Chapter 1: What is Sofia Levin's journey to becoming a MasterChef judge?
A listener production.
Hey, it's Chris Spear with you. Welcome to The Weekend Briefing, where we get to know the humans behind the headlines. And the human joining me this weekend is someone who has what a lot of people, myself included, would consider a dream job, getting paid to eat.
I actually adore these flavours. The whiskey caramel, it is really punchy with that whiskey, but it's also got this kind of marzipan, amaretto back note to it that I think is extremely sophisticated. Yeah. But the textures, it's kind of like eating a dessert soup.
Now, Sophia Levin does a lot more than just eat. She's a seasoned food critic and presenter who is one of the judges on MasterChef Australia. And while she says she's no Nigella Lawson, she can and will drop words that'll make you think otherwise. Now, Sophia is back on our screens this Sunday when MasterChef returns for its 18th season.
And in this chat, she dishes on how she landed that dream gig and what she's learned from sharing a tasting bench with names like Po Ling Yao, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and most importantly...
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Chapter 2: How does Sofia describe her experience as a food critic?
most recently, Robert Irwin. But we go beyond the MasterChef kitchen and all things food and get into how she ran a, quote, Spice Girl dictatorship, her love of travel, and also losing her dad to motor neuron disease, a disease she's now committed more than ever to helping find a cure for.
And a little later in the show is, of course, the weekend list where Sacha Babagat and Helen Smith will recommend what to watch, see, do, eat and listen to. But first, here's my chat with the wonderful Sophia Levin. Sophia Levin, welcome to The Weekend Briefing.
Thank you for having me.
Alright, so I've been looking at the official labels that the world and the media like to give you in the lead up to this episode and the main ones obviously are MasterChef Judge, Culinary Travel Journalist and a 30-something year old Melburnian. I really like that last one, that one, because I was like, is she trying to hide her age or whatever is the mystery? I love it.
But my goal for us is to come up with three new descriptors, fresh descriptors that the world can use to describe you. And I want you to kick us off with the first one. What is the first descriptor?
Insatiable.
Okay. Look, I've got my pen handy, so I'm writing it down.
That's the qualifier, isn't it? There needs to be a second word.
Okay. I'm glad you're using words that are not in my vocabulary already.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Sofia face in her culinary career?
Unquenchable is hilarious.
Oh, I was trying to use the drink version of insatiable. But basically you're always wanting more, always wanting more, never fully, completely fulfilled. It's just a constant search. And it can be, you know, you can be insatiably hungry, which means you're a bottomless pit, which is true. But then you can be insatiable for fun, for knowledge, for anything really.
What are you insatiable for? I love that you used hunger as well, because that's part of the reason I no longer watch MasterChef, because I struggle with seeing food that I'm not allowed to eat. But what are you insatiable for?
I am insatiable for food, but specifically food that teaches and brings a new experience. Like I'm always digging, always looking for things I haven't tried before because the world is just full of them and we will never know all of them. You can't possibly do it in a single life. But I think being based in Melbourne, in Australia, we are really lucky to have a little bit of everything as well.
You're kind of lucky as well in Melbourne. I want to unpack the 30-something-year-old Melburnian as well. You were born and raised in Melbourne. You've kind of watched the food scene shift. Melbourne's very cool when it comes to food. At least for me, I've always kind of known it as the cool food scene. I've always seen it as like... I'm from Sydney. Sydney's the oldest sibling.
Sydney's kind of got like a lot going for her. She's pretty. She's traditionally cute. And then you've got Melbourne who's like, here's my personality. Here's my food scene. What do you love about Melbourne though?
Yeah, I think you're right.
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Chapter 4: How did Sofia cope with her father's diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease?
And I'm glad you said it because now it doesn't look like I'm just biased saying it. But Melbourne is a great food city. I think it's one of the best food cities in the world. And I think it's because unless you're First Nations, most of us are from somewhere else. We're just ā we've got this ā a long history of migration.
