Tournament of Champions 7 (TOC 7) Bracket and Winners

Tournament of Champions season 7 starts on Sunday, March 1st at 8pm on Food Network and 32 chefs are competing for a $150,000 prize.  Once again, none of former champions are competing in the competition and they will be taking on other roles in Tournament of Champions.  Former winner Tiffani Faison will be a sideline reporter, while other former winners Maneet Chauhan, Brooke Williamson, Antonia Lofaso, and Mei Lin will be helping out judging.

There were two weeks worth of qualifiers where chefs competed head-to-head to try to earn 7th and 8th seeds.  Here are the results of all of those matchups and the eight chefs that earned their way into the tournament were: Aarti Sequeira, Katsuji Tanabe, Kenny Gilbert, Dan Jacobs, Giuseppe Tentori, Ashleigh Shanti, Viet Pham, and Stephanie Izard.

The other 20 confirmed chefs competing in the main tournament are: Adam Greenberg, Adam Sobel, Britt Rescigno, Bryan Voltaggio, Carlos Anthony, Claudette Zepeda, Dale Talde, David Viana, Jet Tila, Joe Sasto, Jonathon Sawyer, Kaleena Bliss, Karen Akunowicz, Kevin Lee, Lee Anne Wong, Marcel Vigneron, Nini Nguyen, Sara Bradley, Shirley Chung, and Tobias Dorzon.

This year, they are hyping up four "culinary icons" who will not be revealed until the contest starts.  These icons will be given number 1 seeds and have not yet competed on Tournament of Champions. Many people have been guessing who they are, but they will not be revealed until the new episodes start airing. That is probably the reason why no official brackets have been released by Food Network.  I have created a bracket below that has the matchups with placeholders for the unannounced chefs if you want to see the matchups for TOC VII.  This was done based on the bracket reveal episode that revealed the seeds and divisions, but let me know if anything is off.

Justin Warner and Tiffani Faison will be providing the play-by-play analysis of the competition, and Hunter Fieri will again be following the action backstage with interviews.  The judges this year include Antonia Lofaso, Maneet Chauhan, Mei Lin, Brooke Williamson, Alex Guarnaschelli, Cat Cora, Curtis Stone, David Chang, Dominique Crenn, Geoffrey Zakarian, Hubert Keller, Judy Joo, Ken Oringer, Marcus Samuelsson, Michelle Bernstein, Nancy Silverton, Rocco DiSpirito, Scott Conant, and Susan Feniger.  As they are judging the competition, it is safe to rule out all of these chefs as the mystery "culinary icons."

This post will be used to track the winners for each episode, so come back each week to see who won the matchups on Tournament of Champions (TOC 7) and to discuss the episodes.  Also, the Tournament of Champions season 7 bracket will be updated below with the winners during each episode. The TOC VII finale will air on Sunday, April 18th where the winner will be crowned and awarded $150,000 cash and the champions belt.

Continue reading to see who won the matchups in each episode of Tournament of Champions season 7 and to see the current bracket......

Episode 1: Jet Tila defeated Ashleigh Shanti by a score of 88-80. Claudette Zepeda defeated Tobias Dorzon by a score of 87-85.  Jonathon Sawyer defeated Karen Akunowicz by a score of 89-86.  The first mystery culinary icon was then announced and it was Ming Tsai. Aarti Sequeira defeated Ming Tsai by a score of 85-84.

Episode 2:  Joe Sasto defeated Nini Nguyen by a score of 83-79.  Kevin Lee defeated Adam Greenberg by a score of 90-80. Britt Rescigno defeated Giuseppe Tentori by a score of 92-88. The second mystery culinary icon was then revealed and it was Lorena Garcia.  Lorena Garcia defeated Katsuji Tanabe by a score of 88-85.

Episode 3:  Shirley Chung defeated Dale Talde by a score of 94-87.  Bryan Voltaggio defeated Carlos Anthony by a score o 82-79. Dan Jacobs defeated Sara Bradley by a score of 87-84.  The third culinary icon was then revealed and it was Jonathan Waxman. Viet Pham defeated Jonathan Waxman by a score of 82-80. 

Episode 4: Stephanie Izard defeated Lee Anne Wong by a score of 80-77. Marcel Vigneron defeated David Viana by a score of 87-81. Kaleena Bliss defeated Adam Sobel by a score of 79-77.  The final culinary icon was then revealed and it was Aaron Sanchez.  Kenny Gilbert defeated Aaron Sanchez by a score of 81-76. 

Below is the current bracket for TOC 7 that has the completed matchups added: