How blind chef Christine Hà defied expectations to win more than Gordon Ramsay’s heart
STYLE talks to the visually impaired chef, who is in Hong Kong for a pop-up dining event, about cooking, social media and new tech-enabled possibilities
For fans of MasterChef, Christine Hà isn’t a name you can easily forget.
As the first visually impaired contestant (she has neuromyelitis optica) and the subsequent winner of MasterChef Season 3, Hà earned her title with dishes that not only consistently tasted amazing but were also beautifully presented. And she did so with such grace that she blew the judges (Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot) away during each judging. When Hà re-created Elliot’s white tuna sashimi dish perfectly in one episode, Ramsay couldn’t help but lean towards her and asked, “Am I being punked?”
She has continuously pushed the boundaries of what people think vision-impaired people can – or can’t – do. Yes, that’s her on social media replying to you, and yes, those are her own words that she has posted herself on her blog. (She uses Apple products which all boast VoiceOver, a built-in function that reads out auditory descriptions of everything on your screen, and uses keyboard commands for everything so there’s no need for a mouse.)
We caught up with Hà, who is in town to head a pop-up dining experience at Ozone, to talk about the latest dining trends, plating tips and, of course, her MasterChef experience – including Ramsay.
Since MasterChef, you’ve written a successful cookbook and co-hosted Four Senses , a cooking show on TV geared towards the visually-impaired. What’s next for you?
Working on my second cookbook, and then I need to finish my memoir which I’ve been working on for quite a while since I was in grad school.
