Maneet Chauhan delicately sprinkled saffron onto her gushtaba goat meatballs as the live audience began the final countdown. She and competitor Antonia Lofaso scrambled to finish their dishes on the Season 5 finale of Food Network’s “Tournament of Champions.”. As the timer buzzed, Chauhan tossed a mixing bowl onto the cluttered counter, throwing her hands up in surrender to the clock. She and Lofaso embraced, neither breaking a sweat.
History was on the line for Chauhan, a highly decorated Indian American chef famous for her mastery of spices, who was hoping to become the first two-time “Tournament of Champions” winner. The show had already made history. Through its first five seasons, “ToC” as it is known, is the only cooking competition series that includes people of all genders where no man has ever won, let alone made it as a top-two finalist.
As the show readies to air its qualifying episodes for its sixth season starting Sunday, it remains to be seen whether women chefs continue to dominate “ToC.” But as viewers and chefs have noticed the trend, the show’s unique format is seen as both a reason for the results and proof of what woman chefs have been saying for years. The brainchild of Guy Fieri. “ToC” first aired in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Food Network star Guy Fieri had been pitching the idea for years.
“This is the UFC of culinary. That’s what I was trying to create,” Fieri said from his sunny home in Santa Rosa, California. “I’m a fan of giving people a platform. There are other culinary competitions out there, but they’re a little more drama-oriented. I want to cut the (BS) and just see the best of the best going through the most.”. Fieri, host of “Guy’s Grocery Games” and “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” saw an opening for a no-frills, professional Food Network cooking competition that “Iron Chef America” had occupied from 2005 to 2018.
Though specialized competitions like “Beat Bobby Flay” and “Alex vs. America” existed, Fieri felt there was still no show that matched the “Iron Chef America” format. “ToC” would fill this space, but with unpredictable twists and turns. How “Tournament of Champions” works. The show breaks contestants into geographic divisions, having chefs from all corners of the country compete one-on-one until only two finalists are left. In every match, the chefs are at the mercy of a creation Fieri calls “the Randomizer,” a spinning, five-category board inspired by the “Wheel of Fortune” wheel.
The categories include a required protein, produce ingredient, specialized equipment, cooking style and time limit. Contestants must work with the combination of single options “the Randomizer” lands on for each match. Requirements have ranged from cooking grasshoppers in paella style to combining mussels and cabbage. Dishes are blind-judged in the kitchen where the food was cooked after the contestants have left the studio.
How “ToC” contestants are chosen. Fieri and his team seek out high-caliber, award-winning contestants from every part of the industry. Many players chosen to compete are relatively unknown outside the culinary world, which makes for high-stakes battles when they’re pitted against household names and big television personalities. This held true for “ToC” season one winner Brooke Williamson. “I’ve done my best over the years to go in with a game plan and some familiarity with what I will be facing,” said Williamson, winner of Bravo’s season 14 of “Top Chef.” “Generally, that goes out the window the moment that clock starts or the moment the ingredients are revealed.”.
Williamson, known for her produce-forward Southern California-style cuisine, has long been a force in the restaurant world. She started her career at age 18 in the kitchen of the Argyle Hotel in West Hollywood, which had a Michelin star at the time. She went on to prove her might at many iconic restaurants, eventually co-opening multiple eateries of her own. When the opportunity to compete on “ToC” arose, she saw it as a chance to expand her audience.
“I went into it with very few expectations, and I think that probably helped me in a lot of ways,” she said. “And having everyone else have low expectations of me as well made it so that I was the only one putting pressure on myself.”. A show where the underdog wins. In a remarkable series of events, Williamson, the self-proclaimed underdog, swept through her competitors, beating well-known Food Network stars Jet Tila and Lofaso. In the finale, she pulled off a huge upset, defeating renowned Food Network personality Amanda Freitag by one point.
