SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE: Twenty-nine-year-old Durban-born, Cape Town-based food blogger Kamini Pather was proclaimed as the winner of MasterChef South Africa 2013 during the season finale broadcast by M-Net on 11 September.
At a lavish function held at the Hyde Park Hotel in Johannesburg on the same evening, journalists from around the country watched the tense final in which Pather narrowly beat runner-up, 23-year-old scientist Leandri van der Walt from Mahikeng.
Following the broadcast, MasterChef South Africa executive producer Donald Clarke of Lucky Bean Media told journalists that this second season of the popular M-Net reality cooking show had been much easier to shoot than the first one.
“This time round we had more time in which to produce the series and so could tell more stories and give an increased focus to the actual food. We believe the show has grown to the extent that our audience now wants more food-related information.
“Our season 2 contestants were more sophisticated than the previous series and our celebrity chef judges – Pete Goffe-Wood, Benny Masekwament and Andrew Atkinson – were definitely more relaxed in front of the cameras,’ he said.
Clarke noted that MasterChef South Africa episodes are highly produced and packaged in such a way to increase the tension. “Watching someone cook live on camera can be boring because it’s such a time-consuming process. So we add music and storytelling techniques to add pace.’
M-Net’s head of Original Content Anne Davis said that season 2 had been very successful and generated “great ratings’ as well as a high level of interactivity with the audience.
“The MasterChef format, created and owned by Shine, is hit in over 40 countries around the world,’ she continued. “We learnt a lot from producing season 1 of the South African show, most significantly that each contestant has their own unique food dream, which is not necessarily to open a restaurant if they win the competition. Kamini, for example, wants to relate food to media. M-Net is grateful that our MasterChef sponsors – Robertson’s Spices, Woolworths, Nederburg, Volkswagen and Tsogo Sun – are generous enough to let us be flexible in this regard. There are many ways to be successful in the food industry and we don’t want to be dictatorial.’
Pather said she would like to inspire South Africans to cook locally and noted that her interest in food had been sparked at age 17. “I first started playing around with eggs and then did a degree in commerce. But this didn’t fulfill me so I began blogging about food.’
She would not be drawn into revealing how she planned to spend her R400,00 prize money.
Van der Walt said that she’d always been an achiever and that sitting in the runner-up chair at the press conference was not pleasant. “However, I’m grateful to have the opportunity to grow from this experience and to understand myself better.’
She said she would use part of her prize money of R100,000 for humanitarian purposes.
M-Net declined to confirm whether MasterChef South Africa would return for a third season.
Report by Joanna Sterkowicz
