Premiere League: The Next Iron Chef, "Primal: Heat and Meat"

If you've seen your fair share of reality cooking shows involving established chefs - namely, Top Chef: Masters or The Next Iron Chef - you already know that since the contestants are professionals with reputations to uphold, you're in for minimal amounts of drama. Nobody will be thrown under a bus. Cursing and antagonizing will be at a minimum. In fact, some of these chefs may actually be here to make friends.

This is a "Super Chefs" edition of Next Iron Chef, meaning that the contestants are of a higher profile than previous seasons, mostly because they are connected to established Food Network properties. I don't know whether Iron Chef is directly firing shots at Top Chef, but the appearances of Michael Chiarello (Masters contestant), Marcus Samuelsson (Masters winner), and Spike Mendelsohn (All-Stars contestant) are especially conspicuous.

The first episode contains a ballsy challenge in that the contestants have to cook outdoors on an open fire. This restriction has been the bane of Top Chef competitors in the past, but doesn't faze any of the potential Iron Chefs. Indeed, these chefs are cooking on a higher level and their dishes look appropriately delicious. Even the losers of the "Chairman's Challenge," Mendelsohn and Samuelsson, don't completely bomb it.

In a good twist to the reality-cooking formula made familiar by Top Chef, the "main" challenge is first, while the shorter challenge is reserved at the end for the chefs the judges thought performed poorest. The sudden-death, secret-ingredient format provides for good drama in the premiere and should continue to deliver throughout the season.

There isn't much else to say about the first episode. Reality show premieres are rarely interesting anyway. My biggest complaint is that the judges are pretty bland - where's Donatella Arpaia when you need her? It's nice to see chefs at the top of their games cook well; unfortunately (and Top Chef: Masters has had problems with this in the past), that doesn't always translate into compelling television.