MasterChef winner Dara Yu talks about watching the Back to Win season knowing she won (and her guilty eat)

MasterChef has crowned their Back to Win winner and after a season loaded with difficult challenges and fan favorite competitors, Dara Yu walked away with the win.

Considering Dara’s first adventures in the MasterChef kitchen were actually during the first season of MasterChef Junior, it is truly amazing to see her come back at the age of 20 and take down multiple chefs, including another former Junior competitor on the road to the title. And she did it with a final menu that saw the judges truly impressed with Dara’s ability to make restaurant quality dishes.

We had the opportunity to chat with Dara following her win on the finale episode and we had to know what it was like for her to watch her journey in the Back to Win season. Plus, you know we had to find out what her guilty eat (or eats) actually is.

MasterChef winner Dara Yu chats with Guilty Eats about her time on the series

Guilty Eats: What was the best part of returning to MasterChef?

Dara Yu: “You know, I love being on set with everyone, with all the contestants and with the judges and just like the energy of being on the show is really inspiring. But I think also just, kind of coming back as a 21 year old or sorry at the time as a 20 year old, eight years after being on Juniors and kind of showing and proving how much I’ve grown and improved as a chef.”

GE: Were you surprised by how the judges reacted to your dishes during the finale?

DY: “It was kind of crazy because with the finale, like that menu I had thought through so, so thoroughly and you know, obviously during the appetizer round my sauce kind of didn’t work out at first and I am a perfectionist. I will nit pick my own things, you know? And so sometimes I get more caught up in my own thoughts about the dishes.

So it’s actually really nice when the judges give you that positive feedback about your food. It kind of gives that confidence boost. But, yeah, I mean, I felt like the judges comments were all pretty positive, and maybe more negative ones were just more constructive criticism, which I always take it.”

GE: Did you actually watch the season back as it was playing out?

DY: “Yeah, I know that there’s some contestants who don’t like watching the show. Fred is one of my best friends on the show and like he didn’t watch. I mean, we watched the show together. He came over to my house. We watched like two or three episodes, and then we watched after his elimination. So I did watch every episode, every week. I watched it with my family. I was traveling for most of this summer. So it was really fun because I got to watch it with different friends and family. But it’s weird watching yourself on TV. Especially because it’s like our first time watching it.”

GE: What was that like for you, watching your journey from coming back and competing to get on the Back to Win season to actually winning? What was that like for you to see it play out?

DY: “I think living it is one thing and then having like seven months to process that, and then not even process it all because I think there’s a lot of anticipation on how the season is going to end up and how the edit is going to come out. You know how it’s gonna look and we all know behind the scenes, what happens or what happened, but we have no idea what the final product is going to be.

But I think for me watching my journey from my audition to get my apron and then I went on a little bit of a roller coaster. I was in the bottom. I was in the top. And I feel like that’s how I felt. In the competition I felt like I was trying to find my footing in the kitchen and comfort, and not even comfort but just kind of how to play the game, and I felt like halfway through I was feeling a lot more comfortable. And then I feel like I found that kind of spark in the kitchen at the right time to take me all the way to the end.”

GE: So I know you’ve won. And I know that technically you have completed that MasterChef journey, but would you do it again?

DY: “I didn’t think I would come back after MasterChef Junior. I was like, ‘would I go back?’ And I was like, ‘no.’ It was more just like if the opportunity came up and maybe if it was the right time, and this was the right time to do it. I know I see buzz online about an all winner season.

I don’t know. You know, I think it’s too early to tell. I’m on my winning streak right now…

I don’t want to think about the thought of not winning.”

GE: So now that you’ve won, now that you’ve done this again, what’s next?

DY: “What’s next? Oh my gosh, so much. I mean, this was such a pivotal moment in my life with like, my age. You know, I just turned 21 and graduated from school and went through this huge experience. And now obviously, now I can talk about it.

I think I was getting this question a lot. In the last few months or while the show was airing. It’s like, oh, what are you going to do? And I couldn’t say well, like I win the show but now that I can finally announce that and talk about it.

I’m going to continue my culinary journey. I will work in the food space for the rest of my life. And I am still learning and growing. And I want to continue to learn and grow as a chef, but you know, I also really want to continue this kind of journey of inspiring and educating people to cook and about food, so there’s a lot of projects in the works hopefully to be able to get MasterChef fans and the public to be able to try my food, working on a few projects with that, as well as some other media projects.”

GE: I have one final question I ask everybody: We are called Guilty Eats, so I have to ask what is your guilty eat?

DY: “I like candy, sour candy. I love sour candy. Also Swedish candy. Like there’s a Swedish candy store in Los Angeles that like I just love.”

GE: Do you have a favorite sour candy?

DY: “I love like peach rings. And like sour apple rings…

Or Wine Gums. I love wine gums. They’re not sour. It’s a British candy. It’s like British Wine Gums. But I love those and anything chewy, like really chewy.”

Once again we have to congratulate Dara on her MasterChef win and if you want to follow her journey now that she has been crowned the winner of MasterChef: Back to Win, check out her Instagram for more.