Culinary Class Wars is a South Korean cooking reality competition that uses an elimination-based format similar to Physical: 100. The first season was released on Netflix in 2024 and featured one hundred chefs divided into two classes, white spoons (veterans) and black spoons (unknown challengers), who competed for a prize of ₩300 million. The second season's first three episodes aired in December 2025, with the final episode released in January 2026. Netflix later announced a team-based third season.
Judges and fairness
The judges were restaurateur and celebrity chef Paik Jong-won and Anh Sung-jae, the only Michelin three-star chef in Korea. To reduce bias, the judges were blindfolded during the first black versus white round so that the contestants' status would not influence them. All food was discarded after judging so that crew and contestants could not taste it and attempt to influence the decisions.
Format and early rounds
Twenty experienced chefs competed under their real names as white spoons, while the other eighty, relatively unknown chefs competed under aliases as black spoons. In the first round, black spoons cooked a signature dish within 100 minutes, and judges decided on the spot whether each one advanced. The second round paired white and black spoons in one-on-one matches built around a random ingredient, with the judges tasting blindfolded.
Team competition
In the third round, the white and black spoons formed two teams, one cooking a meat-based dish and the other a seafood-based dish. Each team had 200 minutes to prepare and serve its dish to a panel of 100 audience members, including the two judges. The team receiving the most votes in each match was declared the winner.