Alex Faces Three ‘Tournament of Champions’ Belts in a Heavy-Metal ‘Alex vs. America’ Season Premiere

Alex Guarnaschelli’s the kind of competition chef who melts foes’ faces. Five seasons into Alex vs. America, the Iron Chef, Chopped judge, restaurateur and all-around badass has settled into a comfortable (for her) pattern of facing challengers from around the country in her arena. The rules of engagement are simple: She battles three opponents in two rounds of cooking, and judges decide their fate in blind tastings. Round 1: Someone, maybe even Alex, goes home. Round 2: Surviving challengers who beat Alex win $10,000 (for a first-place finish) or $5,000 (for second). It should go without saying that this almost never happens.

Host and chef Eric Adjepong is quite familiar with Alex’s knife skills, literally and metaphorically; he’s watched her dice up all those challengers, after all. He strode into the arena looking almost as comfortable as she did: “I’ve got some things up my sleeve,” he said. “These are the chefs and themes that you probably don’t want to face. I’m talking about America’s culinary all-stars — a group of celebrated chefs so feared that they think they have what it takes to take you down.”

He then indulged in a bit of foreshadowing: "The chefs we have today are looking to add another notch in their belts."

"Another notch?" Alex asked, about to get an answer she'd hate.

Eric was downright gleeful as he began to introduce Alex’s first challenger: “She spent 10 years as a chef at the legendary Spago before branching off and starting her own empire…”

“I already know who it is,” Alex groaned. But Eric was enjoying himself.

“She has multiple acclaimed restaurants,” he continued, “including the Michelin-recommended Dama; she’s one of the winningest chefs in all of the Food Network competitions.” Yep, Alex would be facing Antonia Lofaso; that hardware she’s hefting is the belt she earned beating 31 other chefs to win Season 6 of Tournament of Champions. In addition to being the reigning champ of Food Network’s notorious culinary battle royale and psychological meat grinder, she’s also one of Alex’s good friends. “We actually said that we would never compete against each other,” Alex said. “But we are!” And Eric was just warming up.

“Mathematically,” ultra-competitive Alex told Antonia, “you’re the only TOC champ in this room.” Eric couldn’t have scripted a better segue to the second murderer in his row: With an eye-popping mega-accessory of her own, in came Tiffani Faison, a four-time James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Northeast, head of a hugely successful Boston hospitality group, finalist in the first-ever season of Top Chef, Chopped judge and third-season TOC winner. Tiffani had seven years of judging beside Alex under her (huge champion’s) belt, “so [Alex is] in for it,” she said with confidence.

“Eric," Alex sighed, "I’m sensing a theme."

Eric completed his hat trick of hellions by summoning Mei Lin, TOC’s Season 4 winner. In addition to her megabelt, she took top honors from Top Chef (winning Season 14 in Boston), shared kitchens with Marcus Samuelsson, Wolfgang Puck and Michael Voltaggio, and created Nightshade, hailed as one of the best restaurants in America and nominated for two James Beard Awards. She had also been on the receiving end of Alex’s judgment on more than one occasion and was more than ready to give back as good as she’d gotten.

“So, chef Alex, say hello to your first nightmare of the season,” Eric concluded. “You versus three TOC champions!”

Alex was more than ready to kick things off: “This is my house and I’m going to defend it with every bit of competitive energy that I have.”

Fittingly, both of the judges Eric invited to evaluate the competitors had also participated in blind tastings to winnow down competitors on Tournament of Champions. Legendary Cat Cora, the first woman to become an Iron Chef (in 2005), has helmed everything from restaurants and apps to cookware lines in the two decades since her historic Food Network debut. James Beard Award winner Susan Feniger, in turn, was the first woman to win the Julia Child Award (in 2018), and she appeared on more than 400 episodes of Food Network’s classic Too Hot Tamales. “I love to see what four different chefs come up with [using] the same ingredients,” Susan told Eric. “It’s always really interesting.”

“This is the top of the top,” Cat said. “I mean, you have to bring it all. And I think that’s what we’re looking for.”

To counterbalance Alex’s home-court advantage, Eric gave her three challengers decision-making power over their first dishes' details. He also gave them a stroll down memory lane, since the proteins, produce and styles presented were all callbacks to details of their first dishes in the Tournament of Champions.

