What MasterChef season was Reynold in? He's been on the show twice, plus a spin-off

Reynold Poernomo has entered the MasterChef Australia kitchen as a competitor three times across eight years. He has never won any of them, which is its own kind of achievement.

The seasons are series 7 in 2015, series 12 — MasterChef Australia: Back to Win — in 2020, and the first season of the spin-off MasterChef: Dessert Masters in 2023. He finished fourth, third, and runner-up respectively, improving each time without ever getting the trophy.

The three runs

• Series 7 (5 May – 27 July 2015) — Fourth place. Won by Billie McKay against Georgia Barnes. Reynold was 21, the youngest man in the cast, and took the Power Apron in week seven with a dish called Chocolate Three Ways.
• Series 12: Back to Win (13 April – 20 July 2020) — Third place, and a $20,000 cheque. Won by Emelia Jackson against Laura Sharrad, with new judges Andy Allen, Melissa Leong, and Jock Zonfrillo.
• Dessert Masters, season 1 (12 – 28 November 2023) — Runner-up to Gareth Whitton, with Jess Liemantara third. Ten pastry chefs, $100,000 prize, and Reynold took the season's only immunity pin in episode one with a dessert called Monochrome.

How each run ended

Series 7 finished him off with a fish. On 23 July 2015 he faced Brett Graham's flame-grilled bonito pressure test alongside Billie McKay and Jessica Arnott, briefly turned the flesh side down during the cook, and dried it out. The Dessert King, eliminated on protein.

Series 12 went the other way. The final three had three hours and forty-five minutes to rebuild Martin Benn's toffee apple — 113 steps. Reynold's apple came out too small, his persimmon and pumpkin leaves collapsed into something closer to fruit leather, and his caramel wasn't bitter enough. He went home on 19 July 2020, on a dessert, one night before the finale.

Two eliminations. Both on the last cook before the grand final. Neither one a savoury dish he'd have called a weakness.

Why the numbers get flipped

Network 10's own Dessert Masters profile page describes him as finishing "3rd and 4th" in seasons 7 and 12 — in that order. Its MasterChef page, on the same site, says he bowed out of season 7 in fourth place. The second one is right.

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He's been in the kitchen far more than three times

Competing is only part of it. He returned as a guest judge for a pressure test in series 8, cooked against contestant Callan Smith in a series 9 immunity challenge and won, appeared as a guest chef in series 10, judged an elimination in series 13, and set a pressure test on 3 May 2022 in series 14 built around his signature dessert, noi.

After the Dessert Masters final he told Yahoo Lifestyle there was "not a chance" of another return, saying he didn't want to be pigeonholed.

For the record: he opened Koi Dessert Bar in Sydney in 2016 with his mother Ike and brothers Ronald and Arnold, and made Forbes Asia's 30 Under 30 in 2017. Arnold judges MasterChef Indonesia. The family got there without a trophy.

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