Next week is the Irish final of the TV programme that looks for people who believe their culinary talents deserve to be recognised beyond their own kitchens.
MasterChefis a terrifically popular reality cooking contest, and yet another spin-off of the seemingly endless, er, appetite for food-themed reality shows. We've had
Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef,and the latest one, the hugely successful
The Great British Bake Off,which ended this week. (Expect "The Great Irish Bake Off" to come this way soon.)
The Irish judges are Nick Munier, a co-owner of Pichet, who used to be the maitre d' of the British version of
Hell's Kitchen,and Dylan McGrath, now of Rustic Stone. Among those who sampled some of the efforts was Catherine Cleary, the restaurant critic of
The Irish Times. More than 1,000 people applied to be on the Irish version of
MasterChef,and 50 were chosen.
For the semi-final, the five contestants were challenged to catch a (live) fish within three hours, and then serve it at a Dublin restaurant. The prize is the title “MasterChef Ireland”, and a whopping €25,000. The final episodes are on Tuesday and Thursday on RTÉ2 at 9.30pm.