And when people move to a new place, they bring their food or they bring a version of their food. And so I think having that diversity in Melbourne, that brings us so many things, not just food, different trades, different ways of looking at the world, different ways that families and friends gather. different customs.
And I think that's the real interest in the colour of Melbourne is that you can walk down the street here and then, you know, drive 10 minutes to another suburb and feel like you're in a completely different place. And I think that's really exciting and just such a wonderful way to live, to be surrounded and immersed in all of this all the time.
And look, speaking of trying different things, I mean, I was digging into a bit of your background and your journey to journalism. I want to talk about a specific moment, but it sounded like you were kind of in an environment where you should have been doing something like medicine or law, and then you did something completely different. Unpack that for us.
Oh, I think my grandpa would probably, uh, maybe not now. He would have said I should have done medicine or law. Um, but no, he's, he's master chef number one fan now. So take that. Um, I, yeah, I did, I did, I did well enough at school. I did pretty, I did very well. Um, and I think it was, it was just an interesting time. I was, I was really interested in psychology. Uh,
and marketing because I always loved writing. And I wanted to be the person who wrote the ads that really disturbed people. I don't know what that says about me, but I used to look at the TAC billboards and be like, I want to make people stop like that and think about what they're doing and whether they should be doing it or not.
I started a marketing psychology degree and marketing turned out to be pretty boring and not much writing. And halfway through that double degree, I took some time off and just with the way that holidays work in Australian universities. It meant that I kind of, I think we had like eight or nine months off when we paused from the middle of the year and then went back. So I didn't miss too much.
And then while I was traveling, you know, getting to see amazing things, I was like, how can surely there's a way to make this a job. I must be able to do this for the rest of my life because I'm not going to be able to afford to leave uni and leave my job all the time to go see the world and eat incredible things. And I think journalism just kind of popped out as a way to do that.
I understand in that adventure, you ended up in Morocco and you found yourself, quote, I'm quoting here, eye to eye with the unblinking eyes of a decapitated goat.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Sofia share about the food scene in Melbourne?
I think that as a travel journalist and a food journalist, particularly with the way that journalism has been over the last, you know, change over the last 15, 20 years, it's glamorous in theory. And it's so much fun when you get to go on, you know, a junket to another country and everything is paid for. And then you spend a week, two weeks, however long you're doing this thing.
Then you get home and you write it. And then you get paid for one single article. So the perk is the lifestyle that you get to live. But it's not a moneymaker. I was consulting restaurants and doing social media and bits and pieces like that. Also, I've never, never been, I don't think I've ever been a full-time journalist.
And a lot of journalists who you speak to who are freelance, who have not been employed for a newspaper or a magazine, they'll tell you the same thing. They'll dabble in copywriting and doing other bits and pieces, but... It's, you know, you've got to ask yourself, like, what's important to you? Are you saving for anything? How much money do you need? I was lucky when I started off in journalism.
You know, I was still living at home until I was in my early 20s. So I didn't have any expenses when I was like a poorly paid junior who got, I think it was like $25 to $50 an article, that kind of thing. Wow. So it just, yeah, it just varies. But there are lots of perks.
But I think I honestly, it sounds like such a corny answer, but I truly think the biggest perk of being in the foodie travel world is the community. The hospitality industry is just so amazing. And particularly if, you know, you're out and about. in places within your area or places that are just opening.
You get to see the same people, whether they are the operators or the other journalists, bloggers, whatever it might be. And when you've been freelance or a sole trader your whole life, they're your people. You don't really have someone to go into an office with. So that's been amazing.
Well, yeah, that's the thing of like working for yourself or freelancing. You're kind of like, you've got yourself to talk to and bounce ideas off. Now you have ChatGPT, I guess. But yeah, they kind of become almost like your immediate team and the people that you can discuss life's happenings with. And you're like, so let me talk about my day.
