Seafood as sculpture, as created on Taste of Art, the new television show that challenges local professional chefs to create edible masterpieces.<\/p>\n
Leong (Dessert Masters and ex-MasterChef Australia) shares the judging table with Vaughan Mabee. One of just 126 chefs from around the world to receive a \u201cthree knives\u201d ranking at the 2025 Best Chef Awards, Mabee is famous for food that confounds. At Queenstown\u2019s Amisfield (where at least one of the new show\u2019s contestants has previously worked), one of the executive chef\u2019s signature desserts looks like the severed head of a p\u016btangitangi or paradise shelduck \u2013 cut it open and it \u201cbleeds\u201d wild elderberry gel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done MasterChef,\u201d says Mabee. \u201cMelissa\u2019s probably done too much MasterChef, and it\u2019s just so different. I don\u2019t even think you can compare it … this is just super creative, no holds barred. They have the option to do whatever is in their heart and their mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the visuals made for naturally spectacular television, there were other constraints. Sample chef dialogue? \u201cf****** nailed it!\u201d says one contestant to another.<\/p>\n
It is a safe bet Taste of Art contains more bleeped dialogue than your average amateur television cooking competition, but production crew also had to contend with quicker \u2013 and quieter \u2013 work benches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are professionally trained chefs who put their head down and focus,\u201d says Leong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge for us was to get them to open up and be chatty, because we\u2019re still making a TV show. Their job is to focus. I mean, if any of them were working for Vaughan and just chatting and narrating their own cooking …\u201d<\/p>\n
Mabee: \u201cWhen there\u2019s silence in a kitchen, usually that\u2019s a kitchen that\u2019s running really well. But that\u2019s not ideal for a show!\u201d<\/p>\n
Contestants on television’s Taste of Art. From left: Ankita and Tan (Tamarind), Josh and Bailey (Aosta), Giulio and Pier (Toast & Oak), Tommy and Dani (Tala) and Yashan and Roy (independent). <\/p>\n
The judges had to watch monitors intently so they could swoop in on any action. \u201cYou want to talk about a sauce that is in development,\u201d says Leong. \u201cAnd that sauce is done, it\u2019s out of there, it\u2019s cleaned down … they were almost too efficient!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mabee: \u201cSome of them run the country\u2019s top three hat restaurants. You would go over to their station and wonder \u2013 are they doing a lot? They were very clean.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judges are speaking to the Herald from their respective homes in Queenstown and Melbourne. Leong, who worked in marketing and was a freelance food writer before becoming MasterChef Australia\u2019s first female judge, recalls Mabee picking her up on her first day in Aotearoa.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018we\u2019re going to go for lunch, and we\u2019re just going to hang out\u2019.\u201d On the shores of Lake Hayes, with the Remarkables mountain range reflected in the water, he told her this was where he came to think.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor someone to be that open and honest, immediately, it means a lot to me. I think that really set us up for success. There\u2019s a level of trust and vulnerability. There\u2019s no small talk with us, is there Vaughan?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mabee might have been an artist. In the United States as a young chef, he also studied photography, painting and sculpture.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother was an artist when she was young. My brother\u2019s a painter, my father is an incredible drawer … my family is quite a creative family. And, yeah, I\u2019d love to be an artist because then I could be in a shed at home painting all the time, and it\u2019d be easier for me to go down and say \u2018hi\u2019 to people, but that\u2019s just not the way it ended up. I thrive or I feel my best when I am creating something. That excites me. I always cook for myself, I cook for my eyes, and then I hope normal people like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mabee says fine dining is a \u201cdifficult realm\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to own your own original philosophy that moves you away from everyone else, so you can create a story through food and product and art that entices the kind of people that enjoy those kinds of restaurants to come to you from around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not interested in doing something unless it first tastes amazing. And then, if there\u2019s this really funky, cool story about how I got that thing, then that\u2019s the basis of presenting it in an extraordinary, artistic way which doesn\u2019t, in any way, denounce the flavour and the special product you are using.\u201d<\/p>\n
The teams on Taste of Art, he says, have created some \u201cserious surprises \u2013 I think it\u2019ll be an inspiration to chefs, and I think it will be exciting for everyone to watch\u201d.<\/p>\n
Save the Turtle \u2013 one of the dishes created for Taste of Art \u2013 included edible straws, charred pavlova and beetroot sorbet.<\/p>\n
