“So it is back to the kitchens again!” Kumar Pereira told the Sunday Times with every sign of relish. Having been invited back into the Masterchef Kitchen for Masterchef All Stars which began airing in Australia on the 26th of July, Kumar is looking forward to pitting himself against the best of the best.
“The nightmares have topped and now it’s all starting again,” says Chris Badenoch at the start of the show, echoing a sentiment popular among returning contestants. How could they be insane enough to put themselves through all this again? But this is probably the rematch they’ve all been waiting for – a rare second chance on a show where you’re only as good as your last dish.
A dozen of the most promising cooks from the first three seasons of the award winning show will be participating, and their number includes Masterchef title holders Julie Goodwin and Kate Bracks. This time however, the check for 100,000 dollars will go into the bank accounts of their favourite charities instead of
their own.
Filming went onto till late July with the show being aired in August in Australia to coincide with the Olympics.
Contestants are divided into teams. The Blue Team includes Julie Goodwin, her arch rival Poh Ling Yeow, Chris
and Justine Schofield. The Red Team favours runner up Callum Hann (Masterchef Adam Liaw seems to have opted out), Aaron Harvie, Jonathan Daddia and Marion Grasby. The final team – Yellow – boasts Kate Bracks, Dani Venn, Hayden Quinn and Kumar himself.
The season premiere launched with a Croquembouche Challenge as the contestants took on Adriano Zumbo’s terrifying desert - the croquembouche from Season 1. As the season progresses, audiences will have a chance to gauge how far their favourites have progressed as they take on some of most delicious and demanding challenges from previous seasons.
In Interviews, judge Matt Preston has compared working with this year's batch of MasterChef All Stars is like having twelve kids or “four children from three different wives.” He said he was delighted to have some of his favourite contestants back under one roof. "It's great to see who's the nemesis and more importantly, it's great to see those great battles, like who would win between the shark, the alligator and the gorilla," Preston
told news.com.au. "When you put Poh cooking against Marion cooking against Dani, it's like well who's got game, this is exciting and the end of the day, one of them is going to walk away with a large cheque for their charity."
