Before chefs and reality TV contestants became famous on television faster than two-minute noodles came to the boil, British charmer Ainsley Harriott was cavorting with pots and pans.
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The luminous chef motivated people to walk on the wild side with ingredients before Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver built TV and cookbook empires and the title "celebrity chef" was as common as a white apron.
Harriott was beamed into living rooms in the 1990s on Britain's Good Morning with Anne and Nick, then hosted the pioneering Ready Steady Cook from 2000 to 2010, and did an entertaining quickstep with Bert Newton on Good Morning Australia.
Prancing less these days at the age of 58, Harriott is still as gregarious as ever, saying: "The smile never goes away." Foodies will be able to marinate in his aura when he comes to Melbourne for the 15th Good Food & Wine Show from June 5-8 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
"The great thing about coming to Melbourne is that people talk about Sydney being the food capital but Melbourne is a lot more; it has that residential feel, a feeling of homeliness," Harriott said. "When you go to restaurants, it's known as a creative, artistic city. That's what you get with the food."
Reflecting on the success of Ready, Steady Cook, the program that first screened in Australia in 2005 on Channel Ten, he said it was a raw format with real cooking time, unlike the "edited, edited, edited" MasterChef and The Great British Bake Off.
Harriott, the author of 12 books, believes the ascendancy of TV shows such as My Kitchen Rules and MasterChef has improved the way people have dinner parties and made them more experimental at restaurants. And we've become healthier by frying less food.
Finger on the pulse
For Harriott's new TV show, Street Food, which premiered in Britain on May 17, he travelled the globe for tasty bites and connected with food bloggers, the self-appointed arbiters of what's hot or not who tend to become the "hero" of their own Instagram hashtag.
Bloggers are rustled up by mesmerised businesses and public relations companies but their influence is questionable and unquantifiable, given social media followers can be bought to boost a blog's power. Nonetheless, Harriott believes in the youth blogging culture, saying: "It's almost like having your own personal food PA. When you arrive in the country, you can get hold of these bloggers and they tell you what is happening there and now. In the old days, you'd buy a magazine."
With heads down in the hashtagging microcosm, he added: "You feel like you've got your finger on the pulse. It's like seeing a movie before everyone else has seen it. I think anything is good that introduces food to people and brings food to people."
Apart from the dried-ice abracadabra of Heston Blumenthal, Harriott believes food hasn't changed that much and just gets jazzed up. Regarding the breathless hype of superfoods, kale "has been around for a while" and couscous "has been around forever" but he added: "I like the fact that people are constantly challenging themselves and giving the diner something different."
Foodies joining Harriott with cooking demonstrations at the Good Food & Wine Show's "Good Food Theatre" are Movida's Frank Camorra, Saint Crispin's Joe Grbac, Woodland House's Hayden McFarland, The Living Room's Miguel Maestre, SBS identities Silvia Colloca and Adam Liaw, author Sarah Wilson and 2011 My Kitchen Rules winners Sammy and Bella Jakubiak.
In Harriott's masterclass, he will cook the nutritious food that he eats and discuss its health benefits. Expect oily fish, beetroot, chicken and shrikhand, the yoghurt-based Indian dessert.
Bringing exotic food to the people for two decades, Harriott is chuffed to have been at the forefront of inspiration, saying "It's a culinary journey and it ain't going to go away."
