Christine Hà is the first-ever blind contestant of the competitive amateur cooking television show MasterChef with Gordon Ramsay, winning its third season. She earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Houston. Christine travels and shares her story, receiving the 2014 Helen Keller personal achievement award from the American Foundation for the Blind.
MasterChef with Gordon Ramsey
In the 2012 season of MasterChef, Christine won seven times over nineteen episodes in both team and individual challenges, reaching the top three group three times. She was announced the winner and awarded $250,000 alongside the title and book deal. Chef and host Gordon Ramsey had this to say about her:
"The lady has an extraordinary palate, a palate of incredible finesse. She picks up hot ingredients, touches them, and she thinks about this image on the plate. She has the most disciplined execution on a plate that we’ve ever seen. But the palate is where it’s just extraordinary. And honestly, I know chefs with Michelin stars that don’t have palates like hers."
She defeated over 300,000 cooks to claim the esteemed title of MasterChef. In 2015, she was a judge on the third season of MasterChef Vietnam and a guest judge on the US MasterChef seasons 4 and 6.
Writing and Publishing
While at the University of Houston, Christine served as Fiction Editor for Gulf Coast Literary Journal. After her victory on MasterChef, she published a cookbook titled "Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food" where she shares popular Vietnamese and Texan comfort foods from her childhood. Find her cookbook here, which became a New York Times best seller.
Four Senses and other appearances
In 2013, Christine partnered with Canadian chef Carl Heinrich launched Four Senses, a cooking show dedicated to making accessible recipes. It has run for several seasons and featured a variety of celebrity guest. Check out the show on AMI, or find it on Amazon Prime.
In addition, she's traveled the world to speak about her experiences, also serving as a culinary envoy on behalf of the American Embassy in cultural diplomacy programs in Jordan, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. She has given multiple TED talks, including this one where she tells her story of growing up as an Asian-American and then losing her sight as an adult: