Nof Atamna-Ismaeel reacts to her win. (photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 from israel21c.org)
“This is the most exciting night of my life,” said a grinning, teary-eyed Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, upon her selection as winner of the fourth season of Master Chef Israel.
The April 5 broadcast had more than a third of Israel staying at home on a Saturday night to see who among the remaining three finalists would be crowned this year’s culinary champion of the most popular show on local television, even beating its close competition, Chef Games, which debuted this fall.
Israeli-Arab Atamna-Ismaeel ended up besting competitors Ido Kronenberg, a businessman from Savyon, and Meseret Woldimikhal, an Ethiopian-born immigrant in the process of converting from Catholicism to Judaism, who lives in Rishpon.
Atamna-Ismaeel was a judges’ favorite from the get-go. This year’s auditions for the show, based on the British reality program of the same name, involved two steps: a blind tasting of a sandwich prepared behind the scenes by a wannabe contestant, and a second dish cooked on screen by those whose sandwiches met with the judges’ approval.