It’s a Christmas miracle! Shirley Chung will return to TV in Tournament of Champions: All-Star Christmas in November, around a year and a half after she was diagnosed with stage 4 tongue cancer.
Food Network delivered the news in a press release about the upcoming Tournament of Champions spinoff, which the network calls “a high-stakes holiday incarnation of the ultimate sudden-death culinary showdown.” Chung is listed as one of the competitors, and she’ll be partnered with chef Sherry Yard.
Chung announced her cancer diagnosis on Instagram in July 2024, saying her oral surgeon found a tumor under her tongue and she’d been diagnosed with stage 4 tongue cancer that May after doctors determined that cancer cells had spread to her lymph nodes.
One option was the complete removal of her tongue, but Chung found inspiration in the “unicorn case” of another chef with tongue cancer who was treated with chemotherapy and radiation, and so pursued that option instead.
And this May, Chung told Instagram followers she was in remission. “I just completed my six-month scans,” she wrote. “I can proudly say, no cancer cell was detected in my body. I am in 100% remission! I am still healing [and] learning to speak again and [have] started to have solid food, two meals a day.”
Chung, who honed her culinary chops under chefs like Thomas Keller and Guy Savoy, was a finalist of Top Chef Seasons 11 and 14, and she returned to the franchise as a judge of Top Chef Amateurs. More recently, she repped the West Coast as a repeat contestant of Tournament of Champions.
Now Food Network is getting her and dozens of other chefs for Tournament of Champions: All-Star Christmas, premiering on Wednesday, November 5 at 8/7c
“In every battle, teams will serve up a savory and a sweet dish based on the spin of the Randomizer,” a press releases teases. “The chef teams will need to be in sync and on their game to earn the title, the belt, a $100,000 cash prize furnished by Carnival Cruise Lines and their split of an additional $50,000 prize to give to a cause close to their hearts.”
Tournament of Champions: All-Star Christmas, Wednesday, November 5, 8/7c, Food Network