Three days ago, Gallup Korea announced that “Culinary Class Wars” is the most favorite program among Koreans after conducting a survey on 1,001 people aged 18 and over in Korea.
However, the popularity of “Culinary Class Wars” suddenly dropped sharply before the last two episodes aired. According to Wikitree, the reason for this change came from the recent episodes.
Accordingly, in episodes 8-10 (airing on October 1), there will be a consolation match where the “silver spoon” and “black spoon” chefs will battle using convenience store ingredients. After that, the top 8 chefs who will advance to the semi-finals will be determined through a restaurant mission.
However, some tasks have faced heavy criticism. For example, in round 4, chefs from both the Black Spoon and White Spoon teams were combined to form new teams and tasked with running a restaurant for mukbang (eating broadcast) creators.
Each team had a leader, and the show suddenly made an announcement that the teams had to vote to expel the least helpful participant. The three eliminated participants then formed their own teams but ended up recording the lowest sales and all were eliminated.
According to Korean newspapers, most viewers found this change unfair. The sudden elimination seemed too harsh considering the unfavorable circumstances such as lack of manpower and time. On the other hand, Ahn Yu Seong's elimination from Choi Hyun Seok's team by voting was judged awkward.
The mission was also criticized for contradicting the show's original premise of competing solely on cooking skills, regardless of social status. Viewers also expressed disappointment at the lack of screen time given to contestants such as Lee Young Suk, Master of School Meals.
Netflix later released some unreleased footage after audience demand, but the negative reaction continued. Criticism also targeted the rating criteria, which were based solely on sales, without considering important factors such as profitability and customer retention.
Currently, under the broadcast episodes, the audience left many negative comments expressing dissatisfaction such as: "Is this a cooking competition?", "If the show is about cooking, why was a master chef eliminated. Explain it."
Or “I came to watch a cooking competition, not a restaurant business competition”, “Why did the production team give such unfair conditions to the eliminated team when they even blindfolded everyone in the previous rounds to ensure fairness?”…
The reactions from viewers are still ongoing. This is expected to affect the final two episodes of “Culinary Class Wars,” which air on October 8.