And they're like, I thought you were here to write a review. Totally, yeah. Ma'am, I don't need to know that you're looking at buying a dog. Talk to me then about the journey to MasterChef because... You finished uni, you're pursuing travel writing, you're doing bits and bobs, little different jobs here and there. You're doing a few TV appearances as they come up on different networks.
Is that where you got the taste for like being in front of the camera and you were like, oh, I like this?
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Chapter 6: What are the perks and challenges of being a travel journalist?
You're welcome. What's it like on set? Tell me all about it. I want to know how long you're on set for, how many hours, how many weeks, a year. Give it to me.
Yeah, cool. So, I mean, the show films for five months pretty much. Oh, wow. So that's always five months for us and five months for whoever makes it till the end. But obviously contestants drop off before that. We generally kick off towards the end of the year, have a Christmas break and then come back and do the rest.
My days are the longest because I have to do hair and makeup in the morning for around an hour and 15, hour and a half. Poe does her own at home. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was a makeup artist in another life, very artistic lady. So they're long days but we have a lot of fun and I think you kind of have to when you're so immersed in something for such a long time.
It's completely new to me. Well, three years new now because as I was saying earlier, you know, I've always been a... freelance journalist or a sole trader of some kind.
And so it's really nice to work on something so intently with such a professional team for a big chunk of the year and to be able to see the results at the end and know that people all over the world love it so much and watch every episode. It's still crazy to me. It's wild. But it's fun. We have a lot of fun, particularly among us four judges. We laugh a lot. We really do laugh a lot.
But it is also, it gets pretty emotional. You know, you get attached to people the longer you know them for. It's kind of, you end up doing a bit of therapy on sex. People tell you how they miss their families and what's going on for them and you're kind of with them across their whole journey. And then when you have to send someone home, it's heartbreaking. It doesn't get any easier.
Especially when you're the deciding vote, right? Yeah.
Well, do you know what's funny is because there are four of us, it used to be easier when there were three judges because you'd always have an odd number. And so now if we're split down the middle, we have to sit there for varying amounts of time until there's a majority.
You guys are literally like jurors.
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Chapter 7: How did Sofia transition from journalism to television?
I've actually never heard of this one.
So this is great for me. This is really a fresh recommendation. Love that one from Matt. Thank you so much for sending that in. And guys, send your recs in like Sash said. We seriously love hearing from you. And it's so much fun just popping your voice in the podcast.
We love hearing from you. Helen, what is your first recommendation this week?
My first recommendation is a new album by Ray. So she's a British singer-songwriter. She is one of my favourite artists ever in the world. She's literally my favourite artist. Yeah, she's just my favourite. She's been for a while now. This is her second studio album and it was released independently, which is really interesting. I love looking at all of those kind of things.
But it's called This Music May Contain Hope. And I think it's just the perfect album the world needs right now. It's super hopeful. It's a little bit sad, but it's so cinematic. It really takes you back to, I think, how albums... It kind of sounds more like a movie soundtrack because it takes you through a whole story. It's filled with jazz.
It's filled with a few collaborations, but the whole track sounds... Poppy at one point and then it will completely switch and you sound like you're just in this enchanted forest or you're in a jazz bar in like underground like New York or something. My favourite songs from the album would have to be Happier Times Ahead. which is so hopeful and so gorgeous.
Ray also kind of speaks things throughout the album and guides you through it. Another one is Goodbye Henry. And she starts the song, it sounds really happy and poppy, but she literally starts the song being like, this is a sad song, guys. Like, I know it sounds happy, but this is a sad song. And it's just really fun, tongue in I love the commentary. Yeah, it's great.
And then my other favourite would probably be Beware of the South London Loverboy. So, you know, the F boys out there. It's just a lot of fun. I don't know how this album put so much hope and real life and it's got like this montage of voices of children, of adults saying, you know, don't give up. There is still hope. There is still hope. It's just such a beautifully done album. But then also...
A little bit of fun in there with the F boys. Where the hell is my husband? Yeah, where the hell is my husband is in there.
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