First up was a Mystery Box challenge involving ingredients specially selected by the visiting dignitary and including chicken livers, cherries and anchovies. The prize for the lucky winner? Afternoon tea with Nigella at Fortnum & Mason in London.

The contestants looked appropriately dazzled and it came as a blessed relief when Queenslander Ben cut through the cloying mush by confiding that he'd really prefer to share a pint at the pub with Nigella, should he the emerge as the winner. But he didn't. Although the judges were doubtful about Kristen's pairing of squid with a passionfruit vinaigrette, when they tasted her dish, she got the nod.

Even though Nigella Week has unleashed some of MasterChef's more unfortunate impulses, the show's essential appeal remains intact. It's warm and supportive, celebrating skill and encouraging inspiration. The contestants, a multicultural array, are genuinely pleased for each other when one of them creates something special and the judges make approving pronouncements like proud parents.

The idea of finding your tribe – your food family, those people who relish food and wine with passion – is also a key ingredient in Sweetbitter (Stan), which has been adapted from Stephanie Danler's ruthlessly unsentimental, semi-autobiographical debut novel. Snapped up by Brad Pitt's Plan B production company and spun into a series of six half-hour episodes, it presents Manhattan as an intoxicating wonderland.

Danler's account of restaurant life is analogous to the wild world depicted by Anthony Bourdain in his 2000 best-seller, Kitchen Confidential, although here the protagonist, and the perspective, are female. The quite literally wide-eyed yet self-possessed protagonist (Ella Purnell), whom we learn, after some time, is called Tess, arrives in New York in 2006, keen to start a fresh chapter of her life. After being hired as a back-waiter in a fashionable Union Square restaurant, she's swept into a heady new world.

The workplace family that Tess joins is a boisterous, dysfunctional, drug and alcohol-fuelled affair, hospitality workers who serve others by day and evening, and revel in a rock'n'roll sub-culture as the rest of the city sleeps.

Tess is initially enchanted by the spectacle of the "family meal", a bustling affair where the staff share a communal dinner before service begins for the night. The restaurant, overseen by the preternaturally calm and constantly watchful Howard (Paul Sparks), is a universe with its own rules, rituals and rhythms, hierarchies and values. The job, and the lifestyle that accompanies it, become seductive and addictive for Tess.

As well as the initiation into a workplace family, Sweetbitter is about many things: the allure of a bad-boy bartender; the precision and passion that drive a top restaurant; the fluidly choreographed teamwork in well-organised commercial kitchens and dining rooms; the contrast between the pressure-cooker environment behind-the-scenes and the sense of serene elegance cultivated in the dining room.

But Sweetbitter is also about the pleasures of food and wine. Hungry to learn, Tess studies the history and distinguishing properties of the winemaking regions of France and learns about terroir. She has her first, heady experience of an oyster and her first informed, appreciative sip of a riesling under the tutelage of cool blonde Queen Bee waitress, er, "server", Simone (Caitlin FitzGerald), who also instructs her on how to "code" her tongue: "sweet, sour, salty, bitter".

Sweetbitter is infused with the thrill of exposure to new tastes and experiences as Tess strides and stumbles along her way. Like MasterChef, it regards food as sustenance but also as edible art, ideally showcasing dishes created with perfect composition and balance, and elevated by inventive elements of surprise.

Both display the qualities that can make productions about food so moreish, even when, sometimes, as in Nigella Week, they're served with an excess of syrup.

Twitter: @DebiEnker