MANILA, Philippines - Exemplary culinary skills filled with a good serving of suspense, a dash of heart-warming scenes and topped with a new flavor of excitement is the perfect mix for Q-11’s Kitchen Battles, the newest cooking show which airs tomorrow, May 16 at 7:30 p.m.
With host Zoren Legaspi, annotator Issa Litton, and chef judge Sau del Rosario, Kitchen Battles features professional chefs from prestigious hotels and restaurants and chefs with their own businesses who make up the show’s 12 Chef Warriors.
Every week, two of the Chef Warriors face each other in the kitchen battlefield to cancel each other out in a cook off. Using the star ingredients which are only revealed to them on the actual competition, the chefs come up with recipes on the spot and cook them under time pressure.
There are three rounds of cook offs per week, with Zoren acting as the mastermind of the battles. Issa annotates what each chef is doing, while three judges — French-trained Chef Sau, Zoren and a guest judge — keep track of the recipes and give the verdict. Criteria are taste (five knives), originality (one knife), plating and presentation (one knife), and creative use of star ingredients (three knives). Winners advance to the next round of elimination until one is proclaimed e ultimate Chef Warrior.
For the pilot episode, celebrity Chef Warriors Danica Sotto and Martin Jickain heed the challenge, armed with the star ingredients, to come up with three delectable dishes.