John Demetrios was crowned the winner of 10’s Dessert Masters on Sunday night with nearly a million tuning in to see him score a near-perfect final score of 38 out of a potential 40 points from judges Melissa Leong and Amaury Guichon.
With five hours on the clock, Demetrios, along with fellow finalists Christy Tania and Emelia Jackson had to create five servings of a two-course menu inspired by Australia – one green and one gold.
Demetrios wanted to pay homage to his hometown of Melbourne, using the memory of a fig tree in his childhood home to create ‘Can You Fig It?’ for his green dish. It comprised of a fig leaf ice cream on top of a white chocolate cremeaux, featuring native ingredients such as lemon myrtle and topped off with a fig leaf oil.
For his gold dish, Demetrios was inspired by the Victorian gold rush era, plating up his ‘Eureka’ featuring flavours of whiskey, brown butter, chocolate, caramel and malted barley, housed in a pastry goldmine.
Once the icing had set, the cakes had cooled and the choux pastries had hardened, B&T sat down with Demetrios to find out what’s next for the chef and what he plans to do with the $100,000 prize money.
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“It feels amazing [to have won],” said Demetrios.
“I’m absolutely buzzing and getting a lot of love from everyone… I’m just trying to enjoy it for the minute. But winning this prize money is going to open a lot of opportunities. I’m planning to open a little bakery in inner city Melbourne.”
Demetrios told B&T that while he doesn’t have a name for the bakery yet, he was planning on opening it quickly and that the publicity he’s garnered from the show would be important in its success. However, while Demetrios said that he was focused on his Melbourne bakery venture, he did not rule out more work in the media or advertising spaces.
“If opportunities come, I would definitely entertain them because it was a lot of fun [being on camera]. Especially towards the end, I felt like I really warmed up and I wasn’t as stressed about it all,” Demetrios said.
“My passion is still cooking so I think I’d be more suited to something where I’m teaching or I still have an outlet to be creative and show people how to approach ingredients and stuff in different ways.”
Demetrios confirmed that a number of brands have already been in touch with him about potential deals, but said that he wasn’t jumping on any just yet.
“I’ve got a couple of messages but nothing I’m going to pursue. I don’t know, I think I should just stay true to the products I’ve been using and quality-first.
“I’ve got a range of equipment that I’ve used throughout my whole career, so if one of those [brands] came along, I might be interested.”
