Calvin’s Hub

Last Wednesday, my wife, two sisters, a friend and I were invited to a taping of Secret of the Masters in GMA Studios. We always watch the show during Sundays and always talked about guesting there to taste some delicious food so when the opportunity came up, we jumped on it.

Secrets of the Masters is a cooking show in QTV where they invite a famous chef every week to showcase his culinary skills and share some of his secrets.

If you’re interested on how things happened during the taping, please read on.

Hosted by Issa Litton

Secrets of the Masters is hosted by former DJ, Issa Litton who I think really fits the show. She speaks well and is very familiar with different culinary terms and techniques.

She’s also very down-to-earth and occasionally jokes around with the audience. You won’t see an air of “showbizness” from her.

She makes some mistakes with her words but she just laughs it off and continues. Ok this whole section simply says that I like her as a host and as a celebrity.

Guest Chef Andreas Gillar

For our taping, we were graced by world-renowned pastry chef, Andreas Gillar who hailed from Austria. He was previously the executive pastry chef of Manila Peninsula before focusing on teaching at Enderun Culinary Arts School.

I don’t know if he’s really soft-spoken or just shy in front of the camera but he doesn’t speak too much during the taping. He usually forgets explaining what he’s doing or what are the ingredients he is using that the director often asks for retakes.

He brought along some of his students to help him out like this cute girl, Sarah.

The Experience

We were excited when we got there. The place was not yet filled so we got to choose our table in the second row.

Eventually, the place got filled up that there were guests without any tables. No plates utensils and glasses.

Before the tape started rolling, the friendly floor director briefed us on what to do. When to clap, to look natural when the camera starts panning on you, how to eat with a satisfied face and things like that.

It was ok to take pictures during the taping as long as no flash is used. They also don’t want to shoot at empty seats so we couldn’t take a pee break until the host asks for one.

When Chef Andreas Gillar started doing his thing, we were all very attentive. Even Issa kept asking a lot of questions and conversing with him.

But eventually, you will feel bored with all those preparation involved in baking. The mixing, stirring, heating and all those boring stuff took a toll on us.

Even Issa got bored in the middle of the baking. The first dish took one and a half hour to prepare by the way. There were lots of retakes involved as well. Hehehe.

So the exciting part for a each dish is the beginning and the ending, when everything is pieced together to create a beautiful presentation. Near the end of the first cake, we were already hungry and were eager to taste the painstakingly-made cake.

Was the wait worth it? I’ll talk about the food and other stuff in the next part.

Continue reading…

You might also be interested in:

• Calvin’s trip to a taping of Secrets of the Masters Part 2
• Catch me on Secrets of the Masters tonight
• Cagayan de Oro Trip for Two Part 1: The Plan
• Cagayan de Oro Trip for Two Part 6: Going to Camiguin

Filed under: Food, Movies and TV