Australian food writer Melissa Leong has spoken for the first time about the scandal involving her Taste of Art co-host Vaughan Mabee.

TVNZ dropped the show this week amid revelations about some of Mabee’s behaviour towards colleagues and fellow industry members.

Mabee, a celebrated chef who led Central Otago restaurant Amisfield, left the company in February. His departure followed a workplace investigation including allegations Mabee groped a colleague at a nightclub after a work gathering at his home.

Posting on Instagram, Leong said she signed on to Taste of Art last year, "excited and honoured to contribute to a show that celebrates the highest potential in cuisine artistry, as well as the tradition, culture and kai that Aotearoa is renound [sic] for the world over."

"And so it is with great disappointment that the show's resounding success has been hampered by such unfortunate circumstances these past weeks," she wrote.

"As a victim-survivor, it would feel like a betrayal to me if I did not say…