Bryan and Michael sat down with Food Network to dish about their first major competition win as a team, their favorite holiday traditions and how they tackled the famous TOC randomizer.
From Sibling Rivals to TOC: All-Star Christmas Champs
Michael and Bryan Voltaggio are no strangers to cooking competitions. As one of Bobby Flay‘s Titans on Bobby’s Triple Threat, Michael has had years of experience mastering the art of cooking perfectly crafted meals on a time crunch. Bryan has also participated in his fair share of competitions, recently beating his brother on Triple Threat. But for the first time, the brothers and business partners teamed up to prove to their fellow chefs and the Food Network audience that they’re better together. Ahead, the dynamic duo sits down with Food Network to discuss how they came out on top of Guy Fieri’s Tournament of Champions: All-Star Christmas, their favorite holiday meals and what it’s like to compete as a team.
You recently teamed up for Tournament of Champions: All-Star Christmas and, spoiler alert, you guys won the whole thing. Congratulations!
Michael: We were both surprised. We had a little bit of an advantage because we do this every day. We’re literal business partners, and we cook together all the time. We just did our thing and showed up like it was a workday. The food that everyone cooked in this competition is incredible. I was intimidated to go up against everyone — Mei [Lin] and Nini [Nguyen], Kevin Lee and Dale [Talde], Marcel [Vigneron], Jonathon [Sawyer] and Britt [Rescigno], Alex [Guarnaschelli] and Antonia [Lofaso]. These teams were not to be messed with. Everyone was there to win. And Bryan and I got to put an end to this sibling rivalry narrative and show people that we’re better together.
How excited were you to be on the same team, especially after going head-to-head on Bobby’s Triple Threat recently?
Bryan: It was great to be on the same team. It didn’t even really matter to me that I went on Triple Threat and won. I did it because it was fun. That was one of the toughest competitions I’ve ever done. Two rounds of two different dishes in 45 minutes. It’s nuts.
Michael: He went to the hospital after the second round before he went against me. How many stitches did you get?
Bryan: I think seven.
Michael: From Triple Threat to TOC, it’s been an intense year. With TOC, we wanted to show as many sides of ourselves as we possibly could. By doing savory and pastry at the same time, we got to show a lot of range. As serious as it was, we took a few more risks on TOC than potentially I would on Triple Threat, because with Triple Threat, I’m in that zone and I just want to cook perfect food every time.
With the randomizer in the mix, the competition is already ruthless. When you have to add ingredients like canned pumpkin, hot cocoa mix, fruitcake — how much more difficult does that make the competition?
Bryan: You have to embrace what’s thrown at you, and sometimes it’s difficult because we wouldn’t ever pick those ingredients to put into a dish that we want to be great. We might experiment with them, but not when we’re trying to cook serious food and are going against really incredible chefs. To be able to edge out the competition, you have to be really smart about how you use them, and it makes it that much more difficult. That randomizer somehow figures out every year how to make the competition harder for the chefs.
Michael: Cooking competitions are also a completely different discipline. The adrenaline is still there, and there’s still an expectation that everything is done technically correct, but it’s really about that spontaneous moment when you look at the ingredients, generate an idea and then execute the idea. Then, there’s a challenge within the challenge; it’s not just about the food. Triple Threat has been a great opportunity to train and get better. People often ask, “Do you love competing?” And obviously I do, but what I love more is the study and the muscle memory that comes with it. It changed the way I look at ingredients and made me come up with more efficient processes on how to prepare something. These competitions are constant education that we can take back in a practical way.
This season isn’t your regular TOC because there’s teams, there’s the sweet and the savory components, there’s holiday-themed ingredients. As a team, how do you tackle this version of the show and divide those responsibilities?
Bryan: We definitely work in tandem. We went into it not knowing how we were going to divide and conquer between sweet and savory because we’re both skilled in those areas. We kind of let the randomizer tell us how to divide and conquer. For the first round, Michael grabbed sweet, and that carried into the second round, and at that point, I feel like we stayed in those lanes.
Michael: The superstition kicks in. It’s like Round 1, it worked. I made dessert and you did savory. Then, when we got to Round 2, we thought, “Let’s just keep pushing,” so we did it again. If certain things would’ve popped up and stumped either one of us, we could’ve switched. I think we’re both left- and right-handed in that regard.
What sort of ingredients do you lean into this time of year?
Michael: I love traditional holiday food. I love stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole with crispy onions on top. I think that there’s room to play with the flavor profiles. The road map for the meal is already there, but it’s the detours that make it super fun. Last year, I made stuffing with a custard base. I blended my eggs into heavy cream, and then I added a whole block of Boursin cheese and poured that onto my bread. It was this luscious, custard-y, garlick-y, delicious bread pudding stuffing. It was gone in five minutes.
Bryan, do you stay more traditional too? What ingredients do you really love to use this time of year?
Bryan: I’m a pumpkin kind of guy when it comes to pies. I’ll mix things up by replacing some of the milk with coconut milk when making the custard or adding curry to the crust. It’s a therapeutic thing as you get closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love the aroma that engulfs the kitchen. Cookies are also a big thing in our household. My wife gets the kids together, and we bake sugar cookies that you decorate and thumbprint cookies. All of the classics.
We’re coming up on a year since the opening of Wye Oak Tavern in your hometown. You guys have obviously teamed up on projects before, but why was this one so special for both of you?
Bryan: It was the first time that Michael and I got to do something together in our hometown. The project was special in a couple of different ways. One, there hadn’t been a hotel in our hometown in over 50 years, so to be a part of that restoration project has been great. The community loves the restaurant. We get a lot of support.
Michael: To do this project together and remind everyone in Frederick, Maryland, that Bryan has a brother was really, really good for me. Once I left, they gave him the key to the city and forgot about me. The fact that we got to come home and share all of our travels and the incredible things that we’ve done with our community (and all of the teachers that suspended me) felt good.
Walk us through that final moment. When you were plating and looked at each other, did you know you had a winner or were you not sure until it was officially announced?
Bryan: I felt really good about the concepts of the dishes and how we embraced the randomizer. I looked down at the plates, and they were both beautiful. Michael’s desserts were insane. It was absolutely incredible-looking. I knew the components were going to be amazing.
Michael: I felt like Bryan and I, especially in the last two rounds of these competitions, we knew we hit it out of the park. You see the ball go over the fence. Then, we just hoped that the other team didn’t hit it as far as we did. That’s the level of talent that’s there. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t something that we phoned in. This was just a scenario where everything fell into place the way we intended it to. In some cases, we got lucky. There’s a little holiday miracle wrapped up in our win as well.
Bryan: It really hit me when Guy said before he announced the winner that one team scored the highest ever in the history of TOC, 98 points. We went in there and, as Michael said, hit it out of the park.
Bryan, what was that moment like for you after being runner-up so many times?
Bryan: The first time that Michael and I competed, we stood together and he won. I was so proud to share that moment with him. Now, to take that full circle and to be in TOC, a competition against some truly incredible chefs, and to share that stage with him for my first major win, that was a very special moment in my life.
Michael: What a gift that we got to share. To be able to call this work, how amazing is that. Bryan certainly got a little bit emotional. We were all emotional in the moment, but to stop and realize what you’re actually getting to do — you can’t fake that. It was a real defining moment in the work that we’ve put into our relationship both personally and professionally over the past few years.
What was the celebration like?
Michael: We had to go to work!
Bryan: We wrapped up the last night of filming, then went back to the hotel, got up at five in the morning and drove six and a half hours to our restaurant in Mammoth Mountain, California, for an event. But it was worth it!
