Iron Chef Gauntlet

For the first Chairman's Challenge, Alton Brown jump-starts the proceedings by serving up an array of wild ingredients, and the chefs must use their expert techniques to make a top-tier dish right out of the gate. Alton determines the most and least successful dishes, and the bottom-rated chef is thrown into the deep end for a Secret Ingredient Showdown against a competitor chosen by the winner. Dishes are presented to judges Donatella Arpaia and Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian, and one competitor is sent home.

The competition kicks off with Alton Brown's Chairman's Challenge that forces the seven chefs to show their resourcefulness by using a single protein in as many ways as possible. When one chef takes too many risks and another isn't risky enough, one of them ends up in the bottom. Then, things get real when two chefs fight to avoid elimination in a fishy first Secret Ingredient Showdown, and judges Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian and Ching-He Huang send one chef packing.