Bad news for My Kitchen Rules runners up Ibby and Romel after it was revealed the pair of thousands of dollars in debt after failing to win the culinary reality show.
The flashy socialites told news.com.au that they frittered their cash during the show in the hopes of maximising their chances of winning the $250,000 MKR prize money.
“Give or take we put in $30,000 combined,” Romel said.
The pair famously flashed the cash when it came to hosting the other teams at their instant Restaurant, hiring a stylist, graphic designer, kitchen hand and spending thousands on flowers.
“The majority of the other contestants had either left their jobs or they came in unemployed whereas Ibby and I both run businesses,” Romel said.
“At first we didn’t have a kitchen hand at all, so what we found was chopping up, cleaning up, running to Coles a gazillion times a day, it was just consuming all our time.
“We had a meeting and asked ourselves, how can we work smarter rather than working overtime and not having any time for our businesses? So, we thought why don’t we just hire a kitchen hand to clean after us. They were chopping up, they were running to Coles … It was basically to save time.
“When we were practising it wasn’t as if we were just making one dish,” he said. “This is where the other money went. The majority of our ingredients, they’re f***ing expensive. We weren’t just making one dish. If we were serving 23 people, we were making 23 dishes.”
Ibby and Romel were beaten by Luke and Matt by four points in last night’s grand final (Luke and Matt = 92/100, Ibby and Romel = 88/100). But many viewers, and even fellow MKR contestant Josh Bonwick, were shocked by the result.
“I can say with a clean conscience after eating both team’s dishes tonight, I believe Ibby and Romel should have won as their food to me was superior in flavour,” Bonwick tweeted. “The food was chalk and cheese tonight. We were all so shocked.”
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