Fire up those stoves — Guy Fieri’s “Tournament of Champions” is back with a competition that is turning up the heat for accomplished chefs.
After going through the qualifying rounds, “Tournament of Champions” pits eight chefs against each other in a bracket-style cooking competition. As if pressure wasn’t high enough, Fieri (the show’s host) throws in the Randomizer, which doles out wild challenges for the chefs, putting their skills and time management to the test.
Each round is judged blindly by the judges, and after eight weeks, one chef will walk away having been crowned the champion, going home with the Tournament of Champions belt and a $150,000 cash prize. This season’s competing chefs will include Karen Akunowicz, Kaleena Bliss, Sara Bradley, Chris Cosentino, Rocco DiSpirito, Tobias Dorzon, Amanda Freitag, Stephanie Izard, Kevin Lee, Antonia Lofaso, Tim Love, Shota Nakajima, Nini Nguyen, Michael Reed, Britt Rescigno, Joe Sasto, Chris Scott, Adam Sobel, Dale Talde, Casey Thompson, Jet Tila, Fabio Viviani, Lee Anne Wong and Claudette Zepeda.
“One thing you can count on with TOC is that we’re always upping the ante, making the competition even more intense and unpredictable,” said Fieri. “With all four past champs putting down their knives for this round, it’s anyone’s game! So don’t sleep on the qualifiers or anyone else as this year it’s truly anyone’s chance to grab that belt!”
Brooke Williamson, who won the first season of “Tournament of Champions” in 2020, returned to the series as a judge alongside double winner of Season II and V Maneet Chauhan and Season IV champion Mei Lin. Other guest judges this season include Scott Conant, Cat Cora, Susan Feniger, Alex Guarnaschelli, Mary Sue Milliken, Charlie Palmer, Wolfgang Puck, Marcus Samuelsson, Nancy Silverton, Martha Stewart, Michael Symon, Ming Tsai, Jonathan Waxman and Andrew Zimmern, and season III winner Tiffani Faison joins Justin Warner as a sideline reporter.
“I think that I understand the position of the competitors maybe more than a lot of the other judges who haven’t competed,” said Williamson. “Me and three other winners are put into a position to not only commentate but also judge; I think we have a certain amount of understanding as to what these chefs are going through and the high level of intense stress that they experience while they’re cooking phenomenal food. It’s a lot less pressure, I will say, although you know that you’re judging the food of potentially very good friends, which adds its own layer of pressure.”
As a judge, Williamson is focusing on the execution of the dishes from the competitors while also understanding why they chose to incorporate the elements of the randomizer, which can control anything from ingredients to the tools they can use in the kitchen.
“If you’re doing something, I want to understand why you did it. I want to understand why an ingredient is on the plate. I want to potentially see how a tool on the randomizer was used in a meaningful way,” said Williamson. “Anytime someone can really employ that that tool in a smart way, it means something to me. At the end of the day, I really just want to eat a delicious dish, and I think I put a lot more emphasis on execution and craveability of a dish than than some others do.”
When thinking back on her time in the competition, Williamson says that the randomizer, as expected, can really throw competitors for a loop.
“I think that you are often placed in a scenario where you’re pairing ingredients that really kind of don’t belong together. Sometimes you get lucky and you get ingredients that immediately trigger a dish in your head and you can creatively run with that from from moment one,” said Williamson. “Sometimes you’re spending an extra few minutes just trying to figure out how to work two ingredients together in a way that nobody ever would. So that randomizer really is the determining factor of how the cook goes.”
As the season continues to unfold, Williamson says that the audience can expect some phenomenal cooking from the competitors.
“I think that the level of talent on ‘Tournament of Champions’ has become so high, and the expectations of performing at a really high level have only gotten greater through the 6 seasons,” said Williamson. “People don’t come in there expecting it to be easy, and I, for one, get excited about the show every season because I learn how to compete a little bit better even just by watching my competitors.”
“Tournament of Champions” airs on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network and streams on Max.
