MasterChef Australia contestant Ben Ungermann admits he was brought to tears when Callan Smith was eliminated from the competition.
Callan, 18, was sent home from Japan after failing to impress the judges in the elimination round.
It was a tearful goodbye to the enthusiastic and determined young cook from Sydney who had tried to reinvent sushi as a dessert.
“I’ve got a young teenage daughter and Callan is a young bloke and I felt really helpless in the elimination,” Ben, 32, tells TV WEEK.
“I couldn’t do much for him, and I really love the boy so that really got to me.”
Ben adds he was also feeling homesick for his own three children.
“The emotions were just over the top and I welled up,” Ben says.
Ben adds he doesn’t think this is the last Australia will see of Callan, describing him as a ‘boy genius’.
“His brain works completely different to anyone else in the way he thinks about food and approaches it,” Ben says.
“He’s absolutely phenomenal and that’s one of the reasons we’ll all miss him.”
Callan was eliminated after cooking alongside fellow cooks Sarah Tiong and Tamara Graffen.
Sarah had surprised her fellow contestants in the elimination round by deciding not to use the immunity pin that she’d won earlier in the week.
Yet she stayed in the competition after the judges preferred her take on a steam boat with miso and cabbage to Callan’s dish.
Fellow contestant Tamara had the winning dish when she took inspiration from ramen and made a soy soaked egg, which the judges declared was the best thing she’d cooked in the competition so far.
“I just felt Callan left a little bit before his time,” Ben adds.
“In a couple of years time you’ll all know about him.”
