Yo! Exclusive: Manisha Panda, a MasterChef Telugu contestant from Vizag

Meet Manisha Panda, a 24-year-old safety officer from Vizag, who is a contestant of the Telugu culinary reality show – MasterChef Telugu. Adept with the sense of taste, choice of ingredients, as well as the flexibility to adapt and manage time and resources in preparing a dish, she will be competing against the top 12 master chefs from the Telugu states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. 

Manisha is a happy-go-lucky person who loves to explore new realms in life. A classical dancer and an avid reader that she is, with the advent of the internet, she started a personal blog called _what.panda.eats_. Through this blog, she curates her experiences of eating at different corners in Vizag and shares them as creative & informative posts on Instagram. Today, this journey, which started as a food explorer, has resulted in providing a national-level platform to showcase her talent.

In an exclusive with Yo! Vizag, this MasterChef contestant from Vizag shares “It all started during the pandemic when the entire world was locked indoors. I didn’t have the opportunity to go out and explore, so I began helping my mother in cooking. Slowly I started featuring my works on the blog”. Manisha received a good response for her work and this inspired her to try and feature more dishes. Over the several experiments in this endeavor, she developed an in-depth understanding, and gained knowledge, in cooking. 

Manisha wasn’t aware of a reality show called MasterChef Telugu until her friends pranked her to apply for the contest. She says “My application to contest was just another realm I was exploring. My friends and I identified the email address and gave it a shot”. Manisha qualified the preliminary selection process and made it into the top twenty contestants. She subsequently competed against the twenty and made it to the top fourteen to participate in the show. 

Elimination & Re-Entry

On MasterChef Telugu, this contestant from Vizag fared well, impressing the judges and the contestants with her tasty dishes. During one of the challenges, she failed the Mise En Place test, wherein she had to keep everything – preparing, cutting, marination, etc, in place. Manisha failed in replicating a few ingredients of her replica and was eliminated from the show. Adding to this she says, “I was flabbergasted on getting eliminated with everything going so well. On introspection, I believe I didn’t give my 100 percent. But in the end, the eviction helped me realise the value and the importance of the MasterChef Telugu show”. 

While a dejected Manisha left the show with a promise to follow her passion for cooking, little did she know that a re-entry challenge was on cards for her. The re-entry challenge offers one last opportunity to the eliminated contestants to prove their candidatures to continue on the show. “I was delighted to hear that there would be a re-entry challenge. This time I vowed to savour the moment and give my 100 percent come what may. I competed against stalwarts like Madhavi Mohan and Priyadarshi Sahgal for the challenge. I cooked Crispy skin chicken with coconut curry leaf curry served with pudina rice and beetroot curd – Coastal Wonder and made it to the show once again”. 

Currently, Manisha is competing against the top twelve contestants on the MasterChef show. She is grateful to Innovative Film Academy for their level of proficiency, and meticulous concern to detail, in ensuring the pandemic doesn’t have its ill effects on the show. 

MasterChef Telugu first aired on Gemini TV on 27 August 2021. It is telecasted at 8:30 pm on Friday and Saturday. Tamannaah Bhatia is the host of the show. Chefs Sanjay Thumma, Chalapathi Rao, and Mahesh Padla are the judges. This show is currently being shot at Innovative Film Studio in Bangalore.