He already brings the food of Asia to Australian screens with his shows on SBS, now Sydney chef Luke Nguyen is set to export Australian-flavoured food programming to Vietnam.
Nguyen will co-host MasterChef Vietnam, a program based on the Australian version of the show.
''We're building the MasterChef kitchen,'' Nguyen says. ''It will look similar but with more woks, more chopsticks and more meat cleavers.''
The Red Lantern restaurant co-owner was shooting in Vietnam when episodes of MasterChef Australia aired: ''People kept saying, 'Why don't you do it here?' So I spoke to a production company.''
Don't expect Vua Dau Bep, the program's Vietnamese name, to entirely mirror the Australian version.
''Although my fellow judge, who owns 18 restaurants in Vietnam, wears a lot of silk, he won't be in a cravat,'' Nguyen says.
Shooting kicks off in December, and Nguyen believes there is no shortage of talented home cooks among Vietnam's 87 million people.
''The woman who just won MasterChef in the US is a blind woman of Vietnamese background,'' he says.
