Recently, Alfred Eggermont from Binford, ND, fulfilled a lifelong dream: he starred in a cooking competition show. Alfred has had this dream since he was just a little boy. He started helping his mom cook at only 3 years old. At 5, he began watching cooking shows, and at 6, he was cooking full meals for his family. This past spring, at the ripe old age of 12, he starred on MasterChef Junior, a cooking competition show hosted by British chef and restauranter Gordon Ramsay, that airs on FOX. Twelve young chefs began the competition, and Alfred made into the top six before being eliminated. People all over the country fell in love with Alfred and his fellow competitors. But what the audience didn’t know is that Alfred has a visual impairment and receives services from North Dakota Vision Services/School for the Blind (NDVS/SB).
“Alfred’s eye condition is consecutive exotropia, or convergence insufficiency,” explains Erin Storhoff, his Teacher of the Visually Impaired (TVI) from NDVS/SB. “Alfred has a hard time reading a lot of materials at one time. His eyes don’t work well together, especially when reading. He says that letters are blurry or jump around on the page. He prefers to use large print, which allows him to read materials without eye strain.”
At school, he uses a magnifier and slant board, which allow him to see his materials more easily. He also gets his textbooks and worksheets in large print so they are easier to read. He has preferential seating in his classroom and can move around the classroom to view materials up close as needed. But on-set, the only accommodation he had was that the cookbooks the contestants were encouraged to read during free time were available in large print for him. Alfred is good about advocating for himself, his mom, Sue, said, “When he needs something, he just tells them.”
From North Dakota to California
MasterChef Junior producers found videos of Alfred cooking on his mother’s Instagram page and reached out to him to invite him to apply to be on the show. Initially, they asked him to be on last year’s holiday show, but then they decided he’d be a better fit for the full show that aired this past spring. After getting the official invite to be on the show last August, Alfred and his mom traveled back and forth between Binford and Los Angeles in October and November of 2023 to film the show. He also traveled back to L.A. in December for the finale.
The days on-set were long, Alfred said, but fun. “I got to meet a lot of people,” he said. The camera crew and other people involved in production were especially nice. Since it filmed in the fall, he missed quite a bit of school, but “there were teachers on set to help with homework,” he explained. “We were supposed to have four hours of school and four hours of filming each day,” but the days were often even longer than that. On days when they weren’t filming the competitions, the individual interviews that air during the show were recorded. The judges, he said, weren’t as intimidating as you’d expect, even though they are celebrities and famous chefs. Gordon Ramsay, who’s notorious for his temper, “was actually pretty nice, with just a few choice words here and there,” Alfred laughed. All the judges were nice – “with no choice words” – but his favorite judge was Gordon’s daughter, Kelly.
Alfred admits the competition was stressful, mainly because of the time crunch. “You had to run against a clock and not get anything wrong,” he explained. Overall, he’s happy with how the competition turned out, although if given the chance, in his last episode, he would “make my plate look better and change stuff up a bit.” He hopes to someday compete on the MasterChef show for adults.
He also plans to open a food truck and write a cookbook when he’s older, both featuring Asian Fusion cuisine, which he grew inspired to cook by watching “Cooking with Lynja” videos on TikTok. Lynja was a home cook in New Jersey who rose to fame when her son began posting videos of her cooking during the COVID-19 pandemic. She died of cancer earlier this year but continues to inspire Alfred and is his dream dinner guest. “She knows what she’s doing,” he said. He would have loved to have had the chance to cook Pancit Bihon for her, a Filipino dish made with noodles, meat, veggies, and sauce. For now, he’s content cooking burgers that feature beef from his family’s farm and salmon that his dad catches on trips to Alaska for his family. “My family’s really cool,” Alfred says. Now famous for being a TV chef, Alfred is pretty cool – and famous – too. “Top six chefs on a reality cooking competition - how many people can say that?” his TVI, Erin, asks. “He is proof that if you put your mind to it, you can do it.”