Food, glorious food
Australia's runaway television hit of the winter reached its teary climax on Sunday night, with the final of Masterchef. More than 3.7 million viewers are thought to have tuned in, the largest audience for a non-sports telecast since 2001.
The winner of the cook-off was mother of three Julie Goodwin, who impressed the judges with her home-style cooking and homespun tales. With misty eyes, she spoke of her love of family and food.
An Aussie battler to the core, Julie said she would use her $A100,000 prize money to open a restaurant on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where she would 'serve good food, unpretentious food'.
The loser was Poh Ling Yeow, an artist from Adelaide who had stunned the judges with her modern Malaysian cooking, much of which she had learnt from her mother.
I came to Masterchef late, but was hooked immediately. An unexpected ratings winner, I wonder what explains its success.
Along with the taste good factor, there was certainly a feel good factor - and perhaps audiences have been particularly receptive to that in these feel bad times.
Certainly, the contestants were an inspiring bunch with noble culinary intentions, which sometimes bordered on the evangelical. As Julie Goodwin said in her emotional victory speech: 'When people leave my restaurant I want them to feel loved'.
The judges were unusually nice, as well, and opted for a much more benevolent style of adjudication that the normal reality show knockabout. Rather than reducing contestants to tears, they tried hard to build them up. In fact, the judges seemed to cry almost as much as the cooks.
A few Australian commentators have noted that in the age of Obama - and the age of Oprah - its fashionable to be 'nice'. During the Ozcar scandal last month, Miranda Devine, a conservative columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald, reckoned that Malcolm Turnbull's assault on Kevin Rudd had backfired so spectacularly because he had come across as Mr Nasty. She cited the success Masterchef as part of the trend towards niceness.
Perhaps a better example is the public revulsion at the British chef Gordon Ramsay for his potty-mouthed outburst at the television host, Tracy Grimshaw. That kind of shtick is so pre-global financial crisis. Since last September, people have wanted to be soothed rather than savaged. They do not want the furnace-like temperatures of Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, but the warmth and sentimentality of the Masterchef set.
Here, it's worth contrasting the success of Channel Ten's Masterchef with the disappointing ratings of Channel Nine's home decoration reality show, HomeMade. Home renovation is for prosperous times. Home cooking is a fact of life of a downturn, as the empty tables in some of the country's most fashionable restaurants attest.
I'd like to think that the success of Masterchef also reaffirms Australia's status as one of the world's great lifestyle superpowers. Surely there are few countries where the food is so good, so varied and so appreciated. When The Bulletin magazine came up with its 100 most influential Australians of all time, it listed the cooking guru, Margaret Fulton, alongside Donald Bradman.
The food here is also so very diverse. Top-notch Greek, Italian, Malaysian, Chinese, Russian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, French, Japanese, Spanish, along with all the fusion spin-offs.
After all, is not food the most glorious expression of Australia's multicultural melting pot?
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~55~RS~)
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I haven't seen Masterchef, but I agree with you final statements, Nick.
I don't think there is any place in the world, where dishes from all over the world meet as freely as in Australia (and yes, I have spent considerable time in London and New York). Whatever your taste, it is here, it is good, and it is affordable.
The only exception is pizza. You can buy it anywhere, but it seldom tastes remotely like pizza. There are a few exceptions, especially in ultra-Italian areas like Haberfield in Sydney, but they remain the exceptions. Your average Australian pizza is simply dreadful. It is even worse than its American cousin. I still don't understand how so many pizzamen and -women, often of genuine Italian descent, can do such a poor job with such an abundance of great ingredients.
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I disagree that the lack of criticism in the contest reflects Australias and the worlds post-economic crisis state, but think rather it is a sign of Australians general reticence to criticque anyone to their face or debate in a sustained way (except through laconic exaggerated jokes). The reaction to Gordon Ramsay's remarks is the same reaction Australians display every time someone from outside the country critizices anything or anyone inside it - watch the outcry whenever Germaine Greer opens her mouth from across the sea - even if Ramsay's comments were stupid. There is a climate of positivity at all costs which prevails everywhere, even more than in America almost.
As concerns food, Sydney might rightly has some great ethnic food, especially Asian (strongly excepted Indian), but go outside the big cities, and food in Australian smaller towns is often appaling, NOT fresh, and generally deep fried, as opposed to the standard of food you get travelling around France and most of Europe for instance, where there is a sustained indiginous cuisine. Except for Asian food you pay way too much for "gourmet" cuisine in Australia, even where it does exist.
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Spot on. I think it was a hit because Australians were getting fed up of reality TV shows based on the cheesy/sleazy and cynical. It's great to see a show featuring real people doing something that many Australian excel at - food. I think Australians take a lot more interest in eating out than their UK counterparts, and restaurants here are affordable and pleasantly un-snooty.
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I was introduced to Masterchef by my thirteen year old nephew and became fairly hooked on it. I do not normally watch reality shows and its success is certainly interesting.
I personally have enjoyed it because of the lack of humiliation in it. As a teacher I have become increasingly exasperated by the expectation of parents that their children be shielded from the slightest criticism from other children, which they often wrongly define as bullying (which naturally we should deal with) For example a nine year old commenting that she does not wish to play a particular game, on a single occasion, can become a major incident.
