Hordern Pavilion and Royal Hall of Industries
Driver Avenue, Moore Park NSW 2021
MasterChef comes alive
Dates: 10-12 December 2010
The MasterChef Live Festival will be a mixture of outdoor and indoor areas all designed to inspire, educate and entertain visitors about all elements of cooking and ingredients. And all this whilst learning from the professionals.
Thanks to Ashley Gatte from Stellar* for inviting me along to the MasterChef Live Preview Tour at 9.30 am on the first day. It was great to gain access before the public and get a private guided tour of the Festival of Cooking. We were all given a VIP pass ($120) which included premium seating in the theatre and access to the outside Jaguar VIP Lounge which was thankfully air conditioned. A Festival Pass which doesn't include the Theatre Show is $25 unless you're lucky enough to get a free ticket which seemed to be given out at various restaurants around Sydney — possibly those owned by the supporting chefs. The event reminded me of a combination of the outdoor Taste of Sydney combined with the indoor Good Food and Wine Show and some added theatrical live entertainment by the MasterChef judges Gary, George and Matt in the Theatre Show. Passionate fans in the audience wanting to be selected by Matt to come up on stage was like watching The Price Is Right. There's opportunity amongst the stands to meet some of the MasterChef contestants and even get your purchased cookbooks signed by them at the Borders stand.
When I visited on the very hot Friday and Saturday it wasn't particularly crowded which made it easy to talk to stall owners, sample products and glance over some of the cookery classes which are included with the ticket entry. I wish I had more time to sit down at the classes and workshop sessions to hear what the chefs and professionals had to say. I thought there was more than enough stalls to occupy your time for quite a few hours and it was good to see that so many of them were promoting Australian made products and businesses.
Other food blog reviews:
PROS: Entry includes a good variety of cookery classes, Lots of food samples, Fans of MasterChef get to meet the contestants, Less crowded than other food festival events this year
CONS: Weather pending for outside area — Friday was very humid and uncomfortable for both the crowd and stalls, Tickets perhaps expensive unless you're a MasterChef fan, Not many restaurant choices
MUST TRY: Attending more of the cookery classes next year
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The public line up before the 10 am gates open on 1st day
MasterChef judges officially open the MasterChef Live
MasterChef contestants welcome the 1st day crowd
Live Theatre Show
Young audience member learning to cook an omelette
The MasterChef Judges
Restaurant Row
Din Tai Fung
Pork (3 pieces) and vegetable (3 pieces) dumplings ($8)
Chefs Gallery
Making handmade noodles
Steamed sesame 'piggy face' bun
Pork Belly Roll: Thinly sliced blanched pork belly rolled with carrot, cucumber, topped with a garlic and oil free vinaigrette dressing ($6 for 5 pieces)
SIMON FAVOURITE :-)
Handmade noodle with diced chilli chicken snack size ($8)
Mad Mex
Efendy
Kofte: Bultarra Saltbush shoulder and leg of lamb kofte, roasted chickpea humus, tomato and spring garlic ezme ($12)
Learn from the professionals
Grill A Chef sessions
Sunbeam Creative Kitchen
Professional Theatre
Cheeky Food Group
Festival of Cooking stalls
Lush Berries — very tempting delights
Anathoth — one of my favourite jams
Movenpick — Chocolote Mint sample YUMMY!
Eskal Gluten Free Foods — lots of samples to try
HealthyFeast — Lemon meringue is their signature dessert
Lemon bar — this guy seems to be at all the festivals now
King Reef Barramundi by Kailis Bros — very tasty samples
Spring Hill Beef
Sarah Glover — passionate cookie baker
Birch & Waite — yummy whole egg mayonnaise
SAXA — try tomatoes and chocolate with their sea flakes
Cobram Estate — Chilli Blast and Garlic Crush olive oils were nice
Wild Sugar by Skye
Organic Times — Dark chocolate macadamias are so good
Amazonia Acai berry superfood bar
Absolute Organic — yummy chip samples
Timburlaine wines — Certified Organic
Olympus Grove
I'd love one of these commercial blenders from Vitamix although at $1050 it's not cheap. Apparently used by Boost Juice and McDonalds amongst others.
Agapé — Organic Restaurant and Bar
Passage Foods — tasty samples
Rosco Fine Foods — generous sweet samples
Luv-a-Duck — duck fat makes everything tastes so good
Pudding Lane — great tasting Christmas puddings
Saltt Himalayan Sea Salt — very subtle in salty taste
Springbok Delights — thought they sold springbok but it's beef
Ponto e Fresco — very tasty and interesting flavours
Paradise Beach Purveyors — You can taste the crab in the Chilli Crab Dip
Formaggi Ocello — Cheese!
Duck Creek Macadamias — very yummy
Pure Gelato — the strawberry and mango flavours were very good
ANL — I love this vertical wall garden for growing herbs
Most out of place stall — Neutrogena free sunscreen sample. It still felt a bit sticky and thick to me when I used it on Saturday and not 'clean feel'.
Chillout areas
Gazebo Wine Garden
MasterChef spotting
Skye Craig from Wild Sugar and Me
MasterChef judge Gary Mehigan and Me
Adam Liaw and Me
Marion Grasby and Me
Courtney Roulston and Me
Blogger spotting
Not Quite Nigella and Me
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11 comments:
Did you enjoy the show?
I'm looking forward to reading your next post. :)
Such a fun day! we were exhausted by the end of it too!
Lovely seeing you again Simon - Hope to see you again soon.
Looks like a great food spotting day!
It was such a great day. Wow you covered every part of the event. It was so much fun. Hopefully it's on again next year. Nice to finally meet you Simon.
It sounds like you had so much more fun than me. >=[
Now that's got to be one of the best photo doco's of the day I've seen. Thanks for sharing Simon. Nice chef & celeb spotting there :)
Great coverage and it was good to see you again!
what a lot of stalls! I would love to try all of those samples.
hi kym, i did enjoy the show but i was at the front so was close to the action. i think it would be different for all the people at the back of the show.
hi gianna, so much to see and do i probably could have spent the whole day there. see you soon :-)
hi gastronomy gal, plenty of food spotting!
hi a cupcake or two, i tried to cover most of it but i reckon i only actually got about half of it. nice to finally meet you too!
hi kym, you didn't have fun? i thought there was a lot to see and do. i think i exhausted myself though.
hi anna johnston, i try my best. you've got to be quick with the photos of the celebs as they seemed to be dashing all over the place.
hi lorraine, great to see you again too :-)
hi susan, i nearly got sampled out. there was a lot on offer and most of the stall owners were nice to talk to.
wow you did an extensive coverage of the event. nice reading them!
hi mel, a super long review but hopefully i've captured most of what went on :-)
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