With one bunch of loud egomaniacs shouting at each other coming to a halt after the elections, we have the next season of ‘shout and swear till someone takes you seriously’ starting with MasterChef USA. Don’t take me wrong, I have nothing against the show. I actually love watching Gordon Ramsay conjure up new swear phrases and slam everyone on the show. It serves as my second favorite pastime. First being, watching Arnab Goswami conjure up new swear words and slam everyone (Mostly Sanjay Jha) on his show. Fine dining was never a popular concept in India. The definition of fine dining in European and Western countries is given as – Full service restaurants with specific dedicated meal courses. Décor of such restaurants feature higher-quality materials, with an eye towards the “atmosphere” desired by the restaurateur, than restaurants featuring lower-quality materials.
Fine dining in India is when you use a fork instead of your spoon/hands to eat rice. MasterChef has changed that. For the better or the for the worse, I don’t know. It just led to people wanting boiled lentil soup instead of Dal Tadka and the rise of a new breed of arrogant customers who go like – Shit service man. I wanted SLIGHTLY seared tandoori. This is ABOVE AVERAGE seared tandoori. I hate this place.
Let me elucidate the underlying plot of MasterChef for those who are unaware of it. It’s basically a cooking contest where some dramatic underdogs cook for this judging panel. Akin to most reality shows in India, the judging panel consists of one highly talented veteran in the field, one soft spoken confidence booster and another wannabe expert who does something worthless for a living. Honestly, how is wine-tasting even a profession? I’m slogging with 30 exams in one semester for an engineering degree and there are professions where you have to basically just drink alcohol and make faces to earn money. He gets to judge other peoples work and I have other people judge me for not working. There is a difference between a person who criticizes you and elaborates on your shortcomings and the person who just says you suck in a senseless manner. That usually leads to insults like- You look like um.. some big thing that’s really big. Let’s be honest here, we watch the shows only to see how the bad dishes are received by the judges. Here is the basic template of every bad food review on the show ever.
Knowledgeable judge 1 : What is wrong with you? You can do better. Just do this, this and this and use this instead of this next time.
Soft spoken Judge no.2 (Usually Gay for some reason ): I love your spirit. You never give up. I kinda maybe sorta didn’t not hate that one small thing which you managed to not screw up. Kudos to that.
Stupid judge no.3: Basically you are a suxxxx. This dish tastes like um.. toilet. Worst. Totally not oolala.
I had made it clear that the concept of Masterchef isn’t what made me write this article. So what’s my rant about the food now? I’ll tell you.
Fine dining came up in the world because they thought they needed an Anna University-esque standard for grading food. Due to the lackluster life decisions made by the world, we are stuck with flamboyant chefs claiming to be masterminding the art of cookery by simply serving us boiled rice with a 54 page long description. With the monkey see, monkey do attitude, my facebook and instagram feed looks like:
“Pan fried stuffed Indian bread infused with various herbs and spices from exotic forests in Gujarat accompanied by a mouth watering exemplary mixture of moderately sweet yoghurt in boiled rice, brought directly by pink unicorns from the heavenly rice plantations in Puerto Rico slightly seasoned with a marinated sauce made from lemons and Heaven Jizz. Ah my dinner. #MasterChefUSA”
It’s freaking thepla with curd rice, pickle and kara sev.
So, with the western hemisphere coming up with a widely popular TV series involving day to day tasks, the Indians were ready with pen, paper, a big name actor and a large sum of money to make an exact rip off and act like the Leonardo Da Vinci of modern television. MasterChef India was sanctioned within a heartbeat and Akshay Kumar went from making bad movies to hosting knock off TV shows, a big step in his illustrious film career. Star Plus led the race among the other mentally dead channels to secure rights for MasterChef India. Which in India, implied the clearing of 10-12 hours of broadcast time usually occupied by soaps and telebrands to make room for re-runs.
“Oh wow, a repeat of MasterChef India. I’ve seen this episode but let’s watch it again because I like it”, said nobody ever. Hopefully.
You know how when a monkey tries to build something perfected by humans, it fails miserably because it tries to monkey-fy the item? Yup, MasterChef India gets summed up within that one line. The Indians know that they are never going to make risotto and penne pasta unless Maggi gives them the packet with masala, so why even try? They stuck to their roots and made stuff like rasagulla black forest cake. Yes, you heard that right. In addition to garnishing rasagullas onto a black forest cake, the task involved baking the cake with the rasagullas inside it. And we wonder why India leads the race in Diabetes.
I’m assuming all of you have already seen MasterChef USA or Australia and are familiar with the Mystery Box challenge. It is a task in which all the contestants are given the same base ingredients and it usually turns out to be something very unexpected like pig brains or liver or something. Considering the fact that most of the contestants on the India version are middle age housewives, I understand that the creators could not take a chance and give them some meat related dish in fear of it being a Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever stupid day they don’t eat meat. Naturally, the Mystery Box challenge was dumbed down to typical Indian standards and this is what it finally looked like. After around 15-20 minutes of suspense, 700 different adjectives and 60,000 zooms and pans on various faces, this was the dreaded mystery box.
A corn cob, an apple, Amul Dahi, A dry coconut, flour, red mirchis, peanuts and that moon shaped thing that always is out of stock in Pazhamudir Chola. Wow. Gordon Ramsay would have killed a baby after seeing those set of ingredients kept on the same table. That was less of a cooking challenge and more of a “Um so we had these few items lying around and the sponsors refused to give us money to buy any more things, so cook with this” challenge. You would be surprised to know that MasterChef India is actually on its fourth season now. I bet they’re making bread butter jam in the elimination round for lack of ideas.
As is the case with most of our shows, sports or states, Pakistan wanted some of it. This led to the conception of MasterChef Pakistan. Although not the worst show, this version sets the bar so low that one of the invention challenges involved some guy making omlette and toasted bread. Obviously you don’t believe me. I came ready for that reaction.
All these things just serve to prove one basic thing. Even coughed up hairballs will seem like fancy five star meals if you set them up on a rectangular-ish plate. Come back if you can make a visually appealing dish even when it’s on a stainless steel round plate which makes more a louder sound than an exploding Boeing 747 when dropped. I’m just throwing punches into oblivion here. Obviously people aren’t going to stop acting like Gordon Ramsay or that weird guy who wears multicolor pants on MasterChef Australia. Let me just get back to watching MasterChef Pakistan. There are only 4 people left in the competition now! I’m in the 3rd episode.
The Daily Offensive 
This is one of your best! Was laughing out loud through almost the entire thing hehe
Haha thank you Radhika 😀