Beloved Food Network Stars Return for ‘Wildcard Kitchen’ Season 3

Ready for more of Wildcard Kitchen’s winner-takes-all culinary poker games? Eric Adjepong returns to host high-stakes play and after-hours banter with Food Network’s extended family of celebrated chefs, hosts and judges. Once again, he’ll deal out a series of three-card cooking challenges: a round begins with a dish card, continues with an ingredient card and concludes with a wildcard. Each player arrives with $5,000 in hand and a chance to take home the whole pot — if their luck holds through three rounds of blind taste tests. Here are the Food Network stars joining Eric at the table for Season 3.

Three dessert-world heavyweights converge on the kitchen to trade quips and bets, but don’t expect sweet talk here: This game is all about savory food. Seasoned competitor Damaris Phillips brings her southern-cooking skills and a bag of tricks from two previous Wildcard Kitchen appearances — including a big-ticket win — to the table. If pastry pro Zac Young’s next-level Halloween Baking Championship transformations are any indicator, he’s going to be the bluffer to beat. Duff Goldman’s knack for cake earned him megastardom on Food Network baking shows, but aces aren’t necessarily unbeatable. This is anyone’s game.

No one can accuse this trio of not giving their all: these three chefs each lost every penny they gambled last time around. Tapped to face off against two other rising Latin-cuisine stars in Season 1, chef Mika Leon has also tested her mettle in Food Network competitions like 24 in 24, Beat Bobby Flay and Chef Grudge Match. Tuscan chef and Worst Cooks in America mentor Gabe Bertaccini might be Bobby Flay’s Holiday Throwdown lucky charm, but he’s going to need a talisman of his own to pick his friends’ pockets at Eric’s place. Chef Stephanie Izard has won everything from Iron Chef Gauntlet to a James Beard award, but she’s starting from scratch in Wildcard Kitchen. Who will avoid another bust?

These are casual games between friends, of course, but chef Maneet Chauhan can’t help being a businesswoman: she’s the only two-time Tournament of Champions winner and the most successful player Wildcard Kitchen’s ever seen. This time she’s taking her chances against fellow TOC winner and elite kitchen-competition chef Mei Lin. She’ll also face the accomplished chef-restaurateur Aarón Sánchez, one of Food Network’s most experienced judges. What’s tempting these heavyweights to put their records on the line? The largest payout in the show’s history, as it happens. Two of these chefs will leave with nothing, and the player to beat them will claim $30,000.

As the host of Alex vs. America, Eric has thrown fearsome foes at chef Alex Guarnaschelli for years. She’s returning the favor by taking the dealer’s seat in his house, and she’s invited two chefs who have beaten him in the past — chef Sara Bradley (a Chopped grand champion and the first-ever Chopped legend) and chef Kelsey Barnard Clark (who vanquished the Titans on Bobby’s Triple Threat and was the first Southerner to win Top Chef) — to revisit those victories. Eric’s gotten awfully comfortable behind his cards. Can he play the hands he’s dealt and turn his own $5,000 ante into a $15,000 purse?

The already-improvisational game gets even looser and jazzier when Eric invites three of the most unpredictable chefs he knows to improvise at his place. Self-taught chef, Season 8 Food Network Star and Michelin-rated restaurateur Justin Warner quite literally wrote The Laws of Cooking: And How to Break Them. He’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow table-flipper and Cutthroat Kitchen: Knives Out host Brian Malarkey, a chef-restaurateur, longtime Food Network competitor and judge whose controlled chaos spans more than 15 restaurants. Tucson chef Maria Mazon joins them with a bag of tricks of her own — having tested her skills on Brian’s show as well as arenas like Beat Bobby Flay and Tournament of Champions. She returns to Wildcard Kitchen ready to break some rules of her own.

Hometown heroes are making bids for their respective cities’ cultural supremacy at Eric’s table. Let the chips fall where they may. For his second turn at the table, Chicago chef and cookbook author Joe Sasto hopes to burnish the Windy City’s reputation and bring home the big pot. The late chef and superstar Anne Burrell joins Eric as the pride of the Big Apple, and Michelin-rated Los Angeles chef Chris Oh returns to the game to prove the west coast is the best coast. This table should be a chatty one: Talking up your local scene is an excellent way to distract fellow card sharps.

James Beard award-winning chef and well-known Food Network brawler Jonathon Sawyer won Season 2 of 24 in 24 after leaving it all on the kitchen floor. He’s come to Eric’s table to serve a bit of that cortisol to (and gain some cash from) his former hosts, and who can blame him? Iron Chef Michael Symon is a Food Network fixture who has spearheaded shows and competitions across the network. Fellow 24 in 24 host and Renaissance woman Esther Choi has helmed bars and restaurants across the country in addition to giving it her all as a cooking-competition competitor, and there’s serious strategy to how she lays her money down. This reunion reshuffles roles — and the game’s final wildcard will turn them all upside down.

All they do is win, but the triumphant trio Eric’s matched up for this table can’t all come out on top. Food Network Star and Chopped judge Christian Petroni is a guest cook at the James Beard Foundation in his spare time. Tournament of Champions winner Tiffani Faison recently outpaced two fellow TOC champs to beat Alex Guarnaschelli at her own game on Alex vs. America, and her ability to improvise in competition is downright gladiatorial. MasterChef: Legends winner and 24 in 24 alum Kelsey Murphy is a master of adaptation and impressing accomplished judges, and she’ll need every move she’s got to leave this game victorious (and $15,000 richer).

Speaking of chefs who’ve beaten Alex Guarnaschelli at her house (at his invitation, no less), Eric has assembled two more to face the ultimate competitor again at his after-hours game. James Beard nominee, cookbook author and restaurateur Arnold Myint has made a name for himself (and schooled Alex) preparing unforgettable Thai food. Oklahoma City’s Kevin Lee is a fellow James Beard Nominee and he’s also a Guy’s Grocery Games champ. If Alex hadn’t already planned to ambush Eric with a Wildcard Kitchen game of his own this season, we’d say he earned turnabout all over again by resurfacing these old rivalries (and had better keep an eye on his chair next season).