Masterchef Recap: Wongtong Destruction
What do you think of when you think of Chinese street food? I guess when I think of Chinese street food, I think of bold flavours. At least that’s what I’m told Chinese street food is all about: bold flavours. The Masterchef amateurs are sure that the most important part of Chinese street food is the bold flavours, anyway. They’re also sure that bold flavours are the most important part of Italian food, French food, Mexican food, Indian food, Spanish food, German food, Russian food, American food, Japanese food, Vietnamese food, Polish food, Greek food and McDonald’s. If there’s a kind of food that isn’t all about bold flavours, Masterchef hasn’t covered and promulgated cliches about it.
But today it is about Chinese street food, to which end they are heading to a Chinese street. Or at least a Melbourne street, in Chinatown, to celebrate the Chinese New Year. “It’s the Year of the Monkey, so who knows what we’re in for,” says Chloe, as if those two things are related, like if it was the Year of the Horse, things would be really predictable, but since it’s the Year of the Monkey there’s just no way of knowing what’s in store — the Monkey brings uncertainty to us all.
Kylie Kwong is the guest chef who will be haranguing everyone today. The judges ask her what kind of food she wants to see. She wants to see “beautiful, delicious food”, dashing the amateurs’ plans to serve tasteless slop.
George splits the amateurs into two teams using fortune cookies in a sickening act of cultural appropriation. Chloe is the captain of the yellow team and Elise is the captain of the red team. “This is a big opportunity,” says Elise, falsely. “I’ve got some really strong cooks on my team,” says Chloe, equally falsely.
Each team must make at least two dishes, one of which must cost seven dollars, the other dish/es costing five dollars. This has been done to prevent the insane price wars of previous challenges. The teams rush to decide their menus.
“I’m thinking a noodle stir fry,” says Harry, naming some words he’s seen on Chinese menus in the past. Chloe decides the yellow team will make just the two dishes, “rather than making three mediocre dishes”. Experts agree, not making mediocre dishes is the way to go.
Elise, who thinks street food is all about bold flavours, is going with three dishes, because she’s very much into the mediocre end of the cooking spectrum. Numerous members of the red team suggest making won-tons. Elise, despite having just heard four different people say the word “won-tons”, says loudly, “Yep, let’s make WONG-TONGS”. And get ready for a spoiler alert: she is not going to to pronounce it correctly once for the rest of the show.
Kylie Kwong asks Chloe what she’s making. Chloe tells her pork belly. Kylie reacts as if Chloe just told her that she’s marrying an unemployed juggler. They go ahead with the pork belly but Kylie clearly expects them to fuck it up.
Over on the red team, Karmen is under a lot of stress because she thinks Elise wants 600 won-tons, but she is incorrect: Elise actually wants 600 wong-tongs.
Harry is excited about making noodles because he has very little going on in his life. Noodles are what he loves, they are his passion, they are his life, he wants nothing more than to dedicate his every waking hour to noodles and allow the outside world to melt away.
Elise gets Nicolette to make the red team’s dessert by herself because Elise doesn’t like Nicolette and wants to avoid interaction with her for the whole day. Nicolette is excited to put her heart and soul into Chinese food just like Kylie Kwong does, which means she’s misunderstood the nature of the show: she will never do anything just like Kylie Kwong does. Kylie Kwong will crush her if she even dares to challenge her supremacy.
Kylie pops over to the yellow team to inquire as to whether Harry’s enough of an idiot to try to stir fry his noodles during service. Harry confirms that yes, he is extremely stupid. Chloe suggests Harry try being less stupid. Harry is concerned that stupidity is at the heart of customer service. Chloe thinks that making a cold noodle salad is just the kind of vaguely revolting move that will prove a winner. Harry insists that being dumb is important to him. Finally an agreement is reached: Harry will shut up and do as he’s told.
Over at the red team, Elise is working very hard rolling her wong-tongs, and Heather is working very hard at politely not correcting her pronunciation.
Yellow Miles is making a master stock, which is a thing that I don’t know what it is. But it contains something called “black fungus”, so I wouldn’t eat it. Kylie Kwong says it’s delicious, but what would she know? She’s an expert at making food, not eating it.
Matt the Amateur is 27, but I swear last time I saw him he was 22. What is going on?
Elena, on the yellow team, claims that her plum sauce needs to be a beautiful sauce, but honestly, you’re serving food on the street for seven dollars: it just has to be edible.
Meanwhile Elise continues to say “wong-tongs”, to everyone. “We need a lot of wong-tongs. Make sure the sauce for the wong-tongs is perfect. Hope the wong-tongs turn out OK.” She won’t stop saying it, and everyone else is saying “won-ton” and Elise just keeps doubling down.