First, would it be Antonia’s cod, Tiffani’s mussels or Mei’s chicken breast? Alex hoped for chicken — “’cause whatever happens, you’ve got chicken” — but the TOC three settled on cod. Produce, in turn, was a choice between avocado (Antonia), cabbage (Tiffani) and button mushrooms (Mei), with cabbage winning the day. Last but not least, between grilled (Tiffani), nutty (Mei) and sweet (Antonia), the group elected to prepare a nutty dish. Tasked with choosing a time limit between 10 and 40 minutes, “I love all the time in the world,” Antonia said, and the decision was unanimous.

“Ladies, the board is set,” Eric said. “We have cod, the humble cabbage and we’re going nutty! Forty minutes to do so. We’re at Season 5 right now, and I have yet to see — America has yet to see — Alex go down in the first round. It could be happening right now!”

Antonia’s defending her TOC title, rolling up as a contestant on a show she judges on the regular and competing against the friend she pinky-swore never to meet head-to-head — no pressure, right? “It’s competition at the highest level. Today is actually going to be the hardest version of a culinary competition that we’ve ever had. Like, there’s no room to breathe today,” she said. She planned to sear the cod, then present it in a coconut broth, “and then do this like salsa macha and shaved cabbage. I want this to just really be about the coconut,” she explained.

"I always love like a raw fresh element on the dish. I start making this raw Savoy cabbage and pickled chile salad, the cod I season with a little bit of salt [and] sear it presentation-side down, [then] throw a ton of butter in there; when the butter starts to turn brown again, that is a quintessential nuttiness."

Tiffani took her dish in a Szechuan direction — her happy place, as it happens. “When I travel [and] come home, I order a Szechuan poached fish dish; that’s my ‘welcome home’ dish,” she told Eric. She looked comfortable as she prepared an aromatic paste with scallions, ginger, garlic, Szechuan peppercorns and shrimp paste, but her mind was still traveling. “It’s been a minute since I’ve competed, and so I feel nervous,” she confessed. “Going back to that place in my head where I’m like, ‘Can I really cook? Do I know what I’m doing?’”

She, too, felt pressure to defend the TOC house. “Alex is super-competitive, she’s an incredible chef, everyone knows that she knows how to cook anything. She’s a technical wizard; that’s going to be so high-level and tough!” Can one poached fish dish tackle all those feels?

Season 4’s representative was cool as a cucumber. “I’ve never battled Alex before, and I have been wanting to for a while,” Mei said as she prepared cabbage wraps for her cod. “I feel like I’m a seasoned competitor, and taking Alex out is the next step." That’s one hell of a recipe! “I think if anybody can take out an Iron Chef in Round 1, it’s going to be a TOC champ,” she concluded.

Like Antonia, she cultivated nuttiness by browning butter. "Nutty is very subjective. I am hoping the judges can taste the nuttiness in my dish," she said.

Eric found the move bold. "The judges are eating this blindly; it is gutsy not to put a nut on the plate when nutty is the theme!"

Alex would like viewers to know she’s sought balance. “I’ve been working on handling losing — like, aligning my chakras, reading Deepak Chopra — so I don’t need to win,” she told Eric. “Except for now! I gotta win this one. I’m the only one without a belt. The belt that I win for myself is right here.” (Figuratively. She did not fry up a cod-belt, though we’d have been here for it.)

Eric wanted to get hit with some flying cabbage, maybe. “Right now, this is probably the biggest competition this kitchen has ever seen,” he reported from the floor. “She could be going home first!”

“I don’t have time for a lot of riffraff and nonsense,” Alex said. “I’m really honored that these three TOC champs came here, but I also must beat them all.”

Antonia served her brown-butter-basted cod in a coconut milk broth made with ginger, sesame oil, onion and galangal, then topped it with a triply nutty peanut-sesame-almond salsa macha and refreshing Savoy cabbage with chiles, herbs and lime.

“There’s a lot of technique here,” Cat said with approval.

“I love that they tried to make a salad with the cabbage and the cucumbers, because that helps with the dish — and you do get a nice hit of the nut, [a] nutty flavor,” Susan replied.

The herbs and lime weren’t quite enough for Cat. “Personally, I would have given it a little dressing on the cabbage, because this is a sauce [where] you’re getting fat on fat on fat in it. [You] really need to break up some of the fat up with acid,” she concluded. All in all, the dish wasn’t the judges’ favorite — but it was enough to send her through to the second round.

