Bizarre Dinner Circus, With A Heart Full Of FOOD DREAMS: Why I’m Still Watching ‘Masterchef’

Last night on Masterchef Australia there was a brief, shining moment involving contestant Jessica Arnott that reminded me why I’ve watched almost every episode of the show since it first went to air. Cooking off in a relay challenge against the show’s judges, Jessica was plating her team’s poached pear dish when she realised it looked a little drab. So she took off, running toward the show’s pantry, screaming the word “MICROHERBS” like a deranged Muppet, while her teammates cheered her on.

That’s the Masterchef Australia spirit: taking a ridiculous premise far too seriously, often to the point of catastrophic emotional breakdown, in order to achieve something called your “food dreams”.

The phrase Food Dreams is whispered like an incantation by the judges, and the contestants respond with one of a series of allowable phrases.

“Dessert bar,” one will murmur.

“Food truck,” says another.

“Honest country bistro with food like my Nana used to make,” says another while crying and covered in failed soup.

“Dessert bar,” says a fourth.

“Food truck,” says a fifth.

And so on. The realisation of these dreams is hitched to the completion of a series of magic rituals, impossible to achieve outside of the Masterchef kitchen. While undoubtedly being a contestant on Masterchef is a singular experience that would be difficult to replicate, it is nevertheless true that most people who start food trucks or run dessert bars did not do it through Masterchef, because getting into the food industry is not that hard.

But this is one of the core beliefs of Masterchef that the show forces you to adopt. The “Food Industry”, like “Food Dreams”, is said in hushed tones. The Food Industry is an amazing place where your Food Dreams come true, rather than a fairly standard career path you can enter by enrolling in a vocational qualification or apprenticeship upon completion of your Year 10 certificate.

Sometimes, The Food Industry comes to visit the Masterchef kitchen: this year, celebrity chef Marco Pierre White was on the show for a whole week. Whenever a new chef enters the kitchen, they are introduced like a wrestler entering the ring: a list of their achievements and awards is rattled off, and they are greeted with gasps and applause.

“He cooked for the Pope! He went back in time and changed what the word ‘sauce’ means! He trained a horse to make lemon meringue pie! He runs a restaurant so good the Michelin inspectors cross themselves before entering! He won the Tour de France by cooking a plate of roast beef! He had his legs removed and replaced with immersion blenders! HE’S MARCO PIERRE WHIIIIIIIIIIITE!”

“Oh my god, it’s Marco Pierre White!” says a contestant.

“He’s a legend. This is unbelievable,” squeals another.

“Mate… you make dinner,” says my boyfriend on the couch next to me. I look at him like he’s just farted in a packed elevator.

“It’s true! He fucken’ makes dinner! That’s what he does!”

It’s worse than that, actually. Not only does Marco Pierre White’s career reduce down to making dinner; Marco Pierre White is also a well-known dickhead. White is such a monumental fucko that Gordon Ramsay, another rampaging shitstain, is said to have quit White’s kitchen as a trainee because he could no longer handle being subjected to such continuous abuse.

Shhhh! Not during Masterchef!

During the 2015 season of Masterchef, the producers seem to have understood — finally — what makes the show good. In past seasons they’ve experimented with manufactured rivalries between the contestants, or having the judges behave capriciously or with cruelty. Not this time. This season has been full of camaraderie, hugs, friendly advice, evenhanded and generous judging. That’s because the main antagonist on the show must be ephemeral; it must be an Emotional Rollercoaster, and the contestants must only be in fear of Disappointing The Judges, Letting Each Other Down, or Not Achieving Their Food Dreams.

These possibilities must be repeated a set number of times during the show, in order to performatively ward them off with the powerful shield of ritualised emotional disclosure.

“I just want to give it 110% today so I don’t disappoint the judges,” says one contestant, before the day’s challenge.

“I really don’t want to let down my teammates,” says the same contestant two hours later in a commercial kitchen, dripping with sweat and red as an organic tomato, while using a pair of tweezers to pin-bone 85 fish fillets.

“It would be so amazing to win an advantage at this stage in the competition — I just want to achieve my Food Dream so badly,” she says, before breaking down into tears because one of the judges has gently delivered the news that her salad is under-seasoned.

“You make dinner!” says my boyfriend. “You’re on a show about making dinner!”

Why do the contestants quit their jobs to spend, potentially, two months being emotionally dis-assembled in a bizarre, televised circus, in order to break into an industry that can be entered by way of so many other routes?

“This is literally my heart on a plate,” says at least one contestant every episode.

“My blood, sweat and tears are literally in this dish,” says another.

“My grandfather’s eyes are looking at me right now, and maybe his ghost tongue is literally licking this food,” says one, shaking slightly, who’s taken the whole thing a bit far and might get booted off by the judges for their own psychological wellbeing.

Masterchef, I reckon, is the Food Dream. Some contestants, usually the most attractive, do move into television cookery shows and the like, but with few exceptions Masterchef will be the apex of their achievement.

“You make dinner! You make bloody dinner!” says my boyfriend, as the contestants cry all over each other.

Well, no. Chefs make dinner. And these aren’t chefs. They’re Masterchefs.

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The grand final of Masterchef Australia‘s seventh season airs on Channel 10 this Sunday July 26 and  Monday July 27, from 7.30pm.

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Eleanor Robertson’s work appears regularly in The Guardian, Daily Life and Frankie Magazine. Follow her at @marrowing for crap jokes and drunk tweets.