Food critics feed festival crowd
Wed 18 May 2011
Matthew Cleghorn, Post-Graduate Certificate in Communication
Australian food critics battled head to head on Saturday May 14, 2011, in the peoples’ choice cooking challenge at the eighth annual Noosa Food and Wine Festival.
Contestants, including MasterChef television show host Matt Preston and The Daily Telegraph food writer Simon Thomsen, impressed the 10,000 strong crowd by serving-up a range of personally prepared dishes in a hotly contested competition.
The critics-turned-chefs presented generous samples of simple dishes for the guests at the picnic style event, hosted in perfect weather conditions on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
Among some of the dishes presented were “maple hot smoked huan salmon with fried rice” from Larissa Dubecki of The Age, and Simon Thomsen’s Lao inspired “ ‘Wild River’ barramundi and sticky rice”.
Many in the crowd were eager to sample defending champion Matt Preston’s offering, with a queue stretching across the festival site for the MasterChef judge’s "slow cooked pork shoulder, chipotle mayo and corn salsa in hand-rolled tortilla”. 
Fonty’s Pool Wines representative Paul McArdle was impressed by the hard work of the television celebrity, who was in the neighboring stall.
“They’ve done more business in 10 minutes than I’ve done in two hours,” Mr McArlde said.
“Just goes to show what a bit of celebrity can do.”
Earlier in the day Mr Preston was joined by the other MasterChef hosts Matt Moran and Gary Mehigan in the Courier-Mail lifestyle annex, taking part in a discussion on the making of the show and how its popularity was affecting Australian food culture.
Mr Moran and Mr Mehigan told the crowd how the pace of working in television was very different to their work as restaurateurs, and how it affected them on the set of the show.
“As a chef, everything’s instantaneous...your constantly on the go, never a moment to stop,” Mr Mehigan said.
“Where as in television it’s a very slow 15 hour day.
“Occasionally you’ll see George [Calombaris] just drift off.
“He’s like a Koala.”
While acknowledging the success of their show, the hosts recognised pioneers of food television, and said that MasterChef was definitely not the only force shaping the resurgent interest in food culture.
Mr Preston said while MasterChef was being credited for a good deal of things like getting families to sit down for dinner together, many great people had paved the way for its success.
“I think to claim that it’s all MasterChef would be to ignore the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants like Stephanie Alexander and Jamie Oliver,” Mr Preston said.
“ ...there’s [sic] been loads of people putting their shoulder against the door for some time... MasterChef just snuck in, clicked the lock and let them in.”
As the day drew to a close the winner of the critics challenge award was chosen by the crowd with the event MC, ABC radio announcer Simon Marnie, using a sound meter app on his iPhone to judge the loudness of the audience’s cheering and applause for the critics’ dishes.
The Courier-Mail's food writer Margie Frasier narrowly edged out Larissa Dubecki from The Age by one decibel, with her dish of grilled Gold Coast tiger prawns, Thai salad with tamarind dressing and local Kingaroy peanuts.
Queensland Minister for Tourism, Manufacturing and Small Business Jan Jarratt was on hand to present Mrs Frasier with the award.
At the award ceremony Mrs Frasier said she and her team had cooked over 2000 of the Queensland farmed tiger prawns.
“We ran out very quickly,” Mrs Frasier said while thanking her team for their effort in the competition.
The event was heralded a success by organisers, with over 26,000 people visiting the festival site over the weekend, and about 70 per cent of visitors from interstate or overseas.
Ms Jarratt said it was a great boost for south-east Queensland business’s struggling in the current slow economic market.
“The value of these events to tourism is of such a high value it’s hard to put a figure on it,” Ms Jarratt said.
“There were a number of events on the 
Sunshine Coast this weekend...they really bring people to the area for that return visitation.
“We’re working really, really hard to make sure we go right through this year with reasonable accommodation figures and people taking tours...it’s such a beautiful area.
“It was a stunning day...If you ordered a day to have an event, that would be it.”
Image(s) designed by Matthew Cleghorn