Marion, You're Being Missed

Marion Grasby, my favorite person in Masterchef Australia Season 2, was eliminated from the competition earlier this week (well, the elimination really happened in July as that's when the series was being filmed but it's being telecast in India now).



Marion was tipped to win the competition by one & all. Even the contestants were convinced that she would win. She constantly kept winning team & individual challenges and invention tests. Everyone would want her on their team during the team challenges. She was also the only contestant to beat a professional chef in the Celebrity Chef challenge to win immunity, which she used to get herself out of another elimination challenge earlier in the show. That's how good she was!

Marion reacts after beating Chef Frank Camorra of 'Movida' restaurant

And then the unthinkable happened. The most bizarre elimination. I say bizarre because she got eliminated on the back of a Satay sauce. Marion is half Thai & half Australian, has a trained Thai chef for a mother, and has grown up cooking Thai food. So everyone expected her to come up with a brilliant Satay sauce. I guess she was having a bad day.

If what one reads on the net is to be believed, she's on her way to becoming a millionnaire! She's working on her range of Asian products & sauces and is apparently being chased by culinary houses to release her line with them, has landed a series of cookbook publishing deals, is being invited to various food events & product launches, and she's also rumored to be the face of Coles, an Australian supermarket chain!!

That's a lot of money for a girl who gave up a career in journalism to follow her dreams (how I wish more of us had the courage to do that!), and who admits she always wanted to start a food & wine bar along with her partner Tim, but didn't have the means to do so. And you know what, she deserves every cent of that money.

I hope her product range does really well and becomes available in India as well (I'm so buying!), and I also hope she gets to open her restaurant real soon.

Marion was a flavor cook. The dishes she produced had bursts of flavor, to the extent that the judges would complement her by saying "when you eat a dish made by Marion, you know it's by her". That I think is a huge compliment for a chef!

The sad part is that while such an exceptional cook as Marion is out of the competition, ordinary cooks such as Jimmy and Aaron remain. Jimmy can't cook anything except Indian and Aaron's good only with pasta. So it's very surprising that the judges would prefer to retain such average cooks and let go of a brilliant cook as Marion. Masterchef is just not the same without her. I miss watching her at work, I miss her dishes, her enthusiasm, her excitement, and her smile that goes right upto her eyes.