MasterChef SA season 4 winner crowned | Channel

The MasterChef SA trophy.

• After gruelling weeks of competition, Shawn Godfrey was crowned the winner of Masterchef SA season 4.
• About his win, Godfrey said, “I’m actually shocked.”
• He now plans to team up with celeb chefs like Callan Austin and Darren Badenhorst to launch an exclusive pop-up restaurant experience.

Cape Town businessman and father of three Shawn Godfrey (34) lifted the MasterChef SA 2022 trophy above his head in the finale of the fourth season of the cooking reality show MasterChef South Africa on M-Net (DStv 101) on Thursday night.

The fourth season, produced by Homebrew Films and recorded at Maker’s Landing at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, concluded in a tense supersized final episode on Thursday night.

Andriette de la Harpe first had to face off in a cook-off against senior researcher Tarryn de Kock, which she won.

For their final challenge, the judges tasked Shawn and Andriette to “make a main and a dessert that will showcase your evolution from home cook to masterchef”. They got an open pantry and 2 hours in the kitchen for this.

Shawn plated a pork tenderloin and quail eggs in a bird’s nest, consisting of crackling crumb, smoked apple puree, bacon, charred leek, and crème fraiche sauce, with a dessert of malva pudding with speculaas branches and lime zest.

Andriette went vegan and prepared butternut steak as her main course, with asparagus, red pepper sauce, ricotta and smoked Chimichurri. Her dessert was custard cake with lemon curd and meringue shards, with peppermint cream, fennel flowers and raspberries.

“I’m actually shocked,” said Shawn. “If you put everything into something, and you just keep practicing, learning, failing, and then improving, it can work.”

He said, “if I can just hand this over to my kids: be passionate about something, and if you’re really passionate about something, put everything in that you can, focus, and just keep learning, keep getting up, keep going. You will get there.”

MasterChef SA winner Shawn Godfrey.

Photo: M-Net

Shawn, who already has four businesses and 100 staff and is a serial entrepreneur with business ventures he had to keep going during the Covid-19 lockdown and shutdowns, told Channel24 on Thursday that he wants to use his MasterChef SA 2022 win as a launchpad into his next business venture called The Roasted Dad, with his website theroasteddad.com that is now live.

“Under that are two subcategories called Little Roast – it’s children’s cooking apparel like children aprons in leather, baby aprons, and then there are also the adult versions of it called Roasted. I’m looking to partner with a big retailer to launch that.”

“The second part of my journey after the MasterChef SA win is to start a pop-up restaurant that will repeat once a month for 4 nights, with chef Callan Austin who was on the show in episode 11 and chef Darren Badenhorst, who owns Le Chêne and Le Coin Français.”

“The three of us are coming together on 27 April for an exclusive pop-up restaurant which is for 24 people for 4 nights and 10 courses. The first one is in Cape Town, but we’re planning to also take it to Johannesburg and Durban.”