With two weeks of MasterChef: Back to Win in the can and about 5,000 dishes now cooked on a fucking Hibachi Grill so far, now’s the time to check the tale of the tape. Who’s shooting up the competition ladder like a mountaineer free soloing a Croquembouche? Who is tumbling perilously like a poor meatball on top of spaghetti when-a somebody sneeze? Who is rising like a well made dough, and who is falling flat like the one I made an absolute bloody meal of last weekend?
Here are your MasterChef Power Rankings coming out of Week 2 (and a bit). The tape tells the tale.
ELIMINATED: Courtney Roulsten
Catering for the Sydney Swans for a decade probably goes a long way to beating the creativity out of the brain, and unfortunately for Courtney there just isn’t enough grace time in MasterChef to get that pilot light re-lit before the cloche comes down on you. Slinging farty curry and bean shakes to an AFL team’s worth of buff country boys ain’t exactly the worst gig to fall back onto, but.
ELIMINATED: Ben Milbourne
The Bandy dream dies on the grate of a Hibachi. Before this whole shebang began we figured Andy Allen might give the handful of close mates that were in the cast a free pass through to the upper reaches of the comp. Now we’re seeing the truth: That Andy is a ruthless prick who will slice his best friends down mercilessly to make a point. Fucked if I know what that point is, but it’s a point nonetheless.
21) Ben Ungermann (No Change)
Cool dick twill! Still got arrested.
20) Rose Adam (No Change)
I like panna cotta just as much as the next hungover idiot at breakfast foolishly thinking that a big stack of sugar is going to do anything other than turn my post-pub guts to mud, but good lord it’s a miracle that plating up an entire football field’s worth of the stuff didn’t punt dear Rose out the door like a Dustin Fletcher torp. Christ I miss footy.
19) Dani Venn (Down 5)
Jesus goddamned christ Dani USE THE IMMUNITY PIN IT IS WHAT IT IS THERE FOR. “All I have to do is not come last in a 22-person elimination challenge” does not, under ANY circumstances, mean “I should aim to finish 21st.” Use the pin. Use the pin!!!!
18) Chris Badenoch (Up 3)
Wears a hat, cooks some meat, puts on a shirt that he probably picked up while following the Wallabies on tour through South Africa in ’02. Same as it ever was.
17) Tracy Collins (Down 2)
Every time I come to do these articles I see Tracy’s photo in the template and every time I have to double check the Channel Ten website to see if that’s right because I do not, for the life of me, remember seeing her in a single episode of this season. That said, Hiding In A Garden Bush is a great tactic for a clogged field because you could probably just wander in at 12 or so left and no one would question it.
16) Jess Liemantara (Down 1)
Jess got approximately 2.4 seconds of screen time this week, which is an increase of around 2.4 seconds on the week prior.
15) Simon Toohey (Down 9)
I don’t care what else you do throughout a week, plating up burnt cucumber is a crime on par with regicide. Under no circumstances should cucumber ever be hot, jesus christ. And cucumber on a HIBACHI GRILL, no less. Just serve up the hot coals, man. Good god.
14) Sarah Claire (Down 7)
Bobbing up and down like a champagne cork in the MasterChef ocean, week two sees Sarah slide back into the pack, which ain’t the worst place to be all things considered. That pantry’s stocked. You can probably drink off-camera as much as you want. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.
13) Amina Elshafei (Up 5)
Leading a team to the promised land (the gantry) during last night’s truly insane MasterChef team challenge in which no one actually cooked as a team and the 1,000 people in attendance weren’t given any food, Amina crawls up the rankings slowly. Like a drip of molasses falling slowly down a piece of fresh French Toast. Or something like that.
12) Reece Hignell (Up 1)
Realistically – if we’re being truly honest about everything right now – Reece has done about three-fifths of fuck all so far in this competition. But he hasn’t sucked tremendously either, meaning he’s comfortably in the middle of the pack and still has all his cards left to play. Plus he’s got a good head. So he rises a spot this week.
11) Emelia Jackson (No Change)
Same.
10) Tessa Boersma (Up 2)
I’m still on the Last Year Was Rigged Against Tessa tinfoil hat train, so I assume they’re deliberately keeping her quiet so they can build her up to knock Reynold out in a slow-burn piece of long-term storytelling the likes of which MasterChef has never attempted before.
9) Harry Foster (No Change)
Mr Consistency this year. King Harry is out here putting up whatever he wants and escaping scrutiny because he knows he doesn’t have to do shit yet. We’re putting raw fish with cream cheese and it’s only just ok? Who gives a shit, man. Life’s chill.
8) Hayden Quinn (Up 12)
I’m sorry. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here, but if the judges do not want you to use packet corn chips then why are they themselves putting packet corn chips into the goddamned pantry in the first place? I’m furious about Sunday night’s bullshit, where Hayden copped flack for not cooking his own corn chips from scratch in 75 minutes. There was a bag of really good, restaurant quality chippies in the pantry – ones that were SPECIFICALLY put there by Andy – and y’all look down the nose at him for using them? No. No, I don’t accept that bullshit for a single second. So for that, Hayden gets 8 this week. You earned it, buddy. Don’t listen to those dorks.
7) Brendan Pang (Up 1)
Picking up the Sashi playbook of “doing slight variations of one thing and riding that badboy all the way to the end,” Brendan looks likely to sail through to the end stages of this competition on dumplings alone, and he’ll have been right to do so. Work smart, folks. Not hard.
6) Poh Ling Yeow (Down 3)
Turns out 11 years is definitely long enough to forget that watching Poh pace back and forth in front of a baking oven for half an is EXTREMELY VERY STRESSFUL INDEED. This show will kill me, I know it. And it’s going to be by Poh’s hand. Lord, let it be by Poh’s hand.
5) Khanh Ong (Up 5)
My KING. Not only is he firing on all gas-lit cylinders right now, but he remains the undisputed champion of being insanely thirsty for fellow contestants on Twitter.
Legit I get mesmerised everytime reynold talks #MasterChefAU
— khanh (@khanhong) April 26, 2020
Get the man a blue check mark at once. This is top-tier posting.
4) Callum Hann (Down 2)
Callum’s incredible. He looks like he should be teaching a Prep class to do the chicken dance. He looks like he should be smiling through a sweaty brow while his more confident supervisor runs me through their fourth quarter earnings report. He looks like he should have a call centre earpiece permanently affixed to his face. And yet here he is, in the MasterChef kitchen, where he just kinda flails his pipe cleaner arms about and a bloody good dish flops out. Remarkable.
3) Laura Sharrad (Down 2)
I think when you’ve made Jock Zonfrillo cry through eating twice in the space of a week, you’re well within your rights to downshift a gear or two the week after. It’s just that Laura is a goddamned freak who has about 300 gears. So “quiet week” in this case means “can still close my throat up by filling it with mousse and I would say thank you.”
2) Sarah Tiong (Up 13)
I am all the hell in on Sarah Tiong’s aggressive over-enthusiasm. That fist-pumping positivity is the energy I want to burst out of the pandemic carrying. Coming from the clouds in week one to nab the Lone Immunity spot in week two is a hell of a rise. Fast hands, fast talkin’, good cookin’. Bloody love Sarah. Get around her.
1) Reynold Poernomo (Up 3)
That it’s the start of week three and old mate is only just now setting himself clearly ahead of the pack means he’s been taking it easy. It’s bullshit how simple he’s making all this looking. The judges are actually going out of their way to try and psyche him out just so there’s the barest whiff of drama about him now. It’s fucked up. He’s too good. Why is he in this competition? Why isn’t he one of the judges? This is like trying to box with God. Fucken hell.
