bowl of soup, if you know what I mean.
Damo and Caz have never cooked with fresh truffles before, and frankly, neither have I, because if you have hundreds of dollars to spend on fancy, stinky clusters of mushrooms, you are the one percent. Their entree is a cauliflower and truffle soup, and wouldn’t you know it, Manu conveniently steps into the kitchen halfway though prep time to put the fear in them and ask if they know what the hell they’re doing.
Later, at the table, there’s a dramatic moment where Manu pauses, scrunches his nose in up in his adorably French way and asks Damo to bring him a truffle and a grater. The music gets all sombre and for a second it seems like we’re headed for [OMINOUS VOICE-OVER] “the lowest score in MKR history” but yeah, nah, he just wanted to shave some more of the little bastards onto his soup. It seems like Manu actually puts way too many truffle shavings on there, but I’m not some kind of fancy ‘chef’, I’m just a homosexually-inclined guy with a lot of opinions, recapping MKR in his underwear.
Just like that, the great Tasmanian truffle kerfuffle is over, and everyone can breathe again.
Main is steak and duck fat potatoes, and Damo accidentally stews the meat, but Caz’s lovely bearnaise sauce saves day. Onya Caz. The most dramatic moment of the episode comes when Tyson and Kyle get into an epic pissing contest over the correct method of cooking a steak. Kyle likes to get a nice crust on it and cook it over a flame like a real red-blooded man, and Tyson prefers a fancier sous vide method, and does not believe in resting it afterwards. Tyson’s meat, like the rest of Tyson, has no chill. The two of them almost come to blows and I’m excited to see where this rivalry leads.
#FacesOfMKR
The apple crumble cheesecake dessert falls flat, but everyone’s pretty nice and diplomatic about it anyway, and Damo and Caz end up with a fairly respectable score of 62, which means they’ll probably end up around the middle of the leader board, pending whatever BIG TWIST is coming for this year’s eliminations. I’m pretty sure the big twist is that nobody’s getting sent home and we’ll just keep on circling around and around forever until every household in Australia is an instant restaurant. Wake me up when we get to hunky farmer Henry’s place.