Nicolette is still by herself, making dessert, and is feeling overwhelmed by the size of the task and the rest of the team’s rejection. She’s putting dragon fruit in it, which isn’t even a real fruit, it’s fictional.
Matt the Amateur claims the yellow team needs to nail the pork belly, but that’s a terrible idea.
Kylie Kwong wanders around the stalls shouting, “flavour, flavour!” just in case the teams have forgotten that how food tastes is a factor in cooking. Another factor is having enough food, and Brett and Trent have just realised they only have half as much pork as they need. This is a classic red team blunder, and wouldn’t have happened if Elise had been keeping an eye on her team instead of spending all day mispronouncing things.
With seven minutes to the start of service, Nicolette begins plating up the desserts she made all by herself in the lonely loser corner. Harry is putting the finishing touches to the cold salad with a depressed expression on his face, feeling the burning shame of shattered dreams. Meanwhile Brett and Trent have solved the problem of having not enough pork by getting some more pork, a stroke of tactical genius. And Zoe is really happy with something or other but who knows, we haven’t really been paying much attention to Zoe to be honest.
The crowds have shown up, desperate to be fed by the itinerant street vendors, because there is famously nowhere to eat in Chinatown. “What have I got myself into?” asks Elise as the masses swarm up to the counter, and the answer is “embarrassing yourself in front of the entire city of Melbourne”, because she keeps telling the customers that the red team is serving wong-tongs and the customers know. They all know. They’re all telling their friends to go to the red team’s stall to hear the funny lady try to say won-ton.
People are asking for one of each of the red team’s three dishes, demonstrating the stupidity of the yellow team’s decision to only make two. No wonder the yellow team is known colloquially as “the team with cretins in it”. Harry’s dumb stir fry theories were just the beginning.
Suddenly the street is invaded by drummers and Chinese lions, reminiscent of the climactic car chase from classic screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? Everyone applauds the clever cinematic reference.
“Go yellow!” Chloe screams, as a substitute for success. The line at the yellow team’s stall is long, but the red team is selling better because they have more dishes. “Fried wong-tongs!” Elise yells, still having no idea. “Really impressed with the red team’s won-tons,” a customer says to camera, carefully enunciating the name of the dish in the hope that the cameraman will get word back to Elise. It’s getting beyond a joke.
The judges taste the teams’ dishes, but I don’t know why: the challenge will be decided by sales, and the judges could go have lunch at a proper restaurant instead. Still, it gives them an opportunity to talk about what a great idea it was for the red team to make three dishes instead of two dishes, because god wouldn’t making only two dishes be a horrible gaffe? Imagine how embarrassed you’d be if you were the kind of dick who made just two dishes. Ugh.
The judges also decide that the noodle salad is bland because Chloe and Harry fought over it. Actually the noodle salad is bland because it was poorly made, but sure, pretend that noodles can pick up negative vibes if you must.
Suddenly Chloe is struck with a terrible realisation: nobody is lined up at her stall. Either word has got around that the noodle salad is depressed because its parents have been fighting, or everyone is just really excited to hear Elise say “wong-tongs”. Harry tries to attract customers by walking over to the line in front of the red stall and yelling in their faces. When this fails he begins violently skewering prawns, which is as good an anger management technique as any I suppose.
The yellow team is adding the prawns to the menu in a clever attempt to copy the red team’s strategy far too late. “This is Harry’s time to shine,” says Chloe, and I guess it had to arrive eventually. “The prawns are absolutely flying off the grill,” says Harry, which makes them extremely difficult to cook, but they persevere.
Fireworks begin to go off in the street as the locals’ campaign to drive Masterchef out of their community continues to no avail. Elise panics because everyone is going to try the yellow team’s prawns, so she orders Brett to go out into the crowd and verbally abuse people until they buy something. Mimi and Harry do the same for the yellows. “Food is flying off the tray,” says Harry, who knows one metaphor and does not intend to deviate from it. “Wong-tongs!” adds Elise.
Time is up and everyone is screaming and clapping and high-fiving in the misguided belief that they have achieved something. “This is a challenge based on how much money you make and we hope we’ve made enough,” says Chloe, champion fact-sayer.
The two teams between them have raised over $6000, which…I mean that actually doesn’t sound like much, considering. I feel like they definitely should’ve raised more. The red team raised $3285 which means they win and Chloe is a failed captain as we suspected she would be. Though to be fair it’s Harry’s fault. Elise couldn’t be prouder of her team, and their efforts to make those wong-tongs. But the real difference between the teams was Nicolette, who overcame the contempt of her teammates to prove herself unpopular yet useful.
So the yellow team goes into an elimination, with Chloe needing to decide whether she should use her immunity pin to spare her the fate of the teammates she led into the bowels of hell.
Tune in tomorrow night, when Gary will ejaculate mid-meal.
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