The news is out! Today, M-Net released a promo video that showed some of the contestants for MasterChef SA 2022, and so I can finally tell you that I was part of the show! 

It has been a very difficult secret to keep, and I am so ready to shout it off the rooftops now.

So how did I become a MasterChef SA Contestant?

It all started one Sunday in September last year. My wife, (the Roasted Mom - Lianne) and I were watching MasterChef Australia and while I had gone to make popcorn in the kitchen, she decided to Google whether MasterChef SA was returning any time soon and it had turned out that auditions were open and in fact - closing that Friday.

We have always been avid watchers of any cooking show, from Come Dine With Me to Hell’s Kitchen, Chopped, Chef’s Table, Cutthroat Kitchen, The Great British Bake Off, Zumba’s Just Desserts and even Nailed It - you name it, we have binge watched it!  

And of course like anyone watching these shows, we have imagined being in the contestants’ shoes. Knowing that the MasterChef SA applications were open, we both got overly excited and the dreaming began.. Would I get a shot to audition? Imagine I could be a part of the show..

Lianne went through the application form and copied some of the questions and sent them to me via Whatsapp. The very next day, Lianne set up a Google Doc entitled “Shawn's MasterChef Application 2021” with all the questions copied in, and I created a Whatsapp Group including just Lianne and I called ‘MasterChef Notes’. That Whatsapp group is still going and we use it to share blog post ideas and I write my recipe notes in there too! 

Over the course of that week, I added my answers to the different questions and Lianne copied these across to the Google Doc, until I had answered all the questions and we went through them one more time to make sure it adequately reflected me and my food dream. 

Some of these questions and answers have made it into the Get to Know The Roasted Dad blog, so have a look if you want to know what was asked of me! Another part to the application was to submit a video featuring myself in the kitchen showcasing my skills. You can watch that original video on my YouTube channel now!

That Friday, I submitted my application. I had officially entered MasterChef. It had been a week of excitement and sharing dreams and wishes and it was then that I realised how much I wanted this and how disappointed I would feel if I wouldn’t get through. 

It wasn’t long after submitting my application, that I was called by the production company to inform me that I had been shortlisted for an interview. I was told that I would be asked to showcase my knife skills, and so I chopped through many red onions and practiced chiffonade fresh basil leaves after watching many YouTube videos to learn how to. 

In the end, I just had a very pleasant call with Hannerie Visser from Studio H and Errieda Du Toit or Huiskok. I am now embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know at the time who they were. I feel extremely fortunate to have gotten to know them very well over the last few months and my life is so much richer for it. 

Truth is, entering MasterChef and being a contestant on the show has opened up my eyes to many of South Africa’s food legends that I wasn’t previously familiar with. It has kickstarted a new adventure that is so very different from anything I’ve done in the past, which is so very exciting. 

For some reason, in the Zoom interview, Hannerie and Errieda did not ask me to display my knife skills. They asked me a few questions and gave me the advice on the call to focus more on South African cuisine, since I’d previously mostly tapped into Asian and Middle Eastern flavours. 

All in all, it was a crazy (long) weekend, as the MasterChef interview was the day before we moved house, and we also had our Gender Reveal at Winelands Light Railway on that Sunday. If you know me at all though, you will be well aware that this is the rule rather than the exception. I tend to live my life at a million miles an hour and thrive in the chaos that comes with it. Come to think of it, this may have been great preparation for what was to come on the show. 

The interview must have gone well because I was then invited to join for the live auditions! How this went, I cannot tell you. You will need to tune into M-Net Channel 101 on the 28th of February at 6:00 pm, when the first MasterChef episode is broadcast. 

As the show airs, I will continue to share my experiences on this blog, giving you continuous sneak peeks into the rollercoaster ride called MasterChef, making sure not to share any spoilers as that would just take the fun away!

About Shawn Godfrey

Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.

Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.

It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.

On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).

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