“Temper!” Colin interjects. “He got grumpy. I’d opened some beers about two weeks before and it sprayed on him when he was cooking kingfish. He’s the sort of person who holds on to things for weeks.”
“Some people call it revenge,” shrugs Manu. “I call it karma.”
Manu and Colin say season two of Off The Grid is a wild ride. Photo / Babiche Martens
One thing the two Sydney-based chefs, both 52, do agree on is that season two of Off The Grid is a wild ride. There’s a helicopter flight across Fiordland, a kaimoana cook-up on Ninety Mile Beach and pig hunting on the banks of the Whanganui River.
Colin says the hunting episode is “great TV” but may be confronting for some.
“One way to conserve the environment is to kill these wild pigs because they root out the kiwi nests,” says Colin. “They’re a problem and they must be gotten rid of, but there’s going to be blowback because it’s pretty full on!
“They hunt them with dogs. In the end, we got one and you can’t shoot it because it’s in the forest with the dog, so you do it with a knife. Then we carried the boar out of the forest.”
It’s one of their many exhilarating Aotearoa adventures, which are also peppered with moments of real significance. This season, they’re gifted pounamu at a settlement near Ohakune, where rangatahi are taught to farm, hunt and cook.
“We spent a day with these guys and they gave us new stones,” says Irish-born Colin. “My stone had a sort of a weaving, which was Celtic. The guy said he was related to the Irish and his grandfather who passed on the stone to him was a cobbler. I started to tear up because my dad had a shoe shop and he’d fix them as well. They said to me the stone finds the person – I was just blown away.”
Stillness is rare for the MKR pair, who are filming a new season of the hit cooking competition. Asked how it will compare to MasterChef, Manu looks puzzled.
“What’s MasterChef?” he asks, smiling. “That’s the one where they all cry? They’re two different shows. They can be competitive, but one is very focused on the food and one’s focused on entertaining. Both shows have got a place on the screen and we’ve never compared ourselves, but we’ve been rating much better than them for years, so the proof is in the pudding!”
Both chefs love visiting New Zealand. Photo / Babiche Martens
As part of embracing the intensity of their filming schedules, both have a new practice they swear by.
“We swim in the ocean early in the morning, which is our new medicine,” shares Manu. “When you’re busy, you forget about yourself a little bit, but the ocean is one of the things that remind us that we’re alive and it’s beautiful.”
Colin agrees, “We’re big into mental health because we’re at that age where we’ve just been working and working, then we stop and we’re like, ‘I need to look after myself.’ We talk and are very open about everything.”
Now they resolve conflict and stress with communication.
“Or he punches me in the face,” laughs Colin. “Manu has a capsule in his head that stores ‘things Colin did to annoy me’. But we also have a little time apart as well.
“Doing two shows together, we need a break, but then we end up having Christmas together with our families because our wives get on. We’re also going away to [food festival] Taste of Port Douglas and my daughter’s looking after his daughter.”
Both chefs love visiting New Zealand and like to boast they should have Kiwi passports by now, but for Manu, the dream may become a reality in his retirement.
“My wife and I are talking about the New Zealand path,” he grins. “You can buy something beautiful, not be crowded and not have people jumping on you, and that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
Off The Grid With Colin And Manu screens 7.30pm Sundays on TVNZ 1 and streams on TVNZ+.