Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend is an American cooking show reboot of Iron Chef and Iron Chef America. Alton Brown returns to co-host the show with Kristen Kish, and Mark Dacascos again serves as The Chairman. Contestants challenge the Iron Chefs in a cookoff with a secret ingredient, and in this series, the highest scoring challenger battles with all five Iron Chefs one more time in hopes of becoming an Iron Legend. The series ran on Netflix from June 15 to July 2, 2022.
Contents
Format
Five new Iron Chefs have been introduced: Curtis Stone, Dominique Crenn, Marcus Samuelsson, Ming Tsai and Gabriela Cámara. Challenger chefs compete against the Iron Chefs to prepare a dish centered around a secret ingredient revealed by The Chairman. Hosts Alton Brown and Kristen Kish provide real-time commentary on how the competition proceeds, with Kish occasionally filling the role performed by Shinichiro Ohta on the original show and Kevin Brauch on Iron Chef America as floor reporter. Each episode has three judges, Nilou Motamed, Andrew Zimmern, and a third guest judge. Unlike prior iterations, Brown and Kish also try the dishes and participate in deliberation with the judges, although their votes are not counted in the final score. At the end of the season, the highest-scoring challenger returns to face off against all five Iron Chefs in hopes of becoming an Iron Legend and receiving a Golden Knife.
Episodes
Each episode has three judges, Nilou Motamed, Andrew Zimmern, and a third guest judge.
Production
In January 2022, Netflix announced that it would reboot the Iron Chef franchise with a new iteration subtitled Quest for an Iron Legend for eight episodes, initially. The release date of June 15, 2022 was announced that May with Alton Brown returning to co-host the show with Kristen Kish and Mark Dacascos reprising as The Chairman.
Tsai, Samuelsson, Crenn, and Stone were previously challengers on Iron Chef America, with Tsai, Samuelsson, and Crenn having also competed on The Next Iron Chef. Samuelsson was also a challenger on the aborted Iron Chef USA pilot from 2001. Past Iron Chefs Masaharu Morimoto and Wolfgang Puck appear as guest judges during the first season. Morimoto was the third Iron Chef Japanese on the original Iron Chef and was one of the Iron Chefs on Iron Chef America, while Wolfgang Puck served as one of the Iron Chefs for the Iron Chef America: Battle of the Masters pilot miniseries before retiring.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 57% of 7 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. Jim Vorel at Paste enjoyed the show appreciating the preserved balance of "patently absurd" and "undeniably impressive" from previous iterations. However, Wenlei Ma disagreed in her review for news.com.au feeling it lacked the weirdness of the original Iron Chef and was too polished, later calling it "soulless" and "not worthy of the Iron Chef name."