Miin Wei Looi has become known on MasterChef Australia for his inventive sauces and bold Malaysian flavours. But, behind the confident cook, is a childhood that was far from conventional.
“When I was one month old my godparents ended up babysitting me,” Miin, 52, tells TV WEEK. “That lasted for two years. After that, I just kept staying with them, literally, until I went off to uni. The only time I really spent at my parents’ was when it came to school. Everything else was at my godparents’ house: eating, sleeping, all the fun stuff.”
Miin describes himself as the “black sheep” of the family, always questioning rules and pushing boundaries – something that once worried his parents.
These days, however, he has channelled that independent streak into success, running his own creative and advertising agency based in Kuala Lumpur.
“The creative agency was great because I was doing a lot of the creative work myself, such as the copywriting,” he explains. “Then, after a while, I started to do more management and administrative work, so cooking became a creative outlet for me.”
It is a business he now leads remotely after he and Melysa, his wife of 16 years, took a leap of faith and moved to Melbourne in 2012. The move marked a fresh chapter for the couple, who were always on the same page about how they wanted their future to look.
“We both knew very early on that we did not want to have kids,” he says. “But we have lots of kids in our lives because my wife teaches music and we love all of them. But we also love the return policy!”
Melbourne also helped super-charge his passion for food. It is a place, he says, where “you can eat your way through the world”.
Speaking of around the world, the contestants are heading into Around the World Week, in which a surprise celebrity chef arrives to put them through their paces.
“For me,” says Miin, “I wanted to showcase my background and my heritage. I love to cook Malaysian.”
MasterChef Australia airs Monday to Wednesday at 7.30pm and Sunday at 7pm on Channel Ten and 10Play.
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