Binge-worthy: Chef & My Fridge reveals eating habits of K-drama stars, K-pop idols

Chef & My Fridge

Netflix
★★★☆☆

Following the success of Netflix’s reality cooking competition Culinary Class Wars (2024), South Korean culinary variety series Chef & My Fridge – which ran from 2014 to 2019 – makes a timely return.

Currently available on the streaming platform with new episodes every Sunday, renowned South Korean chefs compete against one another using available ingredients from a celebrity guest’s refrigerator.

Culinary Class Wars champion Kwon Sung-jun and its runner-up and fan-favourite, American-Korean chef Edward Lee, are on the roster, so viewers can expect a rematch.

Other alumni include “white spoon” chefs Choi Hyun-seok and Choi Kang-rok, and “black spoons” Yoon Nam-no (Cooking Maniac) and Park Eun-young (also known as the goddess of Chinese cuisine).

Here are three reasons Chef & My Fridge will whet your appetite until Culinary Class Wars 2 is served in late 2025. 

1. Creative use of leftovers

The concept is straightforward. Each week features two celebrity guests, whose fridges are literally hauled from their homes to the studio.

The K-stars will set themes based on what they wish to eat. Two chefs will then have 15 minutes to battle each other, creating dishes using only what is in the fridge. 

Not all fridges are well-stocked, so it is really a test of the chef’s skill to whip up creative offerings that cater to the guests’ tastes.

2. A peek into celebrities’ lives and their eating habits

Part of the fun comes from such morsels. For instance, the usually private actor Song Joong-ki gushes about how great a cook his British wife Katy Louise Saunders is. The South Korean also impresses everyone when he says they use only olive oil pressed from the fruits harvested from the backyard of their Italian home.

Then, there is idol Jang Won-young from K-pop girl group IVE, who turns out to be a lover of all things cheesy and greasy.

An upcoming episode will see an embarrassed J-Hope of K-pop boy band BTS explaining why he hoards sauce packets, which are kept in resealable bags in his fridge.

It is also refreshing to see the A-listers becoming starstruck fans of the celebrity chefs. Song wanted to be on the show to meet chef Kwon, also known as Napoli Mafia, as he and his wife – who spent half her life in Italy – are huge fans.

And in every guest’s fridge, no matter how old or established he or she is, there will always be containers of banchan (side dishes) lovingly made by their mothers.

3. Hilarity from the “chef-tainers”

Without any prize for the winners except bragging rights, the chefs have a field day trash-talking one another. The friendly rivalry is amped up by the constant irreverent teasing. 

Chef Lee, now a sensation in Seoul after Culinary Class Wars, shows how goofy he can be while producing top-notch food.

The show also serves as an infotainment series, teaching viewers how it is not necessary to have fancy ingredients or exorbitant budgets to make five-star dishes – just make do with whatever is in the fridge.