SINCE winning Masterchef two years ago, the feet of Dorset’s favourite adopted Kiwi Mat Follas have barely touched the ground.

When not working hard to ensure his Beaminster restaurant The Wild Garlic stays afloat in desperate financial times, he has been running wild food foraging courses with ‘guerrilla gardener’ Theo Langton, participating in cookery events in Dorset and further afield and taking a foodie road trip through America.

He has also been batting away constant rumours that he is planning to expand his business.

“I would be really grateful if you could mention that I’m not about to expand the Follas empire,” Mat grimaced.

“I am not moving away, or opening a café or a new restaurant in Weymouth.

“Instead of opening other places, we are concentrating on The Wild Garlic. We broke even last year, which I was very pleased about given the current financial climate, and I want to keep concentrating on here and keeping it good.”

However, one other new project that he is allowing to eat into his Wild Garlic time is a pop-up restaurant to raise funds for the earthquake-stricken people of Christchurch in New Zealand.

Kai We Care – Kai is Maori for ‘food’ and the name is a pun on Kiwi – is taking place in London on April 4.

It will involve a seven-course meal with each dish created and cooked by top and Michelin-starred chefs, including Russell Brown from Sienna in Dorchester, Celebrity Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner and Michelin-starred Simon Hulstone and Dominic Chapman.

Mat will be cooking alongside former Masterchef champions Steve Wallis and Dhruv Baker, and Steve Groves who won Masterchef The Professionals in 2009 is on board, as is Great British Bake-Off winner Edd Kimber.

Of course, no Masterchef-y event would be complete without the presence of John Torode and Gregg Wallace, who will be lending a hand, and Michel Roux Jnr is also rumoured to be taking part.

As well as a sumptuous meal, the £130 ticket will include a top-dollar auction rammed with fabulous prizes and Mat hopes his pop-up evening will raise around £75,000.

The chef, who has cousins and friends living in the city and used to learn karate there, said: “The devastation has touched everyone. An ex-girlfriend’s parents’ house has been written off and we have had people coming into the restaurant who don’t have a home to go back to.

“Sixty per cent of the centre of the town has been levelled – that’s a place the size of Leeds. The trouble was that people didn’t expect Christchurch to be hit by an earthquake. We thought Wellington would be hit, we were waiting for that and they had taken precautions – high-rise buildings were built with rubber foundations, designed to survive earthquakes.

“That hadn’t been done in Christchurch and the result is similar to if it had happened here. Buildings have just been levelled.”

Kai We Care has mushroomed thanks to Mat’s diligent use of the social network Twitter and his Wild Garlic blog, although it is fair to say that his high-profile as a former Masterchef winner hasn’t done it any harm.

Mat made a guest appearance on this year’s Masterchef in late February when, in an episode of unremitting cruelty and tension, the remaining contestants had to cook for previous winners.

The current series initially came in for some considerable flak. It follows the design of the Australian and New Zealand Masterchefs, with all the contestants cooking in one vast studio kitchen and the chefs who didn’t make it through the preliminary rounds were often seen sobbing in the arms of various friends and family members.

Viewers took against the new format, slating it as ‘X-factor with cooking’ and having a go at hosts John Torode and Gregg Wallace, but now things have settled down and the series remains a must for foodies everywhere.

“I think it will get better as it settles down and develops,” said Mat.

“I watched the Australian and New Zealand ones – I thought the New Zealand series wasn’t great because the contestants didn’t cook many of their own dishes and the Australian one was very showbiz, although I like the way they have three presenters.

“I think the British one will be the best of the three. I like the way they put the contestants in a professional kitchen – that keeps the live element about it. They also did the Scottish field kitchen, which I took part in when I did it and that’s the sort of thing that the viewers remember.

“It was nice to go back and be cooked for and it was good to see the other contestants again. I think that the two who went out were the right two on the day and looking at the remaining ones, I can see there are four who are way above the rest.”

When Mat competed in Masterchef two years ago, the programme was the only one of its kind on terrestrial television in the UK. Now it has branched out to include Celebrity, Professional and Children’s editions, but the original is still the favourite, and the culinary expertise and the contestants’ standards of presentation seem to have sky-rocketed.

“Since my year, people have seen the presentation change and I personally think you can tell which programmes the contestants have been watching by the food they bring out,” said Mat.

“They know what food should look like, but they can’t miss out on the flavour. Anyone who gets through to the final of Masterchef can cook a good plate of food but they also need the knowledge and technology and gastronomy of food.

“My series was the one that really took off but now there are so many series to watch and that’s the reason I haven’t been tempted to do any of the celebrity stuff. I do get asked whether I want to take part in a reality show about the restaurant but I turn them down.

“For me, it’s more important to be here at The Wild Garlic, doing this and making it a success.”

For further details of Kai We Care go to kaiwecare.weebly.com