THE day before AXN�s Mike Whitney took his Who Dares Wins roadshow onto Bombay�s roads while doing an �India Special� for the teleseries, I challenged him to a meal of unusual Indian foods specially prepared for UpperCrust by the JW Marriott in Juhu. Whitney accepted. I was later to discover he is an extraordinarily daring and brave man. And a most adventurous foodie. When put to the test, he will eat anything served in a plate before him.

Not that UpperCrust had laid out just anything to check Whitney�s tastebuds. An outstanding menu of amazing Indian dishes had been prepared by Chef Surjit Singh Jolly of the hotel�s Saffron restaurant for him. Whitney swaggered into the restaurant at 1 p.m. dressed in his trademark blue jeans and white AXN T-shirt, accompanied by his friend, Natalie Strain, and a cameraman trailing behind to capture him making a fool of himself over our Indian menu.

He is a rugged heavyweight of an Australian, over six feet tall, 110 kilos, and a smile that stretches from Bombay to Sydney. He is much bigger in person than he appears on television. You meet him and you will know what I mean. The man fills up all the space around you. Now he plonked himself onto a chair next to me and said enthusiastically, �Let�s eat, mate!�

He was hungry, and he was ready to put his appetite and his tastebuds to the test. But Chef Jolly was not ready with his culinary surprises. So I engaged Whitney in conversation. �Have a drink,� I suggested. He declined and asked, instead, for water. �What,� I said in disbelief. �Not even beer, no Foster�s?� Whitney poured out a glass of bottled water and said solemnly, �This is the golden nectar of the world.� And I knew then that he would be one of the great foodies Farzana Contractor and I often come across on our culinary journeys.

I was not wrong. Whitney informed me that for seven years between 1983 and 1990, he had been a hardcore vegetarian. He had wanted to knock off some excess weight he had put on after operations to both his knees during his cricketing career. �I was 25 and after the operation I could not run. So I used to hobble down to the pubs and hang out with my friends over beer and beef steaks with fried potatoes and tomato sauce. I put on a lot of weight. My sister was toying with vegetarianism and told me if I gave up red meat rightaway, I would lose weight. So I tried it for a month and it worked. My mother, who was used to giving me steak with chips and sausages for breakfast, started looking into things like tomato with lettuce leaves. How I could get protein from elsewhere. I discovered tofu! But being vegetarian opened my eyes, opened my palate, to a whole different culture. Yet by 1991, I was eating meat again!�

He is fond of Indian food. Sydney, which is where Mike Whitney lives and works from, has a number of Indian restaurants. �The cuisine scene has changed dramatically in Sydney,� he said. �An unbelievable fusion of different cultures has come to reside in Australia. There is an enormous influence of the sub-continent. There are Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Tandoori, Sushi, even Himalayan restaurants at every corner. Hardcore Australian food like steak and chips with peas, gravy, french fries, bread and butter with tomato sauce, is being edged out by nouvelle Asian cuisine. Fish cooked in sesame oil and garnished with chopped coriander!�

Then Chef Jolly rolled out with the first of his surprises, a thali full of assorted chutneys in exotic flavours, exciting colours and ranging pungencies. Whitney had to sample them... one by one. �That one looks hot, and that, that, and that,� he said pointing out to several small china bowls of chutney and pretending to be scared. �But not this one and maybe not that. The colour red is... hmmn, let me smell it. (He did.) Wow! This is just amazing.� And he went ahead and dipped his finger into the chutney bowls and started tasting what he was getting into. �I�ll tell you what, mate, this is finger-licking good,� Whitney pronounced with a exaggerated roll of the eyes.

I could see he was enjoying himself. The spice levels and the fiery colours did not even discourage him. Rapidly, he went from one bowl to another, almost making a meal of Chef Jolly�s chutneys. �What�s this? Cauliflower! It�s sweet. I could do with a little bit of more spice. And this one? Smoked chilli with tamarind! This one could be dangerous! (He rolled the chutney on his tongue and gave an indelicate shudder!) What a taste sensation! This is so different from all the others.� And he went onto the next and the next, until he had finished tasting some 14 bowls of chutney. I am not a chutney man myself, and by now, I would have been crying for water. But Whitney was smacking his lips and waiting for the next test. And he did not even look at the bottle of mineral water before him!

