Culinary Class Wars Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
A new cooking show has just dropped! “Culinary Class Wars,” Netflix’s first Korean culinary show, premiered with four new episodes on Tuesday, Sept. 17. The premise is made clear during the first episode, which is what will be discussed here. You may hear what genre this show is part of and assume you can skip out on this one if you’re tired of cooking shows, which is partially true, though the producers have spun the genre out into new realms with this iteration.
You probably know, “Chopped,” “MasterChef” and their spin-offs which set everyone from home chefs to children against each other, making for an entertaining show (with a cash prize often raising the stakes). “Culinary Class Wars” is set in Korea, where 100 professional chefs and other figureheads in the food business like CEOs and content creators, are split into two teams, the Black and White Spoons. The White Spoons are said to be better and more important than the Black Spoons, yet there isn’t a definitive way the people were split since they’re all successful people in their own regard.
The first episode starts with a 10-minute rapid-fire introduction of 80 Black Spoon contestants, who justifiably stroke their egos for their accomplishments in the restaurant business, creating a light-hearted atmosphere that quickly turns serious when the White Spoons, or the other 20 contestants, are introduced. Their qualifications are oddly similar to those of the Black Spoons, prompting the viewer to question if the teams were chosen at random. There’s one White Spoon who is later revealed to be the culinary teacher of a Black Spoon chef, but besides that, the White Spoons, as one contestant puts it, “get a free pass” for no apparent reason in the first round. Although, they are supposed to compete against the remaining Black Spoon contestants later on.
While it’s unclear if there’s a prize, or if there even will be one person remaining by the end, there is a sense of collective admiration among the contestants, who all worked hard to land a spot on the show that makes the competition worth it. Both teams also idolized the two judges: Paik Jong-won and Anh Sung-jae. Jong-won is seemingly a sort of Guy Fieri figure in Korea, albeit more accomplished, and Sung-Jae is the head chef of the only Michelin three-star restaurant in South Korea. These role models’ placements as the judges on “Culinary Class Wars” upped the stakes and level of competition between the contestants.
The camera work goes above and beyond the standard set by contemporary cooking shows. Additionally, the elaborately decorated tables utilized during the production put an added emphasis on the prestige of the competition. It’s as if the camera people and set designers were cooking up a dish of their own with this first episode. One contested exclaimed, “I wasn’t expecting this level of production quality,” while another stated that “the vibes on set were seriously something else.”
Furthermore, the sheer amount of cooking equipment and spotlights in the arena is staggering, along with the fact that 40 contestants cook at one time. The days on set must’ve been long, and especially draining for the judges, because each group of 40 contestants had to be whittled down to 20 for the next round. The first episode filmed the start of that process. The judges had to make their picks strategically, and after someone was eliminated, they had to part with their nametag, their only sense of identity in the competition. That’s right: The Black Spoons weren’t even called by their names.
“Poker Face,” “300 Billion Side Dish Magnate” and “Yakitori King” are just a few of the nicknames attributed to the Black Spoon contestants. “Yakitori King,” referencing a Japanese kebab-style dish with chicken, wasn’t impressed with the show’s premise, noting he and his fellow Black Spoon contestants were “no slouches” as the lower title implied. In a way, however, the nicknames were a way to check the egos of many pompous chefs in the arena, many of whom were eliminated despite their confidence. One chef, “Chirpy,” wore a chicken head mask throughout his short time on the show, as he was eliminated because his chicken burger was “nothing special,” according to Judge Jong-won.
These tactics by the show’s producers are a double-edged sword though. A sweet old lady nicknamed “Family Style Meal Mogul,” a chef with over 30 years of experience, was eliminated after not including rice in her otherwise delectable meal. Following elimination, the Black Spoon contestants had to part with their nametags, placing accountability on the chefs for not doing well enough. It makes getting shouted at by Gordon Ramsay sound like nothing in comparison.
To further compare with other shows, the influence of “Squid Game” is still being felt, given that 60 out of the 100 total contestants were eliminated in the first round, and the Black Spoon chefs who made it would wear the coveted chef attire, just like how everyone in “Squid Game” donned similar uniforms.
The “Meat Butcher” took it upon himself to debone a pig and get it cooked in the 100 minutes allotted in the first round, where chefs could cook whatever they wished with a variety of ingredients. These rules are lax on the surface, though the chefs made use of every second and every ingredient.
Fine dining is a hard art to understand, but with judges like a three-star Michelin chef, every detail was crucial. Jong-won was projected to be the easier chef to be evaluated by, but even then, he was quite strict on the flavor profile of the dishes. Trying their own dishes, the chefs suspected nothing off with their intended goals for the taste, but Jong-won would find something to critique regardless of the dish’s presentation, and elimination would follow suit.
The White Spoon contestants simply giving commentary on the sidelines without having done any work of their own on the first episode is a gripe of mine, but I’m sure they made their mark on future episodes. The fate of one chef, the “Goddess of Chinese Cuisine” was left at a cliffhanger, an overused but reliable way to keep viewers interested, which is likely why they released four episodes at once. I won’t lie, I watched the first few minutes of the second episode to see what happened to the chef for closure’s sake. Overall, this was a fun watch and definitely an above-average cooking show.
