Cooking shows are all the rage these days, especially on Netflix. So it’s no surprise that the rebooted version of Iron Chef, which was itself an incredibly popular show in its time, just flew into Netflix’s top ten.
Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend hit Netflix last week, and is currently sitting in the number 7 slot of Netflix’s top 10 TV shows. That means it joins the likes of Peaky Blinders, Melissa McCarthy’s God’s Favorite Idiot, and the continually dominating Stranger Things.
What is Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend?
The original Iron Chef was a Japanese show, running from 1993 to 2002, and spawned a series of spin-offs around the world. The long-running American spin-off ran from 2005 to 2018 on the Food Network.
It’s not clear why the show went off the air, and if it was ever canceled in the traditional sense, but now it’s back on Netflix.
Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend brings back both co-host Alton Brown and Chairman Mark Dacascos, with Kristen Kish joining Brown in hosting duties. The show also introduces five resident Iron Chefs, and as before the competition revolves around a cook-off featuring a secret ingredient.
If that all sounds familiar, it’s because it’s all very similar to the original premise. The key difference is that the highest-scoring challenger returns in the season finale. Here they battle against all five Iron Chefs in the hopes of becoming the new “Iron Legend” and walking away with a Golden Knife.
We won’t offer any spoilers on what happens, only that you can watch the entire eight-episode first season right now, in true Netflix binge style.
What do critics think of Iron Chef: Quest for a New Iron Legend?
Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend currently has a 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on five critic reviews, Audience scores are not available yet, but the show does have a score of 7.2/10 on IMDB.
Joel Keller at Decider says: “If you’re a fan, you’ll find this new season to be TV comfort food” while Common Sense Media’s Melissa Camacho gave the series 3.5 and described it as ”fun energetic reboot [that] features all the fast-moving competitive kitchen action the series is known for.”
That said, Wenlei Ma, from News.com.au called the show “mundane” and “not worthy of the Iron Chef name." Andy Dehnart of Reality Blurred was equally critical, giving the show a C- score and calling it “an average showcase for talented chefs that has been eclipsed by getter competitions."
So, from the sounds of things, fans of the original show will either be enthralled by the return of the Iron Chef format, or appalled by what the classic cooking show has become.
Should you watch Iron Chef: Quest for a New Iron Legend?
If you’re a fan of cooking shows, and the original Iron Chef series, you will probably want to add this to your watch list. However, with only eight episodes to binge, and each one clocking in between 46 and 50 minutes, the entire season is just over six hours long
In other words it won’t take you very long to get through the whole thing, and you may want to pace yourself.
But the short run time also means Iron Chef isn’t asking for a particularly big commitment. This isn’t a show like Stranger Things season 4, which promises to throw you waist deep into a two and a half hour finale, after all.
Plus, finale aside, each episode is stand-alone, so you don't have to try and watch it all in a single sitting. So at the very least it’ll be something you can stick on the TV, should you need something quick and non-committal to watch for 45 minutes.
Next: Be sure to check out 11 great new movies and shows to watch, and one great show that you should be streaming right now.
