Nat wins MasterChef Australia 2024
Victorian barista, Nat Thaipun, takes out $250,000 prize over Tassie butcher Josh 'Pezza' Perry.
- Published by David Knox
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Victorian barista, Nat Thaipun, has won MasterChef Australia 2024 defeating Tasmanian butcher, Josh “Pezza” Perry.
She scored 71 points to wins $250,000 and a head chef residency at Alumni restaurant at Crown. ‘Pezza’ scored 68 points.
The finale, watched on by both former contestants and families of the grand finalists, consisted of two challenges.
In the first both had were given free rein to cook their preferred dish using black peppercorns.
While his rib eye with fondant potatoes, brussels sprouts done two ways featured a peppercorn sauce packed with punchy flavour, the texture of his brussels sprout purée was a touch grainy.
Nat’s scotch egg with sai oua, nam prig noom, and Thai roasted green chilli dip wowed the judges with universal nines from the judges.
By the end of round one Nat scored 36 points to Pezza’s 33 points.
British superstar chef Clare Smyth, famed for three Michelin stars and three hats, entered the kitchen with an incredible dessert take on a Malteser, her “Core-teser”.
After a 4 hour cook, ‘Pezza’ failed to finish all the elements but was praised for its taste.
Nat’s dish looked incredible when but there some textural flaws.
That left judges with a scoring dilemma over two imperfect dishes. In the end each judge played safe with sevens for both finalists. That will likely draw some blowback on social media, especially given the rule that taste wins every time.
After leading in Round One, that gave Nat the victory at 71 points to ‘Pezza’s 68 points.
“I feel so good, this is crazy! It feels like a dream but it’s not, it just happened, I just won MasterChef Australia!” she declared.
As Runner Up ‘Pezza’ was awarded $40,000 with and third place Sav Perera awarded $10,000.
10 will screen Dessert Masters later this year and has already opened auditions for MasterChef 2025 here.
- Tagged with MasterChef Australia
4 Responses
Late to the party, but what a great season – great bunch of contestants and a great, warm jury. Congrats Nat and Pezza!
Knew who was going to win since late May when Sportsbet posted up the odds. Nat was $1.37 favourite to win. Sportsbet rarely get it wrong. Thought Pezza was a little unlucky not to win but the $40,000 prize money would ease the pain of not winning. Congratulations Nat. Since a male won it last year a female had to win it this year so I believe a male will win it next year..
That’s not really how the whole thing works. Just because a man won one year doesn’t mean a woman has to win the next and then a man the next and so forth. If that’s the way the audience want to see things go then perhaps they should just have a season for female contestants and then another one for male contestants.
That’s not the way it works.