Andrew McConnell
He has been a star of the city’s dining scene for more than a decade, with his restaurants among Melbourne’s most popular, but Andrew McConnell is no celebrity chef.
Heston Blumenthal
All you really need to know about Heston Blumenthal is made abundantly clear in his toasted cheese sandwich. It’s not the edible ingredients – bread, cheese, ham – that perplex; it’s the presence of “new washing-up sponge (without scourer)” on the list of necessities. The questing Blumenthal mind decided the humble, well-loved toastie would be improved if the bread was cooked longer than the filling to create a crisp, golden shell and perfectly melted – not over-melted – insides.
Marco Pierre White
There really is something about Marco Pierre White. I’m in the plush lobby of Melbourne’s Park Hyatt, I’ve spent nearly three hours talking to the famous British chef and I’m simply not myself any more. I’ve entered a vortex, encircled by the 51-year-old’s charisma, trapped by his stories, his slow, quiet sentences, pregnant ellipses and rhetorical questions, which he goes on to answer in a weighty, meaningful way that reels me in tighter. “Honesty is paramount,” he says. “I bare myself.” I somehow doubt it, but I can feel myself nonetheless being charmed by the restaurateur and television star, who is spending three months in Melbourne to film MasterChef: The Professionals.
Curious George. Dani Valent profiles chef George Calombaris
There’s a lot more to George Calombaris than MasterChef. Like his plan for “global domination”. He speaks frankly with Dani Valent. George Calombaris has a few things on his mind. Like opening a restaurant in Kew, and one in Sydney, and another in Athens. And maybe a Greek deli, if the numbers stack up. He’s thinking about his role as judge on Celebrity MasterChef, on air in October, followed by a new MasterChef series for the not-yet-famous. And there are meetings with Channel 10 sponsor Coles to develop supermarket meals: a marinade for boil-in-the-bag pork, something with West Australian truffles.