Don’t mess with Melissa Leong.
The MasterChef judge, 41, rose to prominence in the Australian mainstream media after debuting on the long-running cooking show Ten in 2020, and was immediately praised by viewers for her cordiality towards contestants and eloquent criticism.
And after only two years of her performance, she managed to earn television’s top accolade last 12 months together with her Golden Logie nomination.
Despite all of the love, Leong revealed the cruelty she often polices on social media.
taking to Instagram over the weekend, Leong responded to a hateful comment by a user named Gerrard that read: “They scratched the underside of the barrel once they were in search of recent judges. What number of restaurants did [Leong] when did they interview her? Nothing. Was she a world-renowned food critic [former judge] Matt Preston. NO. As I said, I scraped the underside of the barrel.
Leong took a screenshot of the comment and uploaded it to her Instagram stories, where she fiercely defended her profession against opponents.
![Melissa Leong arrives at the opening of the Goddess Exhibition on April 4, 2023 in Melbourne, Australia.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009451198.jpg?w=683)
“I didn’t own a restaurant, I just wrote for half a dozen of Australia’s best-known publications for over a decade. It’s okay, we non-white men are used to it [being] ignored,” she wrote. “It’s because you may’t see us coming until we arrive.”
Leong added that she also previously co-hosted the SBS television series The Chefs’ Line and “There are also about half a dozen cookbooks and magazines that I have written, edited or subscribed to, not to say working with industry legends similar to Marco Pierre White, Gelato Messina, Zumbo, MLA and others.
“If this is scratching at the underside of a barrel, Gerrard, it have to be very hard to see me from my high seat in the clouds doing…what are you doing, exactly?”
![Melissa Leong attends a ceremony on David Jones Bourke Street on October 12, 2022 in Melbourne, Australia.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009451195.jpg?w=683)
“Thanks armchair prince, I’m sorry you had such a foul day that you’re feeling the necessity to fuck a stranger who bled for her profession.”
Leong, who immigrated from Singapore to Australia when she was a toddler, has accomplished this latest excavation.
“In your information, I am writing this sitting in my house which I bought alone with my unqualified ill-gotten gains. Thanks.”
She appears as Leong is scheduled to return to the screens alongside MasterChef judges Jock Zonfrillo and Andy Allen in the show’s fifteenth season, which is able to debut on May 1.
The trio replaced longtime judges Matt Preston, George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan from 2020, after their ten-year profession got here to an end in 2019.
They were reported to have resigned after Network Ten refused to extend their alleged $1 million individual wages “by greater than 40 percent”.