Thai man wins Asian cook-off
A Thai freelance photographer has won a reality cooking competition
AThai contestant has been crowned the winner of the reality cooking competition The Amazing Food Challenge: Fun in The Philippines Season 2. Sunya Thadathanawong, a 34 yearold freelance photographer beat nine other contestants from nine countries in Asia in the televised cook-off, and brought home the grand prize of $30,000 (971,000 baht).
“It was an experience that money could not buy,” Sunya said. “I got to cook new dishes, got to travel, got to make new friends, and, of course, got the prize. Most importantly, it was really fun.”
The action-packed show pitted contestants of various occupational backgrounds against one another to compete on scores of rounds filled with both physical and culinary challenges.
The show saw the contestants paddling on raging streams to concocting unfamiliar ethnic cuisine, while travelling extensively across the archipelago of the Philippines. The season finale was broadcast on Feb 19 on the Asian Food Channel.
In Thailand, however, the cable channel that was broadcasting the three-month long series decided to cancel after running for just a month.
As a result, Sunya, who was dubbed “roller coaster rider” by his rivals for constantly being on the verge of elimination, was not celebrated all that much in his home country.
As a humble photographer, it was Sunya’s ability to compete with contestants who were real, experienced chefs, along with the outstanding merits of his home cuisine that eventually endeared him to the television audience and TV judges.
“I took advantage of my knowledge of Thai cuisine in the show,” Sunya said. “I added a Thai twist into almost every dish we were asked to make.”
When Sunya was tasked to cook up a Filipino dish, for example, he impulsively added massaman curry paste to it and when he was tasked to come up with a dipping sauce for fresh oysters, he turned a homespun Thai style seafood sauce to something that amazed the judges.
“My cooking style is just plain home cooking,” Sunya said. “I have no cooking theories. I rely on intuition when I cook.”
Indeed, Sunya never took cooking classes, dabbling with it only as a kitchen hand to his grandmother when he was young. As he grew older, though, he always made time to cook for his family and friends.
After working at a photography company for seven years, Sunya became bored and decided to become a freelance photographer instead. Having quite a lot of free time and being an avid fan of cooking television programmes, he one day noticed the show was auditioning and out of curiosity, decided to give it a try.
“There was nothing to lose when all I had to do for the audition was send a two-minute video of myself.” Sunya said. “I just thought if I got selected, it would be super cool but if I didn’t, then it was nothing. Then again after I got selected, I just thought, if I won, it would be good, but if I didn’t, I would just come home, no big deal at all.”
The competition took place in September and lasted for about a month. Apart from showcasing his knowledge of Thai spices, Sunya said it was his expertise and background in art direction from having taken commercial pictures of food that also paid off as he managed to score well on food presentation criterion.
That is not to say that Sunya didn’t experience his fair share of emotional trials and tribulations throughout the show, including when he was caught on camera crying upon finding out he had made it to the final three.
“Looking at myself crying like that on television, it was so embarrassing,” Sunya said, laughing. “Emotion was running really high because I knew I was now so close to the last round, so I would have regretted it if I had been eliminated.”
As well as continuing to work in photography, Sunya is planning to launch an online cooking show on his channel on YouTube to show that it’s fun to cook and that everyone can experience that joy.
“Anyone can cook,” Sunya said, in reference to the famous quote from Ratatouille, “Anyone really can cook. You just do it.”
I have no cooking theories. I rely on intuition when I cook