Following the shock departure of MasterChef judges George Calombaris, Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan just hours before last night’s nail-biting finale episode, speculation is rife about which celebrity chefs will take over from the beloved trio as hosts of Ten’s hugely popular cooking show.
George, Matt and Gary have fronted MasterChef for 11 years and yesterday announced that they were unable to successfully renegotiate their contracts and have chosen not to return in 2020.
So who will be called upon to replace them?
There are three names everyone is throwing around – former MasterChef runner-up Poh Ling Yeow, beloved cook Maggie Beer and renowned celebrity chef Curtis Stone.
All three stars appear regularly on MasterChef and are beloved by viewers, but are the rumours actually true?
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Channel 10 certainly hasn’t denied anything, issuing a very interesting statement early on Wednesday morning.
“Maggie, Curtis and Poh are loved members of the MasterChef family. We are currently casting the judges for 2020 and no decision has been made,” a Ten spokeswoman told Now To Love.
Also, MasterChef favourites Adam Liaw and Nigella Lawson both took to Twitter last night to throw acclaimed Aussie chef Kylie Kwong’s hat into the ring, and they’ve even suggested Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.
So, is there any truth to the rumours? We take a look at these amazing chefs and see if this gig is something they’d sign up for.
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Kylie Kwong
Kylie Kwong is one of Australia’s most well-loved chefs.
(Credit: Getty)Sydney chef Kylie Kwong would be a perfect pick as a new MasterChef judge, seeing as she just closed her acclaimed restaurant Billy Kwong in Sydney’s Potts Point.
Kylie also has a popular market stall at the Carriageworks Markets in Redfern on Saturday mornings.
She has appeared as a guest chef on MasterChef many times and also as a guest mentor.
Kylie is famous for her no-nonsense advice and with decades of experience in the food industry, would be the perfect choice as a judge.
Plus, it would be awesome to have a female judge on the show for the first time!
READ NEXT: Meet Kylie Kwong’s gorgeous wife and hear her heartbreaking stillbirth story
Poh Ling Yeow
Poh was one of the mentors during this year’s season of MasterChef.
(Credit: Ten)Poh is beloved by MasterChef fans, despite the fact that she was runner up to Julie Goodwin during the show’s premiere season in 2009.
Since then, Poh has starred in her own cooking show Poh’s Kitchen, published two cookbooks, launched another TV series Poh & Co with SBS and has garnered a whopping 112,000 Instagram followers.
The Adelaide native runs a popular gourmet food stall, Jamface by Poh, at the famous Adelaide Central Market.
This year, Poh served as a mentor on the show and reinforced her beloved status with viewers, with her calm, firm advice and no-nonsense approach.
She also sent tongues wagging when she debuted a brand new hairstyle that had some viewers speculating that she was wearing a wig.
And then she surprised everyone by chopping all of her hair off and rocking a brand new pixie cut!
If Poh can incite this much passion from MasterChef fans just by changing her hair, can you imagine the reaction if she was announced as a judge?!
Poh has no other big projects happening right now, so it would make sense for her to take on such an amazing gig.
We’re team Poh all the way.
READ NEXT: Poh responds to the rumours she’s wearing a wig on MasterChef
Maggie Beer
Who doesn’t love Maggie Beer?
(Credit: Ten)Is a cheese platter really complete without a chunk of Maggie Beer’s insanely delicious quince paste?
The beloved Aussie cook is a regular on MasterChef, often appearing as a guest judge and conducting amazing cooking master classes that have us salivating, but she’s also an incredible entrepreneur with a wildly successful range of gourmet food products sold at supermarket and fancy grocers around the country.
Maggie has extensive experience as a judge on cooking shows, having starred alongside fellow Aussie chef Matt Moran as a judge on The Great Australian Bake Off and she’s also been a guest quiz master on Have You Been Paying Attention?
So Channel 10’s execs would have faith that Maggie knows TV and can absolutely nail that judge role.
Maggie lives in the Barossa Valley in Adelaide, SA, with her husband Colin, so would be required to travel to MasterChef’s studios in Melbourne for filming.
We also love the idea of an older woman landing a huge prime time TV role, because we don’t see enough of that in this country!
Curtis Stone
Curtis Stone is currently based in LA with his family.
(Credit: Ten)While Curtis Stone is a beloved Aussie chef, you might be surprised to hear that he actually isn’t based in Australia.
He’s married to American actress Lindsay Price and the couple live in LA with their two sons.
Curtis is flat out in LA managing his two wildly successful restaurants, Maude, in Beverly Hills, which was awarded a Michelin Star this year, and his second restaurant Gwen, in Hollywood.
He regularly shared updates from his LA kitchens with his 484,000 Instagram followers and clearly travelling in the northern hemisphere with his family.
While Curtis is also a regular on MasterChef and clearly travels back to Australia for work commitments – he is an ambassador for Coles – we think it’s unlikely the beloved family man would leave his successful restaurants and take his two young sons out of school to move to Australia for the hosting gig.
But speaking to TV WEEK in May ahead of his recent return to the series as a guest judge, Curtis did gush about his love for the show.
“I always like coming back and doing MasterChef, it’s such a fun show to be a part of,” Curtis said.
“I probably shouldn’t feel like this but I kind of feel like part of the family. It’s been cool not only see all the contestants to sort of blossom out of it, but also be such a big part of the judges’ and boys lives, as it’s become what it’s become and watch them do so well. It’s awesome.
“There’s no other show that I’ve been a guest on in the past decade and this is the one that always, whenever I get that call saying do you want to come back for MasterChef, my answer is always yes. It’s a very positive, inspiring show.”
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