Netflix’s Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend is not worthy of its name

The original was a kooky hit that gained a cult following for its over-the-top pageantry. The latest version is nothing like that.

Remember what made the bombastic Japanese cooking competition Iron Chef such a hoot?

More outlandish than outlandish, more over-the-top than over-the-top and so kitsch a vat of confetti would actually tone it down, Iron Chef was the Saturday afternoon SBS delight you never wanted to miss.

From the pageantry of Chairman Kaga’s wild proclamations and gesticulations to the steam and smoke-filled frenzy of the Kitchen Stadium floor, everything about Iron Chef was compelling.

The English-language translated narration also had a certain charm thanks to the slightly off inflections or the barely stifled giggles from the female voice. It was all part of the Iron Chef showcase. It was like a trifle, full of strong elements but somehow working in harmony.

The cooking and the food was secondary to the drama – so it didn’t matter if you turned on during a dud key ingredient week, hoping to see 10 scallop dishes but having to settle for fennel as the hero.

It was also of an era, back before cooking competitions became a mainstay of broadcast (and now streaming) TV, so there was a novelty that has long dissipated.

Challenger Curtis Duffy in episode two of Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend. Picture: Greg Gayne/Netflix

Iron Chef never seemed to take itself too seriously, fully leaning into its excess and spectacle.

You can’t say the same for Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend, a new iteration of the franchise launching on Netflix this week. It struggles to dial up the weirdness and struggles even more to strip out the American earnestness.

The format remains the same. The Chairman pits a challenger against one of his resident Iron Chefs in a battle royale during which they must produce five dishes centred on a “secret” ingredient for a judging panel. A winner is declared and bragging rights ensue. The challenger with the most points will face off against all five Iron Chefs in the finale.

Sounds fine on paper, but the execution is missing all the pizzazz of the original because core to the problem is that it is so slickly American. The benchtops are too clean, the lighting is too bright, the hosts (Alton Brown and Kristen Kish) and the judges are too polished, the editing is too fast-paced and the score is too generically urgent.

In other words, it’s soulless. It has no real identity.

Mark Dacascos has previously played the Chairman in American and Australian remakes of Iron Chef. Picture: Patrick Wymore/Netflix

With Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend coming now on the heels of MasterChef, Top Chef, Chopped, Hell’s Kitchen, Cupcake Wars, My Kitchen Rules and all the imitators, it’s an indiscernible clone not of its predecessor but of the genre.

It doesn’t help that Brown has been host of every other cooking competition series on the US Food Network for years.

It also doesn’t help that the first episode featured Curtis Stone as the Iron Chef. While he’s likely less known to Americans, and no doubt good TV talent and a seemingly nice guy, Stone is overexposed on Australian TV, largely due to his ubiquitous – nay, endless – Coles ad spots.

So when he’s the first person to pop up on Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend, it’s just another hour of Curtis Stone on a cooking competition that looks and feels the same as everything else.

Part of the appeal of the original Iron Chef is that its Japanese Iron Chefs (“Morimoto-san!”) were not known to Australian audiences. Everything about it was wildly different to the mundane.

And everything about Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend is mundane. It’s not worthy of the Iron Chef name.

Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend is on Netflix from Wednesday, June 15 at 5pm AEST.