The cooking competition show, MasterChef has been airing for way too long and throughout the years, the show has managed to find for itself a separate fanbase who enjoy the stressful situations within the show and prefer to watch it as casual entertainment. While we may not understand how these fans function, we can clear up for you the 2019 controversy that surrounded the show right after it aired its grand finale.
This reality show started off as just a cooking competition show but has now turned into a phenomenon for people who love cooking and want to get ahead in the field. The show has gained so much popularity that it has gotten extended into so many different versions with each country bringing its own twist to it.
The show has somewhat of a cult following with passionate fans keeping up with and following every move of the contestants and the judges, making sure to call them out if they will something is not right or unfair. The eleventh season of MasterChef Australia saw similar heat and backlash from fans right after the show ended with its grand finale.
The last episode of this tough reality series announced Larissa Takchi as the winner, who also happened to be the youngest contestant on that season of the show. At the time of bagging the first prize, Larissa was revealed to be only twenty-two years old, the youngest person to have ever won the first position on MasterChef Australia. This remains true even for the present moment.
But while Larissa was happy with her success and busy celebrating the moment with her loved ones, fans were fuming because they did not seem to agree with the final decision at all. If you are curious to find out what the controversy was with the eleventh season’s winner, then continue reading till the end.
Larissa Takchi’s Controversy
At the time MasterChef Australia was airing the finale episode of its eleventh season, Larissa Takchi was pitted against the remaining two contestants, Tessa Boersma and Simon Toohey. The two were older than Larissa, and to the audience looked more experienced as well. The show has made it clear that it looks for contestants and even selects those who have almost no professional experience in cooking whatsoever.
They prefer people who have only indulged in cooking at home and have not yet refined their skills through proper training. And while the show tries to uphold this rule as much as possible, two controversies around Larissa Takchi came up as soon as she was crowned the winner. One of the controversies had people questioning if the channel had even kept to its rules or not.
Larissa not only bagged a monetary prize of $250,000 but also received a sparkling new Holden Equinox and a one-year permanent column in the Delicious magazine. While Tessa Boersma placed second and she gracefully accepted the results, fans wasted no time in coming to defend her on Twitter. Many called out the makers of the show for showing favoritism toward Larissa.
Some agreed that the show was trying to push the agenda of having found the youngest brilliant chef on the show. Fans could not believe that the simple dessert that the twenty-two-year-old had prepared had somehow gotten full scores, while the others with their complex dishes could not even match her score.
The season was called out for being rigged and ridiculously scripted, with many strongly believing that Larissa should have been eliminated from the show way back. Another controversy that came up surrounding Larissa was one where people questioned her cooking skills, asking if she had any professional experience before.
Fans of the show noticed how she would talk about her own family’s sweet shop, urging her social media followers to visit the shop and try their sweets. Fans believed that Larissa had probably trained at the shop and even made desserts for the shop as could be seen on her social media pages. If she had a professional experience then it did not make sense for her to be on the show as it was against their rules, and the fact that she even got to win was even more ridiculous.
Channel 10 which airs MasterChef Australia made a statement regarding this claiming that she was, after all, a rookie with no experience. They continued to push this statement despite the piling evidence though the fan’s outrage seemed to have no impact on the show and the results.
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