Monique Fiso dishes on Gordon Ramsay Uncharted
Gordon Ramsay Uncharted heads to New Zealand this week, and Monique Fiso tells Hidden Remote about introducing Gordon to her food and culture.
Gordon Ramsay’s culinary adventures continue tonight on Nat Geo, as Gordon Ramsay Uncharted takes the celebrity chef to New Zealand. The culinary expert this week is chef Monique Fiso, who is leading the way in Maori cuisine and leads Gordon through the food landscape of New Zealand’s rugged south. You may also recognize her from her appearance on Netflix‘s The Final Table.
She connected with Hidden Remote to discuss what people don’t know about New Zealand, the quirky way she got involved with the series, and how the Gordon Ramsay people see on TV isn’t what he’s actually like. See Monique in tonight’s episode of Gordon Ramsay Uncharted at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Nat Geo, and if you missed last week’s series premiere, you can watch it here.
More from Reality TV
- Get pumped! Vanderpump Rules season 11 coming in Jan. 2024: Release updates, teaser, and everything you need to know
- Strictly spoilers and results 2023: Who is leaving on Strictly Come Dancing Week 9?
- ABC confirms The Golden Bachelor season 2 during the Fantasy Suites
- Whitney Houston did appear on Dancing with the Stars! It was in 2009, 14 years ago
- Jamie Lynn Spears joins I’m A Celebrity season 23: Who else is set to appear in the British reality series?
Hidden Remote: There’s an interesting story about how you joined Gordon Ramsay Uncharted.
Monique Fiso: They approached me and it was quite random. I was clearing the cookbooks and food books and stuff, and one of the books had fallen out that day and it was a Gordon Ramsay that I had read 13 years earlier. I was like I should re-read this book and then weirdly the phone rings half an hour later!
It was really odd that I just thought I should re-read Gordon Ramsay’s Humble Pie book and the phone rings and is this show with Gordon Ramsay.
HR: Everyone always wants to know what it’s like to work with him. How was your experience with Gordon compared to the Gordon Ramsay everyone knows from TV?
MF: I had never met him before. I idolized him early on in my career. The Gordon Ramsay on TV was very scary, screaming and yelling, and I was kind of expecting a little bit of that. When you are a star that big, and I’ve met some pretty big stars across my career, sometimes there’s a bit of ego there. I was expecting someone who was really high maintenance and demanding and a bit of a diva—and he’s not like that at all.
I was really surprised and couldn’t believe how nice he was and how encouraging he was. He just made it a lot of fun. It really took me aback, because it was the opposite of what I was bracing myself for.
HR: Is there anything you want viewers to know about New Zealand before they watch this Uncharted episode?
MF: Just sit back and enjoy it. People think Lord of the Rings, Flight of the Conchords and bungee jumping, but there’s a lot more to New Zealand than people realize. There’s a lot of dips and layers to Maori culture and food—the harvesting and foraging of food that people don’t realize.
There’s a lot in New Zealand; we have a food history that because a lot of that was lost, people don’t know about. But there are some of us out there who are trying to preserve that knowledge and pass it on to the next generation.
HR: You spent several years working in New York’s highly competitive culinary scene before you returned to New Zealand. Did New York influence your work at all?
MF: Totally. New York taught me the work ethic and what it takes to actually succeed and what would be demanded of you [on the] international stage of cooking. You won’t learn that in New Zealand; you have to go to New York and get your ass kicked a little bit, and see how hard all those chefs at Michelin starred [restaurants] are working and build your skills up.
I think in my restaurant you see that—in how everything is organized and how we approach things. [The approach] myself and my team have is very different than most Kiwi kitchens, where it’s a little bit more chill attitude. Then the food itself and ingredients we use, and the approach to foraging something, is very Maori and Polynesian. But the mechanics of running the business is very New York. It’s an interesting cross-pollination.
HR: Is there something, in particular, you hope Gordon Ramsay Uncharted leaves the viewers with?
MF: I hope there’s a bunch of people who try to actually to build a honey pit in their backyard after the show. (laughs) If there’s anything I want them to take from the show, it’s just that I’m standing up for New Zealand and the food culture, and it’s actually got a lot to it. It’s not just pies.
I just wish people would come to New Zealand and take the food scene more seriously and open their eyes up a little bit more. I hope there’s a lot of Kiwis that watch it too [and] take something from it. I think a lot of Kiwis have this idea that we don’t have a food history, or there’s not a lot to Maori food culture, and I’m hoping there will be some Kiwis watching this that go oh, I didn’t realize there was all this to it.
HR: This was obviously a very different experience than competing on The Final Table for Netflix.
MF: Two totally different experiences. One was strict and strange and one was fun. After The Final Table, I was like I don’t want to do any big television stuff for a while. I found that experience quite exhausting. I made a lot of friends; quite a few of the contestants are really good friends who have come over to New Zealand and done events with me. That was a cool thing I got from it.
When I said yes to Uncharted, I was like oh God, what am I doing? I thought I wasn’t going to do this. And I think that’s also what surprised me doing this with Gordon, was that it was so much fun.
Gordon Ramsay Uncharted airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Nat Geo. For more on Gordon Ramsay Uncharted and other Nat Geo series, see the Nat Geo category at Hidden Remote.