A Bite To Eat With Alice cements Alice Zaslavsky as a world-class foodie superstar

It’s been 12 years since cookbook author, writer, radio host and TV presenter Alice Zaslavsky appeared on MasterChef Australia.

Back then she was still working as a high school teacher — but life moves fast.

These days the charismatic foodie is preparing to launch her very own weeknight cooking show, A Bite To Eat With Alice.

For Zaslavsky, it’s the culmination of all she’s worked towards over the past decade or so.

“I genuinely think that I’ve manifested it!” she says of her new series, which has been commissioned for a whopping 50 episodes already, with the first set to go to air on ABC at 6pm on October 28.

“This is what I love, what I’m good at, where I can add value — and get this: I even get paid!”

In each episode, Zaslavsky invites a guest to cook with her in her studio kitchen. She creates a dish inspired by them, gets them to bring in their favourite ingredient to cook with, and also shows them how to cook with something they find challenging or might not enjoy too much. It’s an absolute delight.

The guests are from all walks of life, and as varied as they come; early episodes feature everyone from radio host Sammy J to actress Pia Miranda, comedian Dilruk Jayasinha and singer-songwriter Anthony Callea. Australian food icon Stephanie Alexander is also popping by.

Zaslavsky has done a great deal of television since appearing on the 2012 season of MasterChef, where she finished seventh. She is also ABC News Breakfast’s resident foodie and has a weekly segment, but has never fronted her own show.

She says realising her dream has been a pinch-me moment — one that almost didn’t happen.

When ABC chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor first took up his role in 2023, he put out an all-staff email inviting ABC employees to pitch TV concepts to him. Zaslvasky was too scared to drop him a line.

“He said, ‘My door’s always open,’ and I just thought, ‘Oh, there’s just going to be so many people wanting a piece of this. I’m not even going to bother,’” Zaslavsky says of the genesis of A Bite To Eat With Alice.

“But after a few months, I just thought, ‘You know what? The reason that you’re not making the appointment (to see him) is because you’re afraid that he’s going to say no. And if you just keep sitting in that fear, then you’re never going to progress.’”

She did it anyway.

“I made the appointment, caught up with him, and said, ‘Listen, Chris, when I’m on the radio, I’m often waiting for (Gardening Australia’s) Costa Georgiadis to come on and talk about gardening — what he does for gardening on the ABC, I want to do for food.’”

It was a straightforward pitch, but it hit the spot. Fast-forward several months and Oliver-Taylor had given the green light, and the wheels were in motion.

Earlier this month Zaslavsky, who is of Georgian descent and moved to Australia in 1989 ahead of the country declaring independence from the then-Soviet Union in 1991, had the opportunity to see her on-camera kitchen for the first time, as it was being built in ABC’s Studio 32.

It was yet another pinch-me moment, and one she got to share with husband Nick Fallu and their five-year-old daughter Hazel, who had accompanied her to work that morning on a whim.

“Normally I am able to sneak out and go do News Breakfast myself, but that morning, Hazel insisted on coming with me, so Nick had to come along too,” she explains.

“I think the universe kind of wanted us to experience that first look together.”

She loved having her little family “tripod” with her for the big reveal.

“Nick and I work together,” she says. “He’s an osteo by trade, but he hasn’t practised for almost eight years, because he closed his clinic to help out with all of my various things and keep the train on the tracks at home — every win I have is like a win for us as a family.

“Having that rich personal life also means I’m able to hold public life a little bit more lightly.”

And to think: if she’d not auditioned for MasterChef all those years ago, none of this would have happened. Or would it?

“I think that if I hadn’t gone on MasterChef, I don’t know where I would be,” Zaslavsky muses.

“But considering how correct this all feels, you know, maybe — just maybe — all roads would have led to Studio 32 anyway.”

A Bite To Eat With Alice starts on October 28 at 6pm on ABC.

All about the veg

Zaslavsky has made a career out of singing the praises of vegetables. She even dedicated an entire book to it, 2020’s In Praise of Veg.

Her most recent book, Salad For Days, published this month, continues in a similar vein — and it has some high-profile fans.

Not only has esteemed global food phenomenon Yotam Ottolenghi written a blurb for the book’s cover, but Nigella Lawson has also taken to social media to champion her work — high praise indeed.

“I think the thing I feel most grateful for, beyond the props, is that I can genuinely call them friends,” Zaslavsky says.

“They are genuinely beautiful people.

“I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the years, and that’s how Nigella, Yotam and I are connected, because I’ve hosted them on stage and I toured with Yotam around Australia and New Zealand.”

They’ve become mentors and she treasures their connection and friendship.

“The upshot of all that is that I’ve learned that the people that have longevity in their careers, are the ones who keep it real, who don’t drink the Kool-Aid, who do the work,” she says.

“The thing I kept reassuring myself about when I felt — not overlooked, that is the wrong word — but when I wondered when my time would come on the telly, I kept reminding myself that Nigella wasn’t on TV till she was 40!

“That’s amazing to think.

“To have her give me praise, and say ‘she keeps getting better and better’ is really nice, really galvanising and reassuring.

“I feel it’s a privilege and I’ll treasure that forever.”