This year students from the Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish programmes, and a team from the Victoria International Leadership Programme (VILP), were challenged with the theme Rice to the Occasion. All teams had two hours to produce a staple rice dish from the culture of the language they are learning.
While preparing their meal students only spoke their respective languages and were enthusiastically supported by teaching staff from Victoria.
The judging panel comprised of representatives of various embassies, Victoria senior management and local food experts David Burton from Le Cordon Bleu and Roberto Giorgioni from Bongusto who assessed the dishes on taste and presentation.
The VILP team took away the top spot with its beautiful plate of ‘Intercultural Tapas’, closely followed by the French team’s dessert ‘Verrines à la Parisienne’ and the Japanese team’s celebratory ‘scattered’ sushi ‘ちらし寿司 Chirashizushi’.
The School of Languages and Cultures would like to thank Pro Vice-Chancellor (International Engagement) Professor Rob Rabel, the VILP team and Marco Sonzogni for his vision and perseverance. For the second year in a row, Graham Bloxham from Social Cooking hosted the teams and VIP guests in his kitchen on the waterfront.
This event would not have been possible without generous support from those mentioned above which enables Multilingual Masterchef to be a firm fixture in the events’ calendar of language students and global citizens of Victoria University.