Melissa Leong brutally shuts down troll: ‘I’m writing this sitting in my house that I bought’

Melissa Leong has taken the rare step of firing back at a troll in her comments section, issuing a spectacular - and lengthy - takedown.

Don’t mess with Melissa Leong.

The MasterChef judge, 41, rose to prominence in mainstream Australian media after debuting on the long-running Ten cooking show in 2020, and was immediately praised by viewers for her warmth with contestants and eloquently worded critiques. And, just two years into her gig, she managed to score TV’s highest honour last year with a Gold Logie nomination.

Despite all the love, Leong has exposed the cruelty she often cops on social media.

Taking to Instagram at the weekend, Leong hit back at a hateful comment from a user named Gerrard which read, “They scraped the bottom of the barrel when they went searching for new judges. How many restaurants did she [Leong] have when they interviewed her? None. Was she a world renowned food critic like [former judge] Matt Preston. NO. As I said scraped the bottom of the barrel.”

Leong took a screenshot of the comment and uploaded it onto her Instagram stories, where she fiercely defended her career from naysayers.

“Haven’t owned restaurants, just written for half a dozen of Australia’s highest profile publications for over a decade. It’s ok though, us non white males are used to [being] overlooked,” she wrote. “It’s how you don’t see us coming till we’ve arrived.”

Melissa Leong has brutally shut down a hater on social media.

Leong listed multiple examples of her sprawling career in the food industry.

Leong added that she was also previously a co-host of SBS’ TV series The Chefs’ Line, and, “There’s also about half a dozen or so cookbooks and magazines I’ve ghostwritten, edited or subbed, not to mention working with industry legends like Marco Pierre White, Gelato Messina, Zumbo, MLA and more.

“If that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, Gerrard, it must be very hard to see me from your lofty seat in the clouds doing … what is it you do exactly?

“Thank you armchair prince, I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad day you feel the need to s**t on a stranger who had bled for her career.”

Melissa Leong: “You can find it on Netflix.”

Leong, who emigrated from Singapore to Australia when she was a child, capped it off with one final dig.

“FYI, I am writing this while sitting in my house, that I bought all by myself, with my unqualified, ill-gotten gains. Cheers.”

Cop that.

It comes as Leong is set to return to screens alongside MasterChef judges Jock Zonfrillo and Andy Allen for the fifteenth season of the show, which will debut May 1.

The trio replaced long-running judges Matt Preston, George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan from 2020, after their decade long stint came to an abrupt end in 2019.

They were reported to have quit after Network Ten refused to increase their rumoured $1 million individual salaries “by more than 40 per cent”.