MKR’s dinner parties are crazy. Here’s how Colin Fassnidge handles them
Comparisons between the explosive dinner parties on Nine’s dating show Married At First Sight and those of Seven’s home-cooking contest My Kitchen Rules tend to irk MKR judge Colin Fassnidge. Not because of the two reality programs’ bitter history as ratings rivals, an unwinnable clash Seven’s programmers are this year wisely avoiding. Rather, the Dublin-born Australian chef simply “hates” Married at First Sight. So how, then, has he been able to maintain his composure at the head of the fractious MKR table alongside French-Australian chef Manu Feildel?
“This year, Manu and I have had to tell a few people off,” Fassnidge concedes. “We’re getting old. There is some massive personality [this season]. You’ve got the self-confessed ‘Meat Master’, who will be a meme in his own right. And then you’ve got the other stronger girls around the table.
MKR judges Manu Feildel (left) and Colin Fassnidge.
“It’s like a Christmas dinner. It starts off nice, and then they all have a couple of reds … But I enjoy working with friends. I enjoy eating different cuisines, meeting different people. And it’s not your normal job because at 52, if I was a chef still standing in the kitchen 16 hours a day, I’d be a very grumpy and not very nice man.”
The contentious contestant to whom Fassnidge refers is Michael from Queensland, who, with his partner Reilli, presents a dish containing the flesh of an animal that is set to “divide the nation”. “Look, I’m open to everything,” says Fassnidge. “I was fine. I reckon 90 per cent of the table were not hungry.”
Competing with her cousin Mel is Jacinta, a vegetarian nutritionist from NSW who refuses to even taste meat.
“Meat Master” Michael and his partner Reilli divide the MKR table with a controversial dish.
“At the start, I was a little bit thrown,” says Fassnidge. “But then food is like religion. You can’t pigeonhole everybody. And the way we live and run restaurants now, vegetarians and vegans are a huge part of what we do … Chefs used to be quite arrogant and think that the world revolves around them and not the customer. When you run your own business, you realise everyone’s money is the same.
“So, yeah, the vegetarian option was like a last-minute, whatever. And now, there’s a lot more veg and other options than there are meat options. And that’s because meat has become so expensive. And people are eating lighter now.”
A snapshot of the other contestants this 15th season includes best mates Justin and Will from NSW, who bring South African and Tongan flavours; Greek mother and daughter Anne and Maree from Victoria, cooking family recipes; and best friends Lol and Lil from the Brisbane satellite city of Logan, who have never left Queensland.
“There are also a couple of dads in there,” says Fassnidge. “We’re all about men getting back in the kitchen and cooking for their kids and maybe changing the way food is perceived to kids.”
Unlike Ten’s MasterChef Australia, on which Fassnidge, as a guest judge, routinely tasted dishes that were “ice cold”, MKR presentations are straight from the oven. “Sometimes it doesn’t make a difference if it’s hot or cold. But if it’s hot, we get it straight away. We demand that. If it was up to some producers, they’d faff around for a bit longer.”
While Fassnidge and Feildel argue over food – “because he’s French and he knows everything and he’s never wrong!” – they get along well enough to have spent two months following the three-month MKR shoot filming New Zealand travelogue Off the Grid, airing in late September.
“We actually said we’re like a married couple without the sex, which is probably a married couple,” says Fassnidge. “By the end of it, we were ready to kill each other. We were in a car 24 hours a day with a caravan. We’re sleeping in a caravan. He farts quite a lot because he eats a lot of pies … But yeah, we’re happy to disagree. That’s the joy of it.”
MKR returns at 7.30pm on Monday, September 1, on Seven.
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