Living Room chef Miguel Maestre cooks up a multicultural feast

Being different has paid off handsomely for Miguel Maestre, the Spanish-born Australian chef on Network Ten’s The Living Room.

Spanish-born chef Miguel Maestre. Picture: Toby Zerna

Being different has paid off handsomely for Miguel Maestre, the Spanish-born Australian chef on Network Ten’s popular lifestyle television show The Living Room.

Maestre, who has a rambunctious personality and strong accent, says he has been given many opportunities to work on Australian TV because he is “slightly different” and praises Australia’s multicultural history.

“I can see what is going on around the world, and you know we have to be mindful of obviously respecting each other,” he says.

“I’ve always been very respectful to everyone because of what I represent when I come from somewhere else.

“But I’m Australian now. I’m the same as any Aussie bloke — I just speak a little bit funny.”

Maestre’s comments follow the close scrutiny of shows and movies on TV and streaming services around the world in the wake of racial injustice protests.

In Australia, streaming giant Netflix has removed four comedy shows featuring Chris Lilley as different ethnic characters, while local player Stan has removed British comedy Little Britain.

The chef has nothing but praise for Ten, which is owned by newly merged ViacomCBS. The US media group has been ramping up the integration of its oper­ations in Australia and New Zealand with Ten, including the axing of its news and entertainment website 10 Daily last month and making staff redundancies.

“The fact that I was slightly ­different, it kind of encouraged all the producers that I work with to really value the greatness of Australian multicultural diversity,” Maestre says.

As well as co-hosting The Living Room for the past eight years, Maestre appeared on Ten’s reality show I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! at the start of the year and was crowned the winner. He also appeared on the network’s reality dancing program Dancing With The Stars last year.

Maestre learnt English while working in a restaurant kitchen in the UK, before moving to Australia in his early 20s. His first media gig was a cooking show on Foxtel in 2009. He then moved to Ten’s Boys Weekend show, alongside chefs Gary Mehigan, Manu Feildel and Adrian Richardson.

Ten is bringing back The Living Room, which also features Amanda Keller, Chris Brown and Barry Du Bois, on July 3 after parting ways with TV production company WTFN and bringing production in house. Ten had announced in December the show wouldn’t return this year, despite it featuring at its annual Upfront event just two months earlier.