It’s noon at the Queen Victoria Market, mid-way through Andy Allen and Ben Milbourne’s month-long eating epic across Australia, and the crowd lining up at the American Doughnut Kitchen is about to get a taste of food TV, 2017 style.
The first-names-only pair is ambling through the late-November throngs like any couple of young guys with a mutual love of food and denim - except for the two cameramen weaving backwards in front of them, trying not to bump into shoppers as they capture the duo taking their place in the queue and insisting the young woman behind the counter takes their money as she waves it politely away.
A taste of the debut season of Andy and Ben Eat Australia - the successor to 2015’s Andy and Ben Eat the World - it’s cinema verite gone foodie: a likeable warts-and-all, blooper-friendly antidote to the high-gloss productions that scramble for screen time.
The food genre is too polished and we're trying to show the looseness.
Key word? Likeability. It’s the new X-factor, and it means Andy and Ben have won the game in straight sets thanks to a couple of telegenic faces, wide grins, an easy-going manner and relatable ethos (Milbourne’s motto: “Cook like you don’t have to clean”).
Conveniently perched on the demographic cusp of Gen X and Y - they’re aged 28 and 34 respectively - Allen and Milbourne’s lives were changed in classic clichéd MasterChef style when Allen won the fourth series, in which Milbourne also appeared. Their friendship cemented during filming, they’re among the vanguard of homegrown TV food stars who came of age professionally in an era in which food has become a cross-cultural medium of mass entertainment.
Not that the MasterChef connection is a particularly crucial one four years after the event. Allen is now a part of NSW’s Three Blue Ducks tribe and a co-owner of their Roseberry restaurant; Milbourne runs a cooking school in his native Tasmania and has produced two cookbooks.
As Milbourne concedes, “MasterChef - that's the parent that gave birth to us but this approach we’re taking now, where it’s not all polished reshoots, is worlds apart.”
The Food Network’s first foray into first-run local content, Andy & Ben Eat Australia loosely follows the format of Andy and Ben Eat the World, in which they travelled through Spain, Mexico and Portugal chasing the elusive notion of the perfect dish, visiting markets and chefs along the way and doing the odd cook-up. It sounds similar in form, but they insist it’s worlds apart in execution.
Source: Andy and Ben Eat Australia, Food Network
“As much as we loved doing that, we thought it was time to come home and do something in our backyard,” says Allen. “It's so much easier to get shit done if you can speak the language. You can have as many fixers as you want but overseas it's a tough game. It's much easier to travel and much easier to film here. We can come to a place like (the Queen Victoria market), pick up some ingredients, stop on the side of the road and do an amazing cook whereas you just can't do it there.”
So how do you stay ahead of the crowded food TV pack? That’s where the freewheeling nature of the show comes into it. There are strictly no reshoots, which not only keeps the budget and shooting time down, but adds to the invaluable sense of authenticity. “The more we work the more we find this is the way we want to do it,” says Allen, “because this is a real experience. Not saying other shows aren't real experiences but this is as real as it gets.”
It’s one that’s not without its share of headaches. There’s a tense moment waiting to see if the South American pan-pipe band will finish their busking set before the boys arrive for their doughnut stop, but all bloopers are dealt with in their typically insouciant fashion.
“The advance team go ahead and make sure the space is okay, the lighting is okay. They will feed that back to the camera guys and we just get told to go, so we go and capture the real experience. If there's not enough to edit then we just have to deal with it,” says Milbourne.
“This show … mistakes are shown. The walls are broken now in entertainment and that's what we're trying to show. The food genre is too polished and we're trying to show the looseness.”
Because this is a real experience. Not saying other shows aren't real experiences but this is as real as it gets.
An Australia-wide journey, Andy and Ben Eat Australia features a number of episodes in each state, involving a visit to a leading restaurant in each capital city (in Hobart it was Franklin; in Melbourne, Coda, and in Adelaide, Africola) and producers, markets and chef identities thrown in for good measure. On that count, Andy and Ben are happy they’ve been accepted by the cheffing fraternity despite their made-for-TV origins.
“We have our own careers going on in the industry now,” says Allen. “The chefs and producers we talk to know that we’re in it for the love of food and for the industry. They know we’re not just doing it for the fame or to be TV presenters. Really, we’re anything but TV presenters.”
Andy and Ben Eat Australia premieres Wednesday 15 February, 9:30pm, on Food Network.
