indi.ca

M is for MasterChef, by duncan c

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Basically, Top Chef is tense and bitter, and MasterChef is tense and sweet. People are quite nice on the latter and they still produce great competitive food. People are so mean on Top Chef, and they produce food that I don’t understand. Even in its Australian incarnation, I think MasterChef is the best. Mainly cause it doesn’t bring out the worst in people.

I’ve enjoyed competitive cooking shows since Iron Chef, that Japanese one. That was awesome cause the judge wore a semi-military uniform and the ingredients were like squid or electric eel or stuff I’d never heard of. I understood absolutely nothing that was going on food wise, but it was a great show.

Last year (or was it sooner?) I watched Top Chef and MasterChef and they were both entertaining. Padma Lakshmi somehow pisses me off in a way that I want to keep watching, but that show was full of fights and rancor. MasterChef, on the other hand, felt a bit more amateurish but a lot more family.

Now they’ve set the show in Australia, which I thought was dumb, but it’s grown on me. Again, what makes the difference is that the competition is intense but not bitter. On Top Chef they’ve also replaced Padma with some random attractive woman that doesn’t convey competence and I just don’t watch it anymore. MasterChef, on the other hand, is throwing out some really amazing cooking with characters that you actually care about.

It seems like it’s showing every two hours on StarWorld, yet for me this is not a bad thing.