MasterChef season 10: where are they now? The contestant everyone knows today didn't even win
Twenty home cooks, one $250,000 prize, and Gordon Ramsay, Aarón Sánchez, and Joe Bastianich on the judging line. Season 10 of the American MasterChef ran on Fox from 29 May to 18 September 2019. Seven years on, the name most people would recognise from that cast finished third.
Dorian Hunter won. The 45-year-old creeler from Cartersville, Georgia took the trophy, the $250,000, a Viking kitchen, and training in all three judges' restaurants, beating runner-up Sarah Faherty in the finale. Nick DiGiovanni, cut after the entrée course, placed third — and now runs the biggest cooking channel on YouTube.
Nick DiGiovanni: third place, first on YouTube
He was 22, a Harvard senior, and he left mid-semester to film the show without telling his professors. Third place turned out to be enough. On 30 March 2026, Guinness World Records verified his channel at 35.7 million subscribers — the most for any food or cooking channel — and he holds 11 food records of his own, including the largest iced latte at 1,044.92 litres, made with Dunkin'.
He also landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 and TIME's first TIME100 Creators list in 2025, published a cookbook called Knife Drop, founded the salt brand Osmo, voiced a bartender in Zootopia 2 in November 2025, and went back to MasterChef — first as a mentor in season 11, then as a guest judge in season 14.
He's been candid that the immediate afterglow was thinner than it looked.
"It's almost like your birthday times 10," he told People in 2026, describing the quiet that followed.
Dorian Hunter: the actual winner
Hunter was the first Black woman to win the American series and, at 45, remains its oldest champion. She published a cookbook, Not Your Average Southern Sides Chick, and now works as a private chef doing pop-up dinners and event catering. In 2025 she turned up on Fox's The Floor for season 4, won the first apron of the season, and was knocked out in the second duel of episode 5.
What about everyone else?
- Sarah Faherty — the San Diego runner-up and former Army interrogator, who never once landed in the bottom during an elimination. She hosts a food and drink podcast, Everyday Food and Wine, and came back for season 12's Back to Win without securing an apron.
- Bri Baker — the Dallas cocktail server, eliminated in episode 20, now a content creator running a food styling and photography business.
- Evan Tesiny — the Brooklyn sales coordinator, out in episode 7, since working as a private chef and a sales consultant.
- Micah Yaroch — the Grand Rapids kitchen porter, one of the season's youngest, eliminated in episode 21.
Hunter and DiGiovanni tied for the most individual challenge wins that season, at six apiece. Only one of them got the trophy.