The king of gastronomy Heston Blumenthal returns to MasterChef Australia in what promises to be the biggest week ever.
In a world first, the top 10 contestants open four MasterChef Australia pop-ups in four days – all inspired and supervised by Heston. The theme of each pop-up reflects a different aspect of Heston’s persona and cooking influences. All four are located in exciting and unique spaces – definitely not traditional dining spaces.
Heston joins MasterChef Australia judges Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris at each of the pop-ups for the whole week to inspire, mentor and guide the contestants as they cook to win.
Across the week, the contestants will be cooking a two-course meal for 80 diners on the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel; serving 500 customers savoury ice blocks at Melbourne’s iconic Brighton Beach bathing boxes; creating a three-course chocolate dessert menu for 30 diners at a subterranean space at Melbourne University; and, to celebrate Heston’s love of history, preparing a four-course dinner at Melbourne’s historic Rippon Lea Estate.
It is no regular week, with just one elimination challenge looming on Thursday that will see one contestant leave the competition.
The massive week of Heston challenges wraps up at Melbourne’s Carousel, perched on the edge of Albert Park Lake, where the contestants join the judges and Heston for a very special MasterClass.
I was not happy with the outcome of tonight’s challenge (which allowed us to see what’s inside the kitchen at Caulfield Racecourse for the first time - and where did the contestants lived during their time in the competition). This is what I wrote on the show’s Facebook page:
The blue team won but I think the red team was unfairly treated. The judges praised the red team’s matcha parfait, but then in the kitchen the red team was told they were 15 short, so they made more. The judges saw the new batch and was not happy, and changed its critiques. To make it worse Matt was not allowed to explain (or he did explain the situation but it was not shown on TV). What were the criteria for this challenge? Should public feedback have been included? If not, then the result should have been based on the dishes served to the judges AT THAT TIME, not those plates of food made at the last minute. Had the judges not changed their critiques, I think the end result would have been much closer.
To add to that, the blue team had its own problems when they initially miscalculated the number of portions for the beef dish. Luckily they made a spare piece of beef and were able to produce 10 more portions in quick time.
The preview for tonight’s episode suggested a shock elimination, so I thought it could be either Matt and Karmen, and I was right about Karmen. She was one of few contestants who did not struggle in the kitchen, but were still eliminated after producing components which tasted weird (basil ice cream in this case). Karmen is good at making desserts but she has a lot of learn before she can be considered in the same class as past contestants (and dessert specialists) like season 3 winner Kate Bracks, Kylie Millar, Emelia Jackson or Reynold Poernomo. The West Australian has more details about Heston week next week. Heston Blumenthal said he started planning the challenges (4 pop-up restaurants in the space of 10 days - on TV it’s 4 in 4 nights) last October.
With three immunity pins already awarded and high praise given by some of the most respected local and international guest chefs, including Marco Pierre White and Nigella Lawson, the calibre of the 2016 contestants continues to impress.
This season has delivered some of the most technically complicated elimination challenges ever seen in the eight-year history of MasterChef Australia and judges Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston have been wowed by the contestants’ skills and determination.
Ten remarkable cooks remain and with the coveted title of Australia’s MasterChef 2016 up for grabs and some amazing guest chefs still to come – including Heston Blumenthal, Peter Gilmore and Curtis Stone – the stage is now set for intense competition in the run home to Finals Week and The Grand Final.
Top 10:
Brett Carter, 43, Western Australia
Chloe Bowles, 24, Queensland
Elena Duggan, 32, New South Wales
Elise Franciskovic, 28, Queensland
Harry Foster, 22, Queensland
Heather Day, 32, South Australia
Matt Sinclair, 27, Queensland
Mimi Baines, 26, Victoria
Theresa Visintin, 44, New South Wales
Trent Harvey, 29, New South Wales
NSW residents have a chance to win a dinner for 2 at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at Melbourne’s Crown Casino on July 9. Enter at tenplay website. I don’t understand why this competition is not open Australia wide?
I don’t understand what this top 10 thing is the judges keep banging on about. I’m sure I’ll hear them talking about it a hundred times tonight too. It literally means fuck all.
Enjoyed the Melbourne Star team challenge last night. Most of the five teams went all out with their concept of astronomy. Theresa was back to her best with her sodium alginate orb and black coconut sticky rice dessert.
The teams were told beforehand that the wheel would not stop when it started spinning and each team would have around two minutes to plate and send the dishes to each passenger cabin. This increased the pressure on each team and must have affected the plating of some dishes. But they all managed to send all dishes into the cabins so the diners did not have to wait too long.
I reckon the temporary kitchen was actually the mini gallery before visitors board the cabin as it is surrounded by boards naming the achievements Melbourne has received since its foundation in 1835.
The Brighton beach ice cream challenge tonight should be a cracker!
Really enjoyed it, haven’t seen the Melbourne Star in that way before (it was actually opened in 2008, but suffered a series of technical fails & is now only relatively new).
How good is Heston! Pop-up week, tonight at a Melbourne beach looks great (Brighton?)
Heston and George just told one contestant that goat cheese ice cream won’t work because of the high fat content of the cheese, so she was then totally confused for a while. She decided to still make it as she has made it before. A Google search finds plenty of recipes for goat cheese ice cream.
I think it is poor advice to tell her what they said.
It was a waste of opportunity not to promote the Brighton Life Saving Club which lent its space for the pop-up kitchen and food storage.
Theresa continued her recent good form, now 2/2 by winning the savoury ice cream challenge with Elena with their creations, even though Theresa left it very late to start working on the team’s mustard, bacon and french fries ice cream. Matt and Harry’s gazpacho icy pole also came up trumps.
I must say some of the flavour combinations were weird. Goat’s cheese and beetroot? Lemon, pine nut and rosemary?
It was also quite funny to see Matt Preston’s hair blown in all directions by the wind
Anyone thinks Heston’s been particularly grumbly and in a shit mood so far?
Couldn’t be bothered actually meeting and greeting the contestants as they cooked yesterday but had a gripe about every dish not being a literal space ship on a plate. How about offering some hints or advice while they’re cooking…
Heston doesn’t seem to have been involved as much as previous seasons. It feels like this year he’s just shown up to take a paycheck whereas other years he has offered advice and mentoring etc.
Sorry for the extremely delayed responses on these as I’ve been overseas, but have now caught up with it all.
I tried the dishes from both of the team. The stand out for me was that dessert that Nicollette made. I didn’t like the beef and noodles dish but otherwise they were all good. When there was nobody lining up for one of the stalls that was exactly what I remembered as well. At one point the producers screaming out for people to line up to them but it wasn’t happening after the initial crowd died down. I thought that’s something they would cut out from TV but it seems it was shown as a reason why they lost.
Yes I was shown in the episode a number of times. I have been overseas in the US, logged onto facebook one day and got heaps of messages from people spotting me. I looked very serious in the episode… it was actually hard to hear what the judges were saying. Cool nonetheless.
Also the Brighton beach episode last night was the other challenge I was asked to take a part in, but couldn’t because of work. What a shame as some of those ice creams seemed interesting lol
Yeah to me Heston week seems a bit of a waste with these pop up challenges. They could have done these challenges on any other week. I would have much rathered see Heston inspired invention tests and a pressure test on one of Heston’s dishes.
Also it appears that by the end of the week only 2 contestants won’t face elimination? It’s pretty silly. I was thinking by now it should be individual challenges so only 1 more person each night goes up but from the previews it still seems to look like teams of two again.