“I just [wanted] to use the cod in multiple ways — roasting my cod, and then doing a salt cod and poached cod rice,” Tiffani said. She gave the rice its own dish to drive home the distinction between those preparations. “If I were to put the rice on the bottom [beneath the roasted cod], the rice would get lost in the broth,” she explained.

Alex was impressed with her competitor: “Tiffani’s looks like I stepped into a really homey Thai restaurant that’s been around for 50 years, everything they make is delicious!”

Tiffani’s multiple approaches to the cabbage, in turn, found favor with the judges, who loved how she had charred and pickled it rather than boiling or steaming it. Better yet, “The fish is perfectly cooked,” Susan noted.

“And then you have those nutty little pieces of the nut in there that gives it that extra little pizzazz!” Cat enthused. She would have liked to see a smaller portion of the rice served beneath the cod, “but otherwise it eats beautifully,” she continued. “Pretty dish, very pretty dish. I love those flavors.”

One poached fish could gobble up all of Tiffani’s butterflies, as it turned out; her dish came in first place, securing her total control over the ingredients in the second round of cooking. “Shut up!” she cried in disbelief. “I thought I was going home! For sure!”

Mei enveloped her cod with a finely chopped and seasoned farce before wrapping it in cabbage leaves she topped with crispy Brussels sprouts; she then bookended that delicate roll with grilled and sauteed maitake mushrooms that would double down on the nutty flavor she developed with the nage. Was nuttiness, as she hoped, a state of being rather than a physical characteristic of a nut?

“The sauce is rich and delicious,” Susan said. “There’s not near enough acid in it for me, [but] in terms of flavor, it’s great, and I love that they made a farce out of the salt cod. I think that was really smart.”

“But I don’t get a lot of nutty, even with the brown butter and everything,” Cat countered. “I think that was lost in this dish.”

Mei’s gamble was ultimately too big, and she wouldn’t go on to the second round. That said, she stood by her big swing. “I feel like I made an amazing dish, but I don’t know, taste is subjective,” she conceded. “I know that that’s exactly what happens when you compete against the best of the best!”

Alex was firmly in her zone by the time she finished reducing the miso glaze for her cod. “The more I compete, the more competitive I feel; it’s like coal in a furnace,” she confessed. “It’s not always easy, it’s not pretty, but I don’t have any choice. This is just my DNA!”

Her competitors weren’t surprised that her dish was gorgeous. “[Alex] has such strong technique,” Antonia said, “but then she cooks like you’re her best friend and her neighbor and it’s like the flavors are…”

“…Relatable,” Tiffani finished for her.

“The cod is cooked beautifully,” Cat said. “I mean, this chef is very confident; they’re not feeling that they have to prove anything with this dish, they’re just cooking from their heart. I just love it.”

Susan concurred, though she would have preferred a spotlight on the featured produce and style. “I love the way the cabbage is used, [but] if cabbage is one of the main elements, I would like more of it,” she explained. “I think the dish is fantastic, [but] does it have enough of the nut flavor? Maybe not.”

One question was answered definitively: Alex would not have to leave her own arena in the first round for the first time. That said, she wasn’t keen on coughing up any money in the second round, either. “I’ve got two TOC champs back that are chomping at the bit to win this thing,” she said. “They’ve got those gold belts. They don’t need any money from this bank.”

Tiffani’s triumph in the first round of cooking gave her full decision-making authority for the second half of the competition … or did it? Eric presented her with a choice between four proteins: venison, tenderloin, quail or monkfish.

“Monkfish, one of my favorite fishes of all time!” Tiffani exclaimed. With that sorted, Eric unveiled … a randomizer?! The devilish, slot-machine-style contraption Tournament of Champions host Guy Fieri operates to arbitrarily determine competition variables and keep contestants on their toes — and give them nightmares for years afterward — wasn’t supposed to be part of Alex’s trauma. And yet.

“Randomizers haunt me in my dreams, it’s like PTSD!” Antonia sputtered. “I wanted unicorns and rainbows, not the randomizer. That is wrong to even bring this here!”

“It’s really triggering,” Alex concurred.

