“Sorry – I didn’t read the email properly,” admits MasterChef celebrity judge John Torode, as he realises my phone call wasn’t an intrusive four hours earlier than we had arranged and that I’m not a cut-throat journo after a sound bite that I can blow up into a misleading headline splash.
It’s 11am in Britain and Torode is evidently still getting to grips with the day ahead. His initially croaky tone quickly morphs into the commanding Crocodile Dundee-esque accent foodies are familiar with, as we start discussing all things MasterChef, his upcoming trip to Dubai, and British cuisine.
His oversight just shows how busy he still is, even after having parted ways with the famous London restaurants he helped run — Smith’s of Smithfields and The Luxe — towards the end of last year.
The Melbourne-born broadcast chef has just finished filming a television series in Australia on his own (without MasterChef co-star Greg Wallace) about the food of his youth, and a new series of MasterChef ready to hit Britain’s airwaves later this year has also recently been wrapped.
The imperious antipodean, who has become the face of the bigger-better-and-louder era of MasterChef, is headlining this year’s inaugural Dubai Food Carnival.
Torode is visiting Dubai for the first time to see what’s going on in a location that is popping up more frequently on his international gastronomy radar.
It is curiosity more than anything else that brings him here, he explains. “[Dubai] is a huge force and growing so fast in food and entertainment circles that you can’t ignore it.
“People have become completely aware of Dubai as a food destination as well as a place to go and get some sunshine. It’s quite an incredible world that’s evolved out there, and as such there’s a need to watch it and that’s very exciting.”
Never say never
Though the 48-year-old celeb chef radiates an enthusiastic reverence to the city’s breakneck progression as a culinary hub, he says he’s not interested in delving into a food business venture out here just yet, having just finished his involvement in the restaurant business in the UK so recently. “But you never say never — the world is your oyster and all that stuff,” he adds.
The conversation then takes the inevitable turn: MasterChef.
It’s fair to say that Torode, alongside long-time MasterChef chomping colleague Wallace, has revolutionised the cookery show from the Lloyd Grossman reign of comfortably soporific Sunday afternoon television into prime-time viewing of a cut-throat 21st century kitchen, with knives at the ready.
If the soufflé is a trifle too runny in the middle, or if the confit de canard is slightly too dry to compliment the lemongrass emulsion and beetroot puree, trembling contestants will find out through well-constructed epicurean tirades from both Torode and Wallace.
There is, of course, the frequently outstanding dish created by a plumber, a teacher, an electrician or a builder that has them both purring with compliments. All of which makes for captivating television.
No stirred up drama
But none of it is an act. There’s no lights-camera-action manipulation going on here. The emotions that you see on screen are all genuine, regardless of how potentially dire or dramatic an episode in the BBC kitchen could turn out to be, Torode says.
“Any cookery programme on television that has integrity is a great thing,” and the Aussie clearly feels MasterChef has this in abundance. “And what you see on TV is absolutely me. There are several different sides to me as a person — I wouldn’t be like that around a dinner table with my friends or family.
“I’ve been doing MasterChef for over ten years — and you can’t be something you’re not for ten years. It’s a tough journey for everyone involved. It’s a mental fight for everybody, including Greg and I because we have to make huge decisions. We have to be totally impartial and that’s a very difficult thing — we don’t look at people’s personalities. We look at their food.
“All we do is put some contestants in a kitchen and say cook. And then somebody presses a button on a camera.” Simple.
MasterChef has gone on to become one of the most successful cookery shows of all time. A television audience of 5.5 million viewed the 2013 British Celebrity final in September between Ade Edmondson, Janet Street-Porter and Les Dennis — it even eclipsed an England international football match, which was aired at the same time on another channel.
Forty international versions of the TV programme have spawned from the original English concept and have become mega successes in their own right, being beamed to more than 220 territories worldwide. Torode feels the numbers provide the proof in the pudding and there’s no reason to change the format of the show, despite a familiar theme of blue-collar worker turned gourmand par excellence with each new series.
MasterChef dealt with, we move to the other culinary aspect close to Torode’s heart: British food. While the identity of British food is varied and amorphous at best, Torode says it’s not a bad thing to not have a food identity. And there are a lot of things that the small island nation is now doing very well with its produce.
“I don’t think it does have an identity. [But] it’s hearty and generous and that’s a wonderful thing to be with your food.
“When I arrived in Britain 20 years ago, the Brits were really bad at promoting their produce. They were importing everything. Even ham was coming in from France and Spain,” he explains.
“But now that’s turned around; it has the best asparagus in the world, the best raspberries in the world and it produces some of the best cheese in the world, especially goat’s cheese. Cattle is now an enormous and wonderful industry. And in the main there’s [food] that nobody can compare to — things such as partridge, grouse and pheasant.
“And today I think a group of chefs will be proudly British and that’s a wonderful thing. They’re elevating British food into something very sophisticated and I think, long may it continue.”