Leong, meanwhile, says the food was the best she has eaten in a decade of television judging. Her own contribution to the production table was the decidedly more humble (but no less locally sourced) cheese roll.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not aware of \u2018Southland sushi\u2019 until this trip. And that was eye-opening and possibly stopped my heart for a minute!\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair also cooked for the crew, using an ingredient ingrained in Mabee\u2019s food memory banks, circa 1985.<\/p>\n
Mabee: \u201cI don\u2019t know if this is legal … my grandfather taught us how to shine a dolphin light off the back of the boat and then me and my little brother would just catch the whitebait with nets … we\u2019d put them in buckets of water.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, in the morning, my dad would whip one egg and then pile heaps of whitebait on top, but it\u2019s all alive … he would have a big cast iron pan and put a big bunch of butter in there. He would throw the fritters in the pan and as they would hit, a few whitebait would jump out. We\u2019d joke around and say \u2018if it doesn\u2019t jump, it\u2019s not fresh\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the key to a truly great whitebait fritter (and the way he served them for the Taste of Art team): \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have the worst possible white bread. Kiwis with refined white bread with seafood is definitely a thing. That\u2019s like our tortilla!\u201d<\/p>\n
While restaurants routinely transform and subvert ingredients, both Leong and Mabee agree that some foods are already works of art that do not require the intervention of a chef.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m obsessed with New Zealand kina,\u201d says Leong. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to do anything to it. It is its own flavour. It\u2019s perfectly seasoned, the texture is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mabee adds: \u201cAn oyster from Bluff. It\u2019s already got the creaminess, the salinity, the brininess. That shell \u2013 it\u2019s already captured its own umami party. Don\u2019t mess with that. I don\u2019t even put lemon on it, I\u2019m sucking it straight out of the shell.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says: \u201cThere\u2019s an artistry to cooking for sure\u201d, and at its extreme end are \u201cthe rogue chefs who should have been artists, but never picked up a paintbrush\u201d.<\/p>\n
Leong: \u201cI would say that a successful restaurant needs two kinds of chefs. It needs a creative leader, but it also requires soldiers. If you have an entire brigade of rogue artists, you\u2019re never going to have cohesion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagyu and mushrooms, reimagined as A Walk in the Wilderness \u2013 one of the dishes created for Taste of Art, a new Vaughan Mabee and Melissa Leong-hosted television cooking competition.<\/p>\n
Taste of Art, says Leong, begs the question: \u201cYou\u2019ve worked all your hours, you\u2019ve ended up becoming a sous chef or a head chef or an executive chef, but do you have the capacity to bring art to life on cue? Not just copy someone else\u2019s work, not just replicate what you\u2019ve learned, but really, genuinely, create in the moment?\u201d<\/p>\n
And while most of us will never spin honey into a glow-in-the-dark candyfloss cloud, Leong says amateurs can absolutely up their plating game. <\/p>\n
\u201cGod knows we all take a million bloody photos of our food \u2013 look at those photos and think about what makes it work. A home cook\u2019s natural instinct is to kind of lay everything out in disparate forms. When you look at the way that food is plated in a restaurant, things are grouped thoughtfully … it immediately draws your eye. Grouping things more tightly is a really simple thing you can do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other thing is to show restraint. Clearly I love maximalism \u2013 but, sometimes, don\u2019t put things on things!\u201d<\/p>\n
Quick fire: Vaughan and Melissa on …<\/p>\n
Parsley garnish<\/p>\n
Mabee: I\u2019ve always hated a sprig of parsley. I chop parsley.<\/p>\n
Checkerboard salads<\/p>\n
Leong: I mean, look, if that\u2019s your aesthetic, I\u2019m not going to yuck your yum …<\/p>\n
Failure<\/p>\n
Leong: It\u2019s really interesting, watching highly trained people in any field deal with Plan A not going accordingly.<\/p>\n
Eating on camera<\/p>\n
Mabee: I\u2019m clueless. I\u2019m just waiting for a shot with a couple of whitebait hanging off my beard.<\/p>\n
Art<\/p>\n
Leong: Fashion is wearable art, food is ephemeral, consumable art. You have the more enduring pieces on the wall … we can over-existentialise what art means and how to create, but what does it make you feel?<\/p>\n
Taste of Art starts on Thursday, February 19, 7.30pm, TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+<\/p>\n
Kim Knight is a senior journalist on the New Zealand Herald\u2019s lifestyle desk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seafood as sculpture, as created on Taste of Art, the new television show that challenges local professional chefs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[95,1228,806,154246,53988,156,564,25139,33213,11113,154244,25140,154245,74216,45393,111,139,69,1118,90,1305,23367,48499,11408,437,88697,8238,86365],"class_list":["post-273225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-and","tag-art","tag-as","tag-candyfloss","tag-chefs","tag-entertainment","tag-food","tag-glow","tag-honey","tag-kitchen","tag-leong","tag-lights","tag-mabee","tag-melissa","tag-mnuka","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-show","tag-studio","tag-taste","tag-testing","tag-tv","tag-ultraviolet","tag-under","tag-vaughan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}