Who should win this year's MasterChef: The Professionals final?
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Version 0 of 1. They’ve manhandled cuttlefish and mille feuille. They’ve cooked in some of the most intimidating kitchens in the world. They’ve somehow managed to avoid spending very much time with Gregg Wallace. But on Tuesday, Sven-Hanson Britt, Jamie Scott and Brian McLeish will face their sternest challenge yet – the 2014 MasterChef: The Professionals final. Actually, that’s cobblers. If you’ve ever seen a MasterChef final before, you’ll know that tonight’s episode is likely to be comprised of 75% hamfisted This Is Your Life rip-offs, 15% tortured deliberation, 8% unnecessarily elegiac music and 2% celebratory clinking of champagne glasses. If any actual cookery happens, it’ll probably be accidental. Sven, Jamie and Brian have already done all the donkey work. Tonight, really, is just an hour-long dramatic pause before the winner is revealed. So this is the perfect opportunity to reflect upon this year’s MasterChef: The Professionals series in general. Before it began, I was bracing myself for the worst. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t see how Marcus Wareing – whose stock in trade until that point had involved clomping on to other shows, throwing a tantrum like a beardy Veruca Salt, bursting into flames and then vanishing – could replace lovely twinkly Michel Roux Jr. As usual, my fears were unfounded. Broadly speaking, Wareing has been a delight. Casting aside the wild-eyed tyrant of old, he’s been funny, thoughtful and charming. He hasn’t managed to convince everyone – some hold-outs still see him as the culinary equivalent of Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter, weasling his way into our affections purely to commit atrocities at a later date. However, I have a feeling that we might actually be seeing the real Wareing, for once. I hope so, at least, because all that egomania really didn’t suit him. Better yet, Wareing’s introduction has done wonders for Monica Galetti. She was always the show’s highlight but, without Michel Roux around, Monica no longer has to scrape and bow to her employer. She can do more than just screw up her face in cartoon disgust. She gets to present now, and she’s great at it. In fact, the highlights of the series have come when Gregg Wallace has wandered off to spend the afternoon slapping his belly or dribbling against a cake-shop sneezeguard or whatever, and left Marcus and Monica to do all the heavy lifting. Back to the final, though. Sven, Jamie and Brian are three very different chefs. Jamie is just unstoppably endearing, happy and effusive and constantly primed to drop a Star Wars reference into the conversation. Sven, meanwhile, is more confident, to the extent that his ambition sometimes tips over into ugly entitlement. Then there’s Brian, who occupies the awkward middle ground. What they do have in common, though, is a highly visible sense of progression. The learning curve has been steeper than usual this year, but all three finalists have managed to take something from each task. Their technique has been honed and honed and, by the time they took part in last Thursday’s ridiculous semi-final – where they went to Spain, ate mould and were asked to absorb and replicate an experimental high-concept restaurant’s entire ethos after just a morning’s training – each of them looked like a serious contender. So who will win? It’s a hard one to call. My head’s saying Sven, but my heart’s saying Jamie. Whoever wins, though, the most important thing is that MasterChef: The Professionals hasn’t been in this good shape for years. |