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Netflix’s first Korean culinary competition series has quickly become a breakout global hit — with Taiwan ranking among its most enthusiastic markets.
The Taiwan Creative Content Fest hosted producer Eunji Kim of Studio Slam, who broke down how the series evolved from a rough idea into a fully realized format.
Before “Culinary Class Wars,” Kim and her team produced the 2020 talent show “Sing Again,” which spotlighted Korean singers who had released albums but never found mainstream recognition. That experience formed the foundational idea for their next project. “We wanted to make a competition show for chefs,” Kim said. “But our first question was: how do we stand out against long-running giants like ‘Top Chef’?”
For the team, the answer was rooted in local culture. “This is a Korean variety show. We needed a cultural symbol that speaks directly to Korean audiences,” Kim noted. In Korea, the spoon is a potent symbol of social class. That concept inspired one of the show’s defining visual cues: the split between white-spoon chefs, representing the culinary elite, and black-spoon chefs, representing lesser-known talent.
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Not all participants immediately embraced the class-based format, but the creative team considered it central to the show’s DNA. From early development, they committed to the dramatic tension of a concealed classification system as the core engine of the competition. “From a production standpoint, we held firm to the show’s structure,” Kim said. “But how the chefs performed — how they presented themselves, how they marketed themselves — that was entirely improvised.”
Through careful editing and narrative shaping, the team ultimately found that cultural specificity didn’t limit the show; instead, its themes resonated widely with international viewers. Following the first season’s success, the response from the culinary community shifted dramatically. “For Season 2, many chefs who turned us down the first time actually came back to us after watching the show,” Kim revealed. “That boomerang effect proved that our approach wasn’t just creatively sound — it had real commercial value.”
From Korean cuisine and culturally rooted symbols to a competition format that speaks a universal entertainment language, “Culinary Class Wars” has achieved exceptional visibility on Netflix while pioneering a new style of reality-competition storytelling. As the series heads into a new season, global audiences are eagerly anticipating even more compelling narratives that go far beyond the kitchen.
