Like he and his brother, Tyler, have done for years now, 14-year-old Shayne Wells has traveled from the Lone Star State to the Grand Old City for the summer, where he will spend the next several weeks visiting his aunt and uncle, Anne and James Simpson.

During the next three weeks, Wells plans to check off the usual items on his to-do list while in Dowagiac: tubing and boating on Magician Lake, hanging out with his cousins and enjoying a bite to eat at his favorite restaurant in town, Mr. Wahoo’s.

However, this year, the Texas teenager will stand out a little more than usual — and not just because of his signature Mohawk haircut.

Wells is fresh off his appearance on this past season of Fox’s popular cooking show, “MasterChef Junior,” which aired from Feb. 9 to May 18 earlier this year. The charismatic 14-year-old made it just outside the top three of the competition, finishing in fourth place.

While he has only been in town since Thursday evening, Wells said it did not take very long for strangers to excitedly call out his name, recognizing him from his memorable stint on the show.

“Just the other day, I was out tubing on Magician Lake when this pontoon boat passed by, with someone onboard shouting ‘Shayne the Train!’” Wells said.

His newfound recognition is just one of the ways that Wells’ appearance on the cooking program has changed his life.

Wells resides with his family in Spring, Texas, outside of Houston, though for many summers he and his brother have traveled north to Dowagiac, to spend a few weeks visiting with family.

“It [Dowagiac] is way smaller than Houston, but I like the little hometown feel here, as well as all the great restaurants,” he said.

Wells — who earned his nickname, “The Train,” on his school’s football team due to his knack of always taking on the largest player on the opposing team — has been cooking since he was around 5 or 6 years old. Whether he was helping his mom and grandmother in the kitchen back home or his uncle in Dowagiac, Wells said he was always volunteering to help cook. He especially loved stuffing the turkey during the holidays, he said.

After picking up some cooking skills from his family, including his uncle James, Wells began cooking on his own a few years ago, adapting recipes he discovered on sites like Pinterest and adding his own “Texas flavor” to the mix. His trademark dishes, chicken fried steak and enchiladas, have become favorites among family members. He has cooked several times for his aunt and uncle since arriving in Dowagiac, he said.

“The reason I love cooking is seeing the reaction people have to your food after you serve it to them,” Wells said. “I love the variety of cooking, too. You can serve something new to people every time you get behind the stove. It never gets old.”

The young cooking prodigy soon caught the eyes — or taste buds, rather — of the producers of “MasterChef Junior” during an open tryout in Houston in late 2015. His mother, Shelley, encouraged Wells to audition in order to try and cheer him up after he failed to make the final cut on his school basketball team, he said.

When asked by the producers to cook them an egg, Wells shocked everyone in the room by poaching it instead of frying it like most of the other children trying out, he said. While told he would likely get a call back letting them know if he had made the next round or not within a few weeks, Wells received a notice from the producers within hours informing him he was moving on.

After several additional tryouts and interviews, Wells became one of the 40 contestants to make it to the television program. He and his mom flew out to Los Angeles in spring 2016 for filming, which ran over two months.

Competing in the show allowed him to meet the famous chef Gordon Ramsay, who serves as one of the show’s two judges, alongside chef Christina Tosi. A longtime fan of the temperamental chef and businessman, Wells said he was a bit star struck upon first meeting Ramsay, though after a few days of shooting seeing him on set became like second nature.

One of the highlights of his time on the show was when he beat out 16 other contestant to make the best vegan burger, which won him praise from Ramsay, Wells said.

“He [Ramsay] told me that, if he went to restaurant that served a burger like that, he would go vegan for the night,” Wells said. “That made me really happy, considering the kind of comments he’s known for making.”

Wells was not spared the other side of the chef’s judgment during his stint, though. The teenager got to personally experience Ramsay’s trademark “it’s raw” line during a team competition Wells was leading, with the judge tossing one of his undercooked filet mignons at the side of a fire truck.

In spite of the set back, Wells still managed to lead his team to victory.

While the pressure to perform well and avoid being sent home was always in the back of his mind, Wells said he always tried to remain positive throughout the show. He was a bit surprised to have made it to fourth place, as he would have been happy just to tell people he had made it on TV in the first place, he said.

“I wasn’t surprised until the very end, when he didn’t win,” his aunt Anne said. “He has a giant personality, he is full of kindness and the boy can cook!”

In addition to making a lot of new friendships with fellow constants through the show — he just recently visited Chicago with a few of them, and is hoping to travel out to L.A. later this summer to visit a few more — Wells’ experience on “MasterChef Junior” is already opening new doors for him. He has already been invited to cook on the line of one his favorite restaurants back home, Q-Shi BBQ & Sushi, which is sure to help him as he pursues a career in the culinary arts: be it as a chef, restaurant owner or even the judge of a famous cooking program like Ramsay.

“How many kids can say they made it to the semifinals of ‘Masterchef Junior?’ Not many,” Wells said. “This will be something I tell my grandchildren about.”