MasterChef season 7: where are they now? A decade after the DJ beat the teacher and the poker pro

It aired on Fox between June 1 and September 14, 2016, and it broke the format's own rules by sending three cooks into the finale instead of two. Graham Elliot had left after six seasons, so Gordon Ramsay and Christina Tosi rotated a third chair through Wolfgang Puck, Aarón Sánchez, Edward Lee, Kevin Sbraga, Richard Blais, and Daniel Boulud.

The finalists were almost a setup for a joke: a nightclub DJ, a fifth-grade teacher, and a man who once finished second at the World Series of Poker Main Event. Ten years on, only one of them cooks for a living.

Shaun O'Neale won it, then kept going

O'Neale, 33 and 20 years into a DJ career on the Las Vegas strip, took the $250,000, the trophy, and the cookbook deal with halibut cheeks and vadouvan carrot purée, spice-rubbed venison with black truffle and fiddlehead ferns, and a salted caramel tart that Ramsay called "f---ing delicious" on air.

"The hardest thing about the whole competition was keeping it a secret, especially once I found out I won," he told CarterMatt the morning after it aired. "It's one of those things you want to scream at the top of a mountain."

His cookbook, My Modern American Table, followed, along with the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival and a Macy's partnership. He became co-owner of The Blind Pig in 2020, opened Larrea Las Vegas in 2021 and ran its kitchen until January 2022, then moved to Arizona. Since 2024 he has been executive chef at Three Thirty Three in Tempe, a modern Asian steakhouse on North Scottsdale Road serving wagyu with foie gras and coconut-lime injected king crab legs.

Brandi Mudd quit teaching and came back for more

Mudd, 27, from Irvington, Kentucky, won nine individual challenges — more than anyone else that season — and lost on her dessert. She left teaching, won the cooking competition on the MasterChef cruise, appeared at MasterChef Camp, and launched the catering business Southern Flair with Chef Brandi. She returned for MasterChef: Back to Win in season 12 and placed 10th.

David Williams went back to the cards

Williams had already won $3.5 million finishing second to Greg Raymer at the 2004 WSOP Main Event before he picked up a MasterChef apron. He has one bracelet, won in 2006 in $1,500 seven-card stud, and took the 2010 WPT World Championship for $1,530,537. His live tournament winnings now pass $9.5 million.

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He is also a serious Magic: The Gathering player, and that career has its own asterisk: he made the Top 8 at the 2001 World Championships in Toronto and was disqualified without prize for marked cards, then suspended for a year. He admitted the cards were marked and disputed that he'd done it deliberately.

"Right now I have lost a lot of my passion to cook so I've taken a break," he told CarterMatt two weeks after the finale. "I have had numerous investors approach me about opening my own restaurant or to print a cookbook."

He never took them up on it.

The other 17

• Tanorria Askew (4th) — Turned her private chef company Tanorria's Table full-time in Indiana, published Staples + 5 in 2021, and co-created the Black Girls Eating podcast.
• Manny Washington (15th) — Now a District Chief with his fire department in Orlando, placed third on Food Network Star season 14, and wrote Put Some Flames on Em!
• Andrea Galan (11th) — Moved to Barcelona, staged at three-Michelin-star ABaC, won an episode of Chopped, and opened Bar Lola and L'Espai.
• Katie Dixon (6th) — Opened Birdhouse Café in Hattiesburg in 2017 and published Be Nourished.
• Eric Howard (8th) — Back with FDNY, later a partner at Gramercy Ale House, now a private chef.
• Cassie Peterson (20th) — Opened a bakery, Bread & Buttercrème, in Iowa in August 2017; it closed in July 2019.
• D'Andre Balaoing (13th) — Pastry chef at Scarpetta Las Vegas, then a chef for Virgin Voyages.
• Dan Paustian (5th) — Runs Flavor City Catering and does stand-up.
• Alejandro Toro (12th) — Photographer, filmmaker, and the Spanish-language voice of South Park.
• Lisa-Ann Marchesi (16th) — Launched an olive oil brand, then appeared on TLC's You, Me & My Ex.
• Diamond Alexander, Diana Bilow, Nathan Barnhouse, Terry Mueller, Barbara Savage, Brittany Craig, and Bill Travers — Web design, digital marketing, a theater degree, contracting, gluten-free teaching, private cheffing, and retirement, respectively.

For the record: the season's audience peaked at 4.39 million for the two-part semifinal, higher than the finale itself.

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