Step Out of the Kitchen with Khanh Ong

The former MasterChef contestant co-owns The George On Collins restaurant in Melbourne, helps create the menus at American Express’s Centurion Lounge and has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. Here’s what he does when he’s not cooking.

The TV series I’m watching…

I’m bingeing this show called From. It’s a dark, dystopian series set in a small town in America. It’s from the producers of Lost and has Harold Perrineau, who played Michael Dawson in Lost, in it as the main character. I found Lost really confusing after the first series – it just sort of fell off a cliff – but I’m enjoying the evolution of the characters in this and it has just enough horror to get me through. I’m a massive fan of the horror genre and I like thrillers, too.

The last movie I watched….

Avatar: The Way of Water. The story was really beautiful but it went on for about four hours – that’s just too long! At the two-hour mark I was like, “I can’t believe I’m still here! How much longer is this going to go on for?”

The podcast I love…

I’m obsessed with the one from Shameless Media called Scandal. Every week they analyse a new scandal from pop culture and I always learn something. I love how much analysis they go into and their reporting is so in-depth. The last one I listened to was about YouTubers Jake and Logan Paul. Logan was banned from YouTube in 2018 after he uploaded some disturbing videos. Jake was more into uploading his music. Now they’re both into amateur boxing. It’s been a ride!

The apps I use the most are…

For me, Instagram is more about following my friends but TikTok is more about following random people I don’t know. But I follow a guy called @mckgaston on Instagram. He’s American and talks about plants in this voice that sounds exactly like Gaston, the cartoon character from The Beauty and The Beast. He’s funny and his content is engaging so I learn a lot. I love plants; I’m obsessed with them. Outside of cooking, they’re my biggest passion. They’re the source of so much food so I enjoy finding out the origins of what I’m cooking and where each ingredient comes from.

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