Having been part of MasterChef South Africa Season 4, there are some questions that keep recurring when I talk to friends and family members about the experience. I thought I’d share a selection of the questions I get asked most often - with my answers of course!

About the Production

When did the filming take place?

Filming took place in October / November 2021 and the show aired on M-Net between February 28th and March 31st 2022.

How do you think MasterChef South Africa compares to MasterChef Australia?

MasterChef South Africa is definitely proudly South African, featuring South African ingredients, and South African classic dishes, reinvented of course - MasterChef style. 

The production budget apparently was a whole lot higher than the previous season’s budget, and comparable to MasterChef Australia’s budget, with our buying power of course being in our favour! All in all, the quality of the set, filming and overall production shows that no expenses were spared to make a great series.

Where was the MasterChef studio?

Filming happened at Makers Landing at the V&A Waterfront. Makers Landing is an awesome venue where up-and-coming food entrepreneurs are given an opportunity to grow their businesses incubator style. This is where Chef Mmabatho Molefe -who was a guest judge on the show- has her restaurant Emazulwini. Chef Mmabatho’s restaurant focusses on authentic Zulu favourites, giving them a modern twist to tempt even the most European-influenced of diners (read more in my Emazulwini restaurant review).

Also, MasterChef Season 4 contestant Charmaine Govender-Koen has her food stand, Charm’s Kitchen there (I particularly rate her butter chicken - see my blog post ‘Meet the MasterChef SA Contestants 2022’ for more on Charms).

All in all, Makers Landing is an incredible space and the studio that was built far exceeded my wildest expectations. The same setting was used for  the judges’ food demos and  Q&A sessions with eliminated contestants, and of course the viewing of MasterChef South Africa's final episode! 

Since the airing of MasterChef South Africa, I have also been involved in a few events at Makers Landing: I have run a pop-up restaurant (The Chefs’ Collective) in collaboration with Darren Badenhorst and Callan Austin for two nights in April, and I have hosted a few cook-with-me demos where my kids (or: Little Roasts) featured too, of course sporting their Little Roast leather aprons!

What were your thoughts on the guest judges / celebrity chefs on the MasterChef show?

There were a lot of guest judges on the show. I loved meeting South Africa’s food heroes and I have become very passionate about the talent SA has to offer. Contrary to how guest judges and celebrity chefs were welcomed on the latest MasterChef Australia via Artificial Intelligence and TV screens, on MasterChef South Africa, all guest judges and celebrity chefs joined us live and ‘in flesh’. Presumably they all had a PCR test before joining us on set, and social distancing was applied where possible. 

Is MasterChef really reality or is it actually scripted?

From the moment the challenge starts, it is very real. The challenge is real, the clock is real, and the judges really judge our dishes based on what we manage to put out within the time frame given. After each challenge, both before and judging, we would go into the diary room to recount our experience of the challenge. As the content directors will have picked up on certain fails and successes during the cook, their questions are tailored towards the story they are looking to show in the episode. Does this make it scripted? I don’t think so. Throughout the show, I tried to be as authentically myself as was possible in these extraordinary circumstances and I think I stayed true to myself. Of course, because of the limited duration of each episode some of the  context and intricacies of the day could not be included, however I felt that the episodes were an accurate portrayal of my MasterChef experience. 

About My Personal Experience

How long were you filming on the MasterChef set for? 

Filming took place over the course of just over a month. Each contestant stayed until they were eliminated from the competition, but everyone returned to watch the finale. Because I was never eliminated, I stayed away fo five weeks. 

Could you go home / see your family in between filming MasterChef episodes?

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, all cast and crew that were part of MasterChef had to stay at the same hotel for the duration of filming. We were not allowed to go home or see our family or friends over this time. 

Where did you stay during the filming?

We stayed at the Radisson RED Hotel at the V&A Waterfront, which is about 13 km away from where I live. This was particularly weird and difficult, as my wife and two children would often come to the V&A to spend the afternoon at the Two Oceans Aquarium. They would drop off a box with the kids’ drawings, and other gifts like biltong and plants - so that I could make my hotel room a little bit more like home. I would in return, buy some gifts for the children and pack them a box to take home again. 

I remember particularly well when my wife was walking back across the V&A Waterfront from Two Oceans Aquarium to the parking lot, and I was at the Raddison RED Rooftop Bar and could see them from above!

How did your wife cope?

You will have to ask her! 

I’m fortunate that my wife is my biggest supporter and encouraged me to enter the competition despite knowing what it would mean for her. From the day I applied, we knew that if I were to get through to filming, she would need to look after our two children on her own, while pregnant! 

Of course she had some difficult moments, and she doesn’t particularly like to cook, but all in all I think things went amazingly well. We both were very positive that my being a contestant on MasterChef was going to be a huge blessing to us as a family and so that pushed us both through the more challenging days. We were in touch every day through WhatsApp and FaceTime and that helped a ton too. 

The highlight of my MasterChef journey was when my wife and our kids came to watch me cook my way into the finale!

Did you travel for any of the episodes?

There was some travel involved, both before the competition began and during the competition. In the week before the filming started, we visited places like the JAN Studio and Babylonstoren. For the final episodes, Taryn, Andriette and I went to Chef Kobus van der Merwe’s Wolfgat in Paternoster.

Did you get paid?

I was very lucky that my business partner and managing director, as well as the Board of the company that I co-own, was very supportive of my ‘sabbatical’ (this is what I used to call it before I could spill the beans about being a MasterChef SA contestant). M-Net also financially supported us as contestants with a stipend and we received daily food vouchers to get supper in the hotel. Of course our hotel accommodation was also part of the deal. 

Behind the Scenes

What was it like?

Being part of a TV production is no joke! Each episode took one or more days to film, and filming would start early in the morning and finish late in the day. There is a lot of ‘cut’ and ‘action’ and often certain scenes need to be filmed numerous times to get all of the different camera angles. In between shooting, there is a lot of waiting around, which is exhausting in itself! Add to that the pressure that you’re put under during the challenges and the stress of not knowing whether you’ve made it through to the next round - it was an experience that I could not compare to anything else I’ve been exposed to before!

Being part of the MasterChef competition also lit a fire inside me and as I never knew which day would be my last, I tried to soak it all in and make the most of every experience!

Did you get to taste the dishes the other MasterChef contestants made? 

Unfortunately not! This made it even more challenging to know how I’d done in the challenge when waiting in the holding room or doing the diary entries, as I’d only seen but not tasted the dishes of my competitors. Sometimes a dish would look incredible, and then the contestant ended up being voted out for a reason that I could not know just from looking at their plate. 

When do the diary entries take place?

Sometimes, the diary entries would start before the challenge. We would either look back on the previous day’s challenge, or talk about what we thought would be coming up next. After the cook, we would also each go into the diary room to speak to one of the content directors about what transpired during the challenge. 

The most difficult part is that you have to speak in the present tense, as the diary entries are post production interwoven with the footage from the actual challenge. This means that we had to get used to saying “I grab the pan from the oven and burn my hand” instead of “When I grabbed the pan from the oven, I burned my hand.” You have no idea how tricky this is, especially after a stressful cook and a bad night’s sleep stressing about the next challenge! The content directors had to stop and correct me many times, and then I would have to start all over again. 

Sometimes you have to go back in the diary room multiple times, as content directors are checking the footage and going through their notes to look for the different narratives that will be played out as part of the episode, and realise that they needed more content from the contestant on a particular event within the challenge. 

After the diary entries, you go into judging, and after judging, you go back into the diary entries. You can see why the filming days were long, but for me - worth it in the end, of course!

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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