by Thinus Ferreira

The winner of the 4th season of MasterChef South Africa that will broadcast its season finale tonight on M-Net (DStv 101) will definitely be from Cape Town, with either Tarryn de Kock or Andriette de la Harpe who will be going up against Shawn Godfrey in the final competition cook-off.

The MasterChef season 4 finale, produced by Homebrew Films, will have a special hour-and-a-half duration tonight on M-Net with another world-renowned South Africa guest judge and chef making an appearance.

There will be tears, stress, mistakes, and not enough time as the contestants are forced to discard some of their plans, ingredients and even ditch half-prepared food in order to put something on the plate for the judges by the time the MasterChef clock overhead signals that it is all over.

In Wednesday’s semi-final, DStv subscribers saw how Cape Town dad Shawn Godfrey (34) won and got a pass through to the final.

It means that the Cape Town senior researcher Tarryn de Kock (25) and the Cape Town entrepreneur Andriette de la Harpe are going to first compete against each other in a cook-off on Thursday evening, after which the best one of the two of them, will face off against Shawn in the night’s final MasterChef challenge.

Then the winner will be announced, with the season’s 20 MasterChef SA contestants all back in the Maker’s Landing test kitchen at the V&A Waterfront to congratulate the winner.

“They just need to clear their mind and just remember that you need to cook with love and passion because that’s what brought them into the competition in the first place,” says MasterChef SA judge Gregory Czarnecki.

MasterChef SA judge Zola Nene says “this is a moment – whether you’re the winner, or you’re runner-up or you’re third – it’s a life-changing moment. It’s big! It’s big!”

The MasterChef SA judge Justine Drake says “the three of them have put their lives, their hearts, their souls into this journey and they must be feeling enormously proud but also terrified. They’re still here to win.”

Tarryn says “the person who walked into the MasterChef SA kitchen was not as self-assured as I am now. I’ve never been confident in my ability, I’ve never trusted myself as much as I have learnt to trust myself coming here”.

Andriette who was retrenched in 2021, says that MasterChef SA “has really been a journey. I’ve gone through a lot here”. 

She says “every cook has been a fight. Every cook is me trying to find me again. I want to win MasterChef for every person who had their worth taken away from them. That has felt that they aren’t good enough.”  

Shawn says “winning MasterChef SA is something I really want to do for the kids. There are a few fundamentals that you can take out of the MasterChef kitchen: Just stick to your guns, keep persevering, keep recovering. You may hit the bottom but you can keep coming back up”.