2026 Nominees

Wildcard Kitchen

Production Company: Lando Entertainment

Produced for: Food Network

Executive Producer (Production Company): Brian Lando; Francesco Giuseppe Pace; Bradley Warden; Lindsay Luttrell; Cara Rifkin

Executive Producer (network/platform): N/A

Country or Territory where first released: USA

Synopsis:

After midnight, Eric Adjepong takes over the Food Network kitchen and invites the best chefs in the country to bring $5,000 of their own money to play three hands of his late-night, underground culinary card game. Eric deals cards that randomly reveal the dish and mandatory ingredient for each round, and the players are challenged by everything, from catch of the day with blue cheese to chicken dinner using tinned fish. But it's each chef's secret wildcard that makes or breaks the high rollers, proving once and for all, it's not the cards you're dealt, it's how you play them! In this representative episode, Eric Adjepong invites three winners of the highest honor in food, the James Beard award, to prove why they're top-tier chefs and settle some old scores. Stephanie Izard, Jonathon Sawyer and Karen Akunowicz slug it out in a high-paced culinary poker showdown and face some of the most diabolical wildcards to win bragging rights and cold hard cash.