HWKR the home of MasterChef

Last night on Wednesday 22 May 2019, ICD Property’s first ever retail project HWKR featured on Season 11 Episode 18 of Network 10’s popular hit series, MasterChef, which reaches an average viewership of 630,000 Australians per episode.

Centred around a ‘Street Food Team Challenge’, the episode required contestants to split into three groups each with a unique cuisine (Mexican, Malaysian, and Indian) and prepare a three-course meal within that cuisine for 360 diners each.

As the episode was part of ‘Legends Week’, the contestants and judges were joined by legendary, international food connoisseur Yotam Ottolenghi. An Israel-English chef, restaurant owner, and food writer, he is the co-owner of five delis and restaurants in London, as well as the author of several bestselling cookbooks, including Ottolenghi (2008), Plenty (2010), and Jerusalem (2012) which have sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

Located at 137 A’Beckett Street on the ground floor of ICD Property’s iconic residential high-rise Eq Tower, HWKR’s concept was inspired by the popular hawker centres of South-East Asia which feature multiple food stalls that change throughout the year. Thus, HWKR was built to include four individual kitchens with plug and play cooklines so tenants can easily rotate every 3 – 4 months. There is also communal seating within the food centre to mimic the market-style ordering of traditional hawker centres where customers try food from multiple tenants rather than rigid allocated seating in front of the specific stall you order from. This architectural design lent itself perfectly to last night’s MasterChef challenge as teams could be clearly split up into separate kitchens and share a central grocery-store-style pantry in the middle.

Prior to last night’s episode, HWKR has also been previously involved with MasterChef by hosting 2015 contestant Reynold Poernomo and 2017 Champion Diana Chan in the first round of tenants when HWKR opened in February 2018. To the delight of many Melbournians, Poernomo brought his much-loved Sydney restaurant Monkey’s Corner and KOI dessert bar and Diana Chan opened her first ever restaurant Chanteen. In August 2018, the new MasterChef Champion Sashi Cheliah also opened his first post-MasterChef venture at HWKR, Gaja by Sashi.

The Season 11 Episode 18 ‘Street Food Team Challenge’ episode can be viewed in full at Network 10’s TenPlay here.