Memory Bites with Matt Moran review: a journey worth taking

If there’s one thing SBS excels at, it’s finding ways to take local celebrities on a journey. Sometimes the journey is to visit their own past (Who Do You Think You Are?), sometimes it’s to another country to visit their own past (Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey), and sometimes it’s around scenic locations to visit Australia’s past (Great Australian Walks). Now, with Memory Bites, the pasts of a group of celebrities are once again under the microscope – only this time, the journey’s being taken by their taste buds.

The concept is the kind of thing that should have earned whoever came up with it a hefty bonus: celebrity chef Matt Moran meets up with a collection of Australian celebrities and cooks them meals that mean something special to them. Hopefully they like their meals extra salty, because a lot of tears are going to be shed as the memories come flooding back.

ScreenHub: Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey review

Childhood favourites and family recipes are high on the list. Disappointingly, nobody gets served the brand of two-minute noodles they lived off during their university years, or the dodgy fast-food caravan dim sims they used to get stuck into after a big night down the pub.

Watch the Memory Bites with Matt Moran trailer.

In introducing his first guest, Moran says ‘Pia Miranda is an Australian acting icon, but what I want to know, is all about that Italian food heritage’, with the goal to find out how those ‘incredible food memories’ impacted the person she is today. Her family’s supplied a memory box with ingredients and recipes, which makes it feel a little like an episode of This Is Your Life where all the guests are food.

ScreenHub: Great Australian Walks: in life and locomotion an old favourite is afoot

While Moran gets to explore and explain the ingredients, the guests get to talk about their pasts and the role food played in their lives. So Miranda talks about the Italian side of her family, which includes a family fruit and veg store that her dad had to take over at 15 after his father died – and then they go out into the garden and promptly find an idol from Survivor, which segues nicely into a chat about her winning appearance there (turns out she doesn’t like nature or the outdoors, so she probably won’t be appearing on a celebrity edition of Alone any time soon).

Memory Bites: guests

Like most of these series, a lot depends on the tales the guests bring, and Memory Bites is blessed with a surprisingly strong line-up as far as food-related stories go.

Other guests in this six-part series include comedian Ross Noble (getting stuck into a frozen block of spaghetti bolognaise), singer and songwriter Christine Anu, actor Richard Roxburgh (who cracks open his mum’s Beggar’s Chicken with a hammer), entertainer Courtney Act, and actress Danielle Cormack.

If you’re getting the sense that this is a bit of a mixed bag of ingredients, isn’t that most good recipes? It takes a little while to get used to the whiplash-fast turns between tender family memories, celebrity anecdotes and food facts, but once the action settles down in the kitchen this becomes a more traditional cooking show – only with someone famous tasting the end result and getting all emotional.

And then there’s the recipes. While this is a series taking celebrities on a journey through their past, it doesn’t neglect that segment of the audience who just want to know how to make a meal that’ll make a famous person tear up as they remember the time their grandma died and she left behind some soup she’d made and nobody wanted to finish it off because they knew it’d be the last time they’d get to taste it.

Moran is a charming host, the guests all seem happy to wander down a memory lane lined with tasty treats – or maybe they’re just excited about getting a free feed from a famous chef – and most importantly of all, the food all looks delicious (well, maybe not the frozen spag bol).

As a lightweight lifestyle snack that’ll leave you wanting more, Memory Bites is a journey worth taking.

Memory Bites with Matt Moran premieres 10 March at 7.30pm on SBS Food and SBS On Demand.

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