very interesting on masterchef australia elimination rounds when the challenge is "cook a dish from your family history" and, e.g., the first- or second-gen asian contestants end up at an advantage while the white australian contestants who grew up eating nan's overcooked beef mince in underseasoned tomato sauce have no real repository to draw on. it's always a white guy getting eliminated. andy allen is famous for teaching himself to cook because his family served up the creme de la creme of 1980s white australian ready-made excellence and that's the culinary heritage these contestants have. masterchef is in this interesting position of constantly elevating and calling back to "nostalgia" and "memory" as touchstones, "celebrating" the "traditional australian" staples like pavlova etc., while also making sure to uphold the melting-pot virtue of immigration and multiculturalism, but inadvertently their challenges end up showing how 2/3 of these categories, the culinary "nostalgia/memory" of non-white australians & their immigrant relatives, cast the culinary heritage of "traditional australia" (to say NOTHING of how the show deals with indigeneity) into doubt as a thing even worth cooking. i don't think they're being "subversive" on purpose but the message that invariably comes across is just "these dishes we revere as Classic Australian Food Taste Like Shit Compared To Any Cuisine Except, Like, The UK & Ireland" lol