While Jolly vanished into the kitchen again, I asked Whitney if he could cook. He could, he replied. He is the single parent of set of triplets. �Two girls and a boy, they�re eight, and I cook for them at home in Sydney. I can do a good lamb roast with vegetables in the oven. Or a fillet of fish. But the kids prefer the barbecue. So I barbecue prawns, lobster, octopus, whatever they feel like eating. It�s traditional in Australia, a real male thing, for men to stand together around the barbecue and have a beer while the women hang together in the kitchen. I take great pride in cooking on the barbecue. The art is in organising the heat correctly. The flow of air should keep the coals going. I�ve been doing it for 15 years.�

He is equally good at doing a �bachelor�s special� mix of everything at home, girl-friend Natalie revealed. She is the love of his life. �The quintessential Australian farm girl who rides horses and bikes and wrestles cows,� Whitney said affectionately. He described the �bachelor�s special�. �It is an excellent bacon, tomato, mushroom, garlic pasta with plenty of pepper and parmesan. That�s my signature dish. It�s easy to prepare and doesn�t take any time at all.� That�s for when he�s at home, alone. He does a lot of eating out in Australia and when he is travelling for Who Dares Wins. But Whitney has no such thing as a favourite cuisine. He shrugged when I asked him.

�They�re all fantastic, it�s difficult for me to say what�s 100 per cent my favourite cuisine, but my perception of life is that you�re only here once... so you should experience everything.�

�Which means what,� I persisted. �Which means I�ve eaten most things. Monkey in the Philippines, it was real crazy, and eel in Japan, which is not unusual, it�s par for the course. And I�ve had elephant in Africa, also kudu, an antelope-like animal. Plus ostrich and kangaroo. You would think that the thought of eating kangaroo would turn a lot of Australians off! But no, kangaroo is the red meat that has the lowest fat content and highest protein value. And dealing in kangaroo meat is a big industry in Australia. I have also eaten and liked the clean, white meat of the crocodile. But not snake and dog. That�s something I haven�t gone for yet. Tiger�s penis and bear�s claws? Hmnn, I�ll try them when I can. Don�t tell me that it is part of the menu now!� He was describing the Who Dares Wins show to me, how he enjoyed doing it though it took an incredible level of energy for him at 43 to sustain the show. And how he introduced food on it every so often. �Once I offered people $50 to eat a green chilli that had been chopped and still had the seeds. Another time it was fish. I gave $50 to whoever could bite into a raw fish! Ugh! There was this woman who did it.� Again, that inelegant shudder! �And I used Tim Tam biscuits once, they are popular in Australia, I got people to pop three into the mouth and try and swallow them in 30 seconds. It�s impossible, mate! But the most challenging was this Middle Eastern delicacy. Sheep eyes in olive oil and garlic! Eat one and get $50. The Australians shied away in horror!�

And then the indefatigable Chef Jolly was back, this time with a team of chefs from Saffron backing him. He offered Whitney a dish full of dum-cooked and char-smoked quail. The man from AXN polished it off without so much as asking, �What�s this, mate?� And he gave his verdict: �The meat is so succulent, poof, you put it in the mouth and it�s gone!� Then Chef Jolly�s team wheeled out the dumba biryani. A kid goat, not more than ten kilos, cut open and stuffed with biryani, then stitched up and cooked on dum. The big lagan in which it is cooking is sealed with a purdah of dough. �What�s this? What�s this?� Whitney rubbed his hands in delight and anticipation. Chef Jolly explained how to cut open the purdah and unveil the dumba biryani. Whitney wielded an expert knife and leaped back in mock horror when the aromas and steam rose up at him. But he was soon shovelling spoonfuls of biryani onto his plate and attacking it with gusto. �It�s fantastic, this rice is so aromatic, the meat so juicy!�

Likewise, he dealt with the Salim raan flambed on a skewer. �How long did it take to cook this leg, mate,� Whitney asked Chef Jolly. �Oh, 25 minutes!� And there was baby pomfret marinated in saffron and coriander. �Never imagined something like this in my wildest dreams,� he exclaimed. �It�s wild, it�s fantastic.� And this is the man who at Sydney Harbour picks seafood off the fishing trawlers and takes it home to cook. He bit into Chef Jolly�s stuffed and pickled chillies. And he ran through the desserts, saffron kulfi and falooda and barbecued fruit with dry date and apricot chutney. Then the chefs invited him into the kitchen to see if he could try his hand at rolling out a roti and baking it in the tandoor. Whitney was game. On that afternoon, he could have done anything. AXN could have dared their key anchorman to pull any stunt. Whitney would have done it.

I invited him back to the dining table to show him my own little after meal stunt. An interlocked spoon and fork balancing on a toothpick from the rim of a wine glass, defying gravity and gently seesawing in the air. This has not been repeated by anybody I put the challenge up before. But in a while, Whitney had got the hang of it and was chortling with delight at this new trick he could take back home with him.

We had reached the end of our dare-to-eat show, and Mike Whitney, who had dared and had won, was saying to me and Chef Jolly, �That was some gastronomic extravaganza. But you have ruined me for life. Everytime I eat out I�m going to say, �Not good, not enough flavour, no taste, no texture, where�s Chef Jolly�!