Cape Town - Who travels more than 500 000km collectively, produces 108 000 meals, and drinks 7 200 brandy and Cokes? Only the cast and crew of the Ultimate Braai Master.
The third season of the show, which made road tripping, camping and braai-ing sexy, starts tonight (Thursday).
Themed “Time for Tough”, it will see the return of host and presenter Justin Bonello as well as judge and taskmaster Bertus Basson. Marthinus Ferreira steps out this season to focus on his restaurant, but will be replaced by new taskmaster chef Petrus Madutlela.
The 70-day road trip starts in Cape Town, travels a path up the West Coast to Namibia, then back down the East Coast.
Bonello, who is also the production company’s creative director, says contestants were pushed even harder and further off-road.
“We pushed the contestants that much harder, traversing some of the most outlandish, rugged and breath-taking territory in South Africa and Namibia’s outback,” he says.
He explains that contestants’ stamina had to match their braai skills because during the 9 000km road trip, they had to drive themselves across treacherous off-road terrain.
“The game is certainly the toughest one that we’ve had to date and the competition between the teams is fierce, but the show retains its distinctive soul and flavour that South Africans know and have come to love,” says Bonello.
The 15 teams, chosen from 400 semi-finalists nationally, will face challenges at 13 remote locations.
When looking at the tasks given to the contestants, one must wonder if the judges and presenter would be able to pull it off themselves.
Bonello most certainly can, as the outdoors play an important role in his personal life. He remembers the first few times he took his oldest son camping. Dan was about five years old.
The first time, Bonello kept Dan right by his side at all times. The second time, he kept him within eyesight. By the third trip, he allowed his son to wander off and explore by himself. Father and son camping is still very important to them.
“Outdoors, there’s very little they can do to damage themselves,” he says.
Other than tackling Braai Master, another important project is his vegetable garden. In recent years Bonello has started to research where his food comes from.
“As a supposed foodie, I found I knew nothing about where it came from. And that scared me,” he says.
The more he read, the more he found the need to source ethically farmed food. So he joined the ever-growing pool of urban agriculturalists.
He eventually built a full green house at his deep south home, and uses a hydroponic system to grow leafy vegetables, a process of trial and error. While he believes in merging nature and technology, there is no replacement for what nature provides for free. So in December last year he took it a step further. Bonello ripped up his front lawn and turned it in to a vegetable patch. He grows a range of vegetables, including spinach, kale, beans, peas, leaks and carrots. A year and a half ago, he added chickens too.
“I feed my family, my farmer’s family and the housekeeper’s family from the garden.
“Now I’m producing too much, so I take a few carrier bags to the office every day,” says Bonello.
While his older son sees helping out in the garden as a chore, his younger children – Sam, 3, and Gabriella, nine months – are growing up with the idea as a way of life.
He says more people must be encouraged to grow their food where they live and to ask questions in restaurants and supermarkets about where their meat comes from, in what conditions the animals were raised, and how and what they were fed.
There’s no reason for big retailers to be put out of business. Instead, they should be supporting local farmers and putting fresh produce on the shelves.
“In a country where people are nutritionally starved… we should celebrate the people who produce food. They are the most important people in our worlds. We need to figure out how to make farming sexy again,” says Bonello.
Producing food is what he will pass on to his children.
Being part of a show that is largely about braaiing meat, Bonello says the sponsors have been very good in only providing free-range products and green-list fish. This means the animals and products were ethically farmed and fed, and are sustainable.
Bonello says according to their calculations, they produced 108 000 meals while on the show. Speaking about the road trip, he says the 70 crew members in 45 vehicles were living out of each others’ pockets for over two months.
“Being on the road, removed from all the creature comforts was radical,” he says. The fact contestants from very different backgrounds – who would never have mixed under ordinary circumstances – become lifelong friends is a testament to how unifying the great outdoors can be.
l The series starts at 8.30 on e.tv.
New guy on the block
A new face on television on Thursday night is chef Petrus Madutlela. He grew up in the North West, and dreamed of becoming a doctor.
But while working as a cleaner at the Pecanwood Country Club, his focus turned to food. He worked hard in the kitchen, constantly researching and refining his skills, and was awarded a scholarship to the Stellenbosch Institute of Culinary Arts.
Madutlela moved to the UK where he worked at top establishments, including Michelin-star restaurants. In 2011 he came back to South Africa to participate in the Unilever Food Solutions competition, and walked off with the Chef of the Year title. Last year he made it to the quarter finals of the BBC series MasterChef: The Professionals.
His goal is to one day open his own restaurant in South Africa.
Of the new addition, fellow cast members say that South Africa is going to love him.
Cape Argus