And yet! Tasked with spinning a mini-randomizer to single out a vegetable, Tiffani spun to kohlrabi. She then spun another randomizer that committed the competitors to using a box grater as they cooked. For the final variable, “I promise we are done with the randomizer,” Eric claimed.

“Who believes you anymore?” Alex asked, with good reason.

Given the choice between pickled, smoky and gooey-style dishes, “I don’t think anything good comes out of gooey,” Tiffani said. “Smoky.”

With that, the 40-minute timer was set once more, and the money round was underway.

“Monkfish is like the lobster of the finned-fish world. It has the texture of lobster, so you can’t cook it too quickly — but you need to get a sear on it,” Antonia said. “I’m going to do a monkfish in a really strong, smoky beef sauce with mushrooms, pureed kohlrabi and a kohlrabi-potato fritter to go along with it.”

The antidotes to the randomizer are, of course, intention and precision; she’s a creature of the competition she’s mastered. “I am just keeping every single element of this dish as precise as possible,” Antonia continued. “It’s not about who I beat; it’s about putting out really great food, it’s about being able to play the game. It’s just about winning. So for me, it’s all about precision. The perfectly cooked mushroom, the bacon, the puree; everything needs to be precise.”

With zero interest in getting dinged for neglecting her assigned style a second time, Tiffani used a vacuum sealer to infuse her monkfish with a smoky marinade; she also built her dish with lapsang, a Chinese black tea with smoked leaves. After fearing an early exit in the first round of competition, she swung all the way over to heist mode for the second. “I’m so nervous at this point, because if one of us comes in second and Alex comes in first, we get no money! It needs to be me and Antonia one and two, no matter how that works out. And it would be kind of nice to sneak in the back door and rob [Alex’s] house, you know?”

The pressure cooker Alex loaded up to build smokiness (ham hock + beef stock) did not rock. Dwelling on setbacks isn’t her thing. “This is one of those moments [where] you can either pitch a fit or you gotta turn the car around [and] get out of the ditch,” she said, mid-pivot. “So, I juice some red bell peppers, and I get that reducing in a pan, I’m gonna add straight cooked chipotle to create that smoky taste.” Monkfish with smoked chipotle sauce and kohlrabi fritter, coming up. “I love my friends, but I want to win against them — and so I’m putting everything in this, and, yeah, this round is intense.”

“This is so you,” Alex told Antonia. “It’s so pretty, it’s so inviting. It’s nice to have competitors like this on the show.”

“Well, thank you for having us!” Antonia replied.

“It’s worth losing for,” Alex fibbed.

Antonia’s kohlrabi three ways — which Alex called “a direct TOC randomizer response to an ingredient” — earned her favor with the judges.

“I think the strongest element there is the kohlrabi,” Susan said. “The kohlrabi puree, definitely the kohlrabi greens; it got really focused.”

Cat took issue with the chewiness of the monkfish, which retained a bit of sinew. “The inside of it, though: very moist, very delicious.”

Ultimately, Susan pronounced the dish a bit too rich — and Cat concurred. “[It] definitely needs a lot of acid,” she said. “We hate to keep saying that, but that’s just the truth!”

Like Antonia, Alex created a kohlrabi fritter — and the synchronicity between the dishes made both competitors nervous. “For me [with] the kohlrabi cake, I think from grating it, unfortunately, [there] was too much moisture and so then it made it mushy,” Susan said. Geez, the randomizer really can spoil anything! “The sauce for me,” she continued, “was better for me than the sauce on the first one.”

Alex satisfied the judges’ hankering for acidity, but Cat noted that the monkfish was cooked “maybe a minute too long” — proof, if you will, that every second counts in competition. So, would Alex or the last of the TOC three take the win?

“Oh my god,” Alex said. “It’s so pretty! It looks like I’m in the forest in Denmark! I love the flowers!”

“She’s smoky; she needed some color,” Tiffani replied. “She’s fighting with the darkness.”

The judges were as enchanted with Tiffani’s efforts as her competitors were. “I love this dish. The charred kohlrabi is so creative,” Susan said. “You get that smokiness, [and] the puree is delicious, not too rich.”

“I really love the presentation,” Cat added. “Monkfish is very hard and, unfortunately, I think all three of these chefs took it over a minute more [than they should have], but all of these chefs are extremely talented — you can tell by the technique.”