The first season of the Netflix reality series Culinary Class Wars proved that a cooking cooking competition that starts with 100 contestants can actually be compelling to watch in its first episodes. It helps that the presentation is bold, the dishes made in the first round look great and the judges are tough as hell. This all comes back in Season 2, but with some twists.
Opening Shot: Contestants in Season 2 of Culinary Class Wars talk about watching Season 1 and what they’re going to bring to the competition, as we see scenes of selected contestants cooking.
The Gist: As in the first season of Culinary Class Wars, the contestants are split into two groups. “White Spoons,” who are all Michelin-star chefs, legendary chefs in their particular cuisine, or winners of cooking shows like MasterChef Korea. “Black Spoon” chefs are supposedly less experienced restaurant owners and chefs, but as the group of 80 Black Spoons filters into the arena, they’re noticing that the competition is even more fierce than in the first season.
The Black Spoon group members are only identified by nicknames indicating their specialty, like “Boss In The Kitchen” or “Barbecue Lab Director.” But there are more chefs in this season that could be in the White Spoon group, intimidating the self-trained and even the experienced chefs.
When the White Spoons are introduced, the Black Spoons notice there are 18 instead of 20. In the Black Spoon elimination round, they learn that 18 of them will be selected by the judges, restauranteur Paik Jong-won and three-star Michelin chef Anh Sung-jae, who will take 20 dishes each, to take on the White Spoons. But there’s a twist in this season’s elimination round: Two “Hidden White Spoons,” who were eliminated during Season 1, will compete in the Black Spoon elimination round. If they go through, the number of Black Spoon slots available will also increase.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We still think Culinary Class Wars is Top Chef on steroids.
Our Take: Because the first episodes of Culinary Class Wars is so dizzying, with the two judges having to judge 80 — now 82 — dishes between them, it’s easy to feel a little disconnected from the competitors and their stories. But, as in the first season, the show’s producers have made this lengthy elimination round exciting enough to keep us watching, especially with the addition of the two “Hidden White Spoon” chefs.
The Hidden White Spoon chefs operate under different rules in this round; they are under different instructions than the Black Spoons, both judges taste their dishes, and the judges need to be in agreement about moving the chef on. If they are not, the chef is eliminated.
While we’re not super familiar with the culinary scene in South Korea, it’s still interesting to see chefs in different cuisines and disciplines come together in this competition. One chef, for instance, distills her own soju in the 100 minutes she has to cook her dish, and then pairs it with a spread of pork, shrimp, vegetables and rice. Another chef brings his own noodle machine to make his unique brand of hand-pulled noodles.
What we’ve come to enjoy is watching Paik and Anh take hearty bites of each dish and make their judgements based on their unique but exacting criteria. That definitely comes to the fore when one of the Hidden White Spoons, Kim Do-yun, presents a dish that Paik loves, but Anh has questions.
Performance Worth Watching: Not sure why, but we like how Zen Kim Do-yun is while he cooks, wearing headphones and looking like he’s one with his noodle machine.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Anh gives his judgement on whether Kim Do-yun stays or goes.
Sleeper Star: All of the chefs and their dishes make us want to fly to South Korea and go to their restaurants.
Most Pilot-y Line: As with the first season, the show takes its sweet time getting into the actual cooking, using much of the first half of the hourlong first episode making dramatic introductions. But once the cooking gets underway, things move quickly.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The producers of Culinary Class Wars realized that the level of competition is more important to viewers than bringing in quirky chefs that may get lucky, and that shows in Season 2.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.