MasterChef Monica Galetti Returns to TV Screens

If you thought the heat in the kitchen was intense on MasterChef, it’s arguably hotter in its spin-off, MasterChef: The Professionals. The UK’s Daily Express reports.

Called TV’s cruellest reality show, the contest challenges real-life chefs to fiendishly difficult cooking tests that show up all of their shortcomings – not just to viewers, but to their regular customers.

So it’s not too much of an overstatement to say that contestants put their livelihoods on the line – and they do it under the stern gazes of top chefs, New Zealander Monica Galetti, Marcus Wareing and food expert Gregg Wallace.

“Fans always say, ‘You’re much nicer in person,’” Galetti, 42, says with a laugh.

“Then they say, ‘Is Marcus really as scary as he seems?’ And he is as scary as he seems.”

Although contestants get wobbly during the skills test, by the next round they start to relax.

“After that we become quite familiar,” Galetti says.

“We egg them on because we want our guys and girls to do well once they’re in the kitchen. They know they’ve got to rise to that challenge every time. And the whole time we will back them up, but also be their harshest critics to guide them along the way and give them the feedback.”

Galetti opened her first restaurant, Mere, with her sommelier husband David Galetti in March of this year, an experience she finds “exhausting yet rewarding”.

This is Galetti’s ninth year on the show.

Original article by Vicki Power, Daily Express, November 6, 2017.