Masterchef demonstrates valid criticism without personal putdowns. It fits in with our culture, where our language is low in modality or directness, I think coming from the English part of our heritage. My German and Dutch friends have been forbidden to complain in restaurants by their Aussie children, who find this habit quite humiliating!
I dont think there is any link to the recession. I would be interested to hear how Nick thinks we are dealing with the downturn-like others I was optimistic and remain so.
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Almost 4 million Aussies watched the cookoff??? And this was some kind of record? Good Grief how easily you are led by Aussie TV network propaganda.
Ask yourself, what were the other 18 million Aussies doing? I went looking for Miss Marple on the ABC but they'd discontinued the series, so I went to bed. I was talking to my neighbours today. They watched Dancing With The Stars, and they too followed by going to bed.
Australian TV is abismal, and most Aussies turned their TV off by the time this kind of crappy programs comes to air.
Have you ever listened to ABC Local Radio? Their audiences are going stronger every year. Someone should tell the companies executives that advertise on TV that if the ratings are down as low as 4 million viewers, they aren't getting their money's worth.
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All this talk of food is making me hungry. Too bad I just got to work....
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"Coarse rice for food, water to drink, and the bended arm for a pillow - happiness may be enjoyed even in these" - Confucius.
It's nice to know that someone so wise understood the vitues of a cat-nap.
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You didn't metnion that 2 of the judges were expat brits... and the 3rd was George Calombaris (I always expected him to break out with a healthy "ohmygawwwdddmate" ...yia sou!).
The final for mine wasn't the highlight. The highlight was Jacques Reymond's face when someone (Julia? Justine? Cant remember) served him duck confit & winter veggies. From cynic to believer in one mouthful. And this is one of the best chefs alive anywhere - he's not an industry hack or a TV channel stooge..
Actually there you go - there's the main lure of the show. No hacks. No stooges. A viewer can believe it because we know who these chefs are and what they can produce.. if they say its good, it's good.
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I have to admit it got me hooked as well. But at the same time I feel slightly disturbed at the fetishisation of food. It's just fuel after all and many millions go hungry every day.
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I agree with some of the thoughts in this blog but - notwithstanding your contractual obligation to put words on a page, Nick - does the success of show like this really require so much national psychoanalysis?
Australia is no different to any other market - it's got its trashy cynical reality tv like Big Brother and it has more positive, affirming fare like Idol, Biggest Loser and Mastechef.
And like other English-speaking nations, Australia's appetite for quality food and innovation has increased in recent decades. While you can probably get better pizza in Rome or better laksa in Singapore than you can in Sydney, you can't get a better pizza in Singapore or a better laksa in Rome than you can in Sydney, if you take my meaning. Australia's food scene is less established but far more open minded than those with mature cooking cultures and blessed with so much fresh produce. So why is the success of a show like this so surprising?
People watched this show because they want to see what others could create when they pour their heart and soul into their cooking.
This show was based on the more mature UK series, which was less intimate and more clinical in its format and I suspect, while highly successful, had less of an impact on the British public.
An interesting test of Nick's argument will be how much the BBC takes note of the Australian format's success?
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"Nick - does the success of show like this really require so much national psychoanalysis?"
Apparently so. Anything that happens here apparently is indicative of a deeper national psyche informed by a regrettable lack of culture and a dry, arid climate endured by pragmatic, beer-swilling people.
Of course, Masterchef is a British format - no doubt we'll be hearing all about how this has further 'influenced' Australia.
I've said this in that other post on cricket (again, cricket!), but to blog about a ball game and a TV show in a week where there's been a major terrorist attack and increased discussion on Australia's role in Afghanistan following a soldier's tragic death seriously surprises me. Is this the BBC or the Murdoch press?
If the BBC ever gets back into Zimbabwe what will they be blogging about there? "Live Reggae Returns To Harare", "Football Madness Sweeps Zanu PF", "Mrs. Mugabe - Style Icon".
These blogs get worse. I'm sorry Nick, someone had to say it.
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Actually, the Australian Masterchef is a long way removed from the British version of the show. Australian Masterchef is a three-way hybrid of British Masterchef, The Apprentice and Big Brother.
The really interesting aspect of the series for me is, as someone pointed out above, two of the judges are British. )In fact one is very obviously a Brummy, not a part of the UK which was noted for its fine cuisine when I last lived there.) Were there really no Australain chefs who were both suitable and available? Or did they all decline to touch it with a bargepole, and are now regretting their reluctance to join in?
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And one of the two judges in BBC Masterchef is John Torode from Melbourne. Is that "really interesting" as well?
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Phantom-cyclist, the chef on the UK version of Masterchef is Australian, so maybe all the decent Oz chefs are over here, and vice versa.
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Agreed, why is the nationality of the judges so interesting? There are more than 1 million British-born in this country and Gary Mehigan has been here since 1991 and his British accent is very washed out (oddly enough I think John Torode has been in the U.K. for the same amount of time - his Aussie accent is also very watered down). Matt Preston has been here for a similar amount of time. Is the fact that they're both Brits so fascinating?
More interesting to me were the number of contestants of southern European heritage (by my count, at least half) - shows the way these people have helped change Australia's once stodgy British food culture.
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Nick Bryant:
Where are the pictures of the food...In the blog you posted...
Since It is making me very hungry!
~Dennis Junior~
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Nick:
(After all, is not food the most glorious expression of Australia's multicultural melting pot?)
That is a very accurate statement of food and the multicultural melting pot of country....
=Dennis Junior=
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