Ex-MasterChef contestant Sarah Todd to host popular Channel 10 cooking show
Former MasterChef foodie turned restaurateur Sarah Todd swapped the madness of Mumbai for the quiet of Melbourne in lockdown, but has found fame again as the new host of a popular cooking show.
Entertainment
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Melbourne’s usually bustling city streets completely deserted will be an enduring image of 2020.
But for Sarah Todd the past few months of lockdown have seemed especially quiet.
Having called Goa her second home for the past five years, the model-turned-chef says spending time back in Melbourne since March is, literally, a world away from her life in India.
“The pace of life in India is absolutely nuts,” Todd says. “I looked at my schedule and did 13 trips to India (last year), international flights and domestic. I’m sitting here now thinking, this is what it’s like not to be jet-lagged.”
Life has been an international whirlwind since Todd, 33, applied on a whim to appear on a cooking show MasterChef and six years and thousands of frequent flyer points later, she now has three restaurants on the subcontinent, though they, like the industry in Melbourne, remain closed for now.
“The thing with India, the people are so beautiful and positive. Everyone’s staying very strong. The virus has affected so many people, such a horrible thing to think about,” she says. “It’s very scary, the complete lockdown in Delhi and Mumbai. I have friends who haven’t left their house once since March. Those city hubs used to be so vibrant, the hustle and bustle.”
Comparing how life looks in lockdown in Melbourne and Mumbai is a long way from Mackay in Queensland where Todd grew up. Moving to Sydney when she was 18 to pursue a modelling career, she then spent several years crisscrossing the catwalks of Europe before settling in London in 2012.
Like many a Queenslander before her, the long, cold winters of England seeped into her bones and the heat of the MasterChef kitchen proved the perfect remedy.
“I’d never watched MasterChef to be honest, I was just obsessed with cooking at the time. I was modelling but my heart wasn’t there. I’d spent two years freezing in London and I couldn’t handle it any more. I thought, if I get MasterChef we all can move back to Australia.”
Get in she did, so she moved to Melbourne with her then-partner and their son Phoenix and ended up placing in the top 10 of the sixth season of the hit cooking competition. But it was a dish cooked during one of the challenges that would set Todd off on her incredible Indian adventure.
Becoming familiar with Indian cooking and culture through her ex-partner’s Punjabi heritage, Todd cooked many Indian-influenced dishes during the competition. But it was her take on aloo gobi — a homestyle vegetarian dish of spiced potatoes and cauliflower — that earned her a devoted Indian fan base overnight.
“MasterChef is huge in India, so when that episode aired I ended up getting 50,000 social media followers overnight. It was crazy, but people were so positive, so encouraging. I thought, I have to go and see India. I’d never been, but always wanted to.”
Her MasterChef profile opened doors and soon Todd was doing a series of dinners for one of the major hotel groups across the country, from Delhi to Goa, where she was feted by media and audiences alike.
“It was incredible, people went absolutely crazy. I was overwhelmed with so many people knowing who I was. But there was something about the people, I just fell in love with the country,” she says. “It was the beginning of a love affair with India. So I decided to do more things there as work.”
That decision led Todd to meeting Indian restaurateur Ashish Kapur, which in turn led to Antares, a 250-seat Australian-themed restaurant in Goa helmed by Todd that opened in late 2015.
The process of opening a restaurant in India became a six-part TV series, My Restaurant in India, which screened on SBS. A second restaurant, The Wine Rack, in Mumbai followed in 2017, as did a second series following her journey to opening, with Todd and Kapur also opening The Wine Company in Delhi in 2018.
“My dream was to get out of MasterChef and open an Indian restaurant in Australia. And I did an Australian restaurant in India,” she says, laughing.
“Thank goodness I didn’t. I had no idea of the diversity of Indian cuisine. The knowledge I have now, I’ve travelled all over India, been to more cities than the majority of people in India have, to places like Nagaland and Kashmir, places not many people have been to. I’ve seen so much, and every place I go I have this food memory. If I had’ve tried to open an Indian restaurant it wouldn’t have been what it could be today.”
While the pandemic has placed her plans for a restaurant here in Melbourne on hold for now, Todd says she’d love to create something here when life returns to so-called COVID-normal.
“I have the whole concept in my mind, know exactly what I want to do. The style of food and everything. It’s put it all on hold right now. That would’ve been the ultimate dream, to come back (and open a restaurant),” she says.
Todd says she’s drawn to homestyle cooking rather than refined restaurant dishes and discovering and replicating little-known dishes inspires her as a chef.
“We know butter chicken and dal makhani, but there’s really beautiful lighter food they eat on an everyday basis, healthy and really flavoursome,” she says. “I feel more ready to do that in Australia now. I have to see when that can now be possible, but that’s definitely something I’d love to do for sure.”
While for the past five years Todd has spent her time equally between India and Melbourne, the extended homestay has coincided neatly with her new role as a host of the popular Channel 10 cooking show Farm to Fork, taking over from current MasterChef judge Andy Allen.
Todd joins fellow MasterChef alumni Michael Weldon and Courtney Roulston in presenting the show that highlights the produce and producers of Australia.
“We’re well into the depth of filming. It’s 90 episodes so it’s a lot of cooking. I’ve never shot
a show in this format, cooking in the kitchen; (my other series) were a lot more travel based.”
Filming on the show started just before the initial lockdown and has an exemption to continue.
While the producer and farm visits that are a staple of the show are on hold for now, Todd says the small team is making the most of shooting on a working farm in the Yarra Valley.
“We’re hoping to do farm visits when restrictions ease up. Then we’ll do a lot of Victoria and the Riviera. I’m looking forward to exploring a bit more of Australia. It’s so weird, I’ve done so much of India now but we’ve got this beautiful country. I just want to get out and explore,” Todd says.
“It’s been so nice to be in the kitchen and cooking, experimenting with different recipes and I’ve been really enjoying it, more than I thought I would to be honest. Everything’s coming together nicely. Highlighting Australian farmers and producers, and focusing on the quality ingredients we’re so lucky to have here in Australia, but with a global twist in terms of the cuisine and flavours. I want to highlight Australian produce with quick simple meals that have a bit of a spin so you feel you’re doing something amazing but ultimately they are quick and easy.”
IN between filming, like single parents across Victoria, until this week Todd has been juggling the pressures of homeschooling and keeping Phoenix, 9, entertained.
“Like everyone, (we’ve) had huge stressful moments, (but) it’s been so beautiful for our relationship to be honest, to be constantly at home,” she says. “We went through the stage where I was the most boring mum in the world, thankfully that’s passed. I think we’re all going through that. Six months of homeschooling for the kids is hard, really hard.”
Todd has been using time in lockdown to perfect a chilli sauce range she is developing with her brother, as well as putting the finishing touches on her next cookbook scheduled for release next March. Titled Everyday Indian, Todd promises easy-to-replicate recipes filled with authentic flavours.
“We look at Indian cuisine and think, it’s too hard, it has too many ingredients,” she says.
“But you know what, it’s not. So I’ve gone through and simplified it, kept things really easy to do, but still give authentic flavours — more the everyday food people eat at home.”
And when international travel returns to the menu Todd says the first thing she’ll do when she’s back in Goa is find her favourite street vendor for a serve of papdi chaat.
“I was eating it every day before I flew out, I was stocking up. It’s a little crimped roti-biscuit thing served with tamarind chutney and ginger yoghurt. I love it!”
The second series of Farm to Fork will screen on Channel 10 in November