MasterChef’s Callan Smith dishes up drama in Bondi a year after shock elimination
MASTERCHEF’S youngest contestant has spent the year since his elimination perfecting his skills, ahead of opening a candy bar themed pop-up store at Bondi Beach this month.
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CALLAN Smith’s entry into the MasterChef kitchen last year was anything from typical.
While his high school peers were squarely focused on their 2016 HSC year, the ambitious young cook had the added pressure of applying for the popular cooking show.
When, to his surprise, he was invited to Melbourne to audition and progressed to the next level, he juggled his final exams with filming — shooting on his off days and flying home to join his friends in the exam hall.
And while his mates celebrated the end of school life at schoolies, he entered the MasterChef house in the top 24.
Unfortunately the show’s youngest contestant was knocked out when he plated up an inventive but divisive “dessert sushi” — crumbed salmon, candied nori with toasted rice ice cream — which judge Matt Preston (right, with Smith) said was “bonkers or brilliant”.
Smith has spent the year since his MasterChef experience honing his skills in pop-up kitchens at events across Australia. His latest, at this month’s Bondi Feast festival, shows he hasn’t lost his penchant for unconventional food pairings and creations.
The now 20-year-old’s passion for theatre is as strong as that for food, and he’s hoping to play on over the 10 day arts event, by bringing a taste of the theatre interval to Bondi Pavilion.
“I’m playing on the idea of the candy bar, so I’ll be serving a choc top — one with a savoury warm potato cone and a sweeter choc top but without the ice cream,” he tells BW Magazine.
“There will also be a soup in a can, it will be a packet of snakes in soup, set in the bottom of the cup. You’d assume they’d be sweet ones from a lolly bag but when you pour hot liquid over the top it melts the snakes which creates a broth.”
Despite being MasterChef’s youngest contestant, he has no regrets entering at 18, saying his age gave him an advantage. Coming straight from school he says, he had less at stake than contestants who had to leave behind families and careers for filming. He says he had nothing to lose.
And while he didn’t make it into the final, the experience still gave him an accelerated path to follow his food dream.
“MasterChef has changed my life dramatically,” he says.
“I don’t think I’d be doing anything as much, food wise, without it. Leaving school I knew I wanted to do something in food or theatre and it was just about which to follow first. When MasterChef came along I jumped at that and thought I’d follow theatre later and I’ll eventually combine the two into one.”
And it’s given him a new perspective watching this year’s crop of contestants. He can empathise with the high-pressure decisions that make or break their dishes.
“I understand the mind-frame the contestants are in what point of the competition they’re at and understand what they’re feeling. We watch it at home and someone will say, ‘Why did they do that?!’ and I’ll say if I’m honest I would have done the same thing at that point, so it’s interesting watching from an insider’s point of view.”
But he’s insistent there’s no trickery going on off camera that audiences don’t see.
“One thing MasterChef has going for it is that what you see on TV is what you get. The only thing is if there’s a tasting for 24 people that may take 12 hours to film, so just the time it takes. But nothing is fudged, there’s no second dishes being cooked. And I think that’s why people love the show so much and why it’s in its 10th season.”
* Bondi Feast is at Bondi Pavilion from July 17-28, bondifeast.com.au