Kitchen Stadium is prepped and ready for another season of Iron Chef Gauntlet.
In an exclusive clip from season two of the Food Network culinary competition show above, seven chefs battle it out while host Alton Brown delivers some of his most lovable cheesy lines to date.
“I love the smell of broken souls in the morning—no, wait, that’s bacon,” says Brown.
Fans get their first look at the competitors, Timon Balloo, Nicole Gomes, David LeFevre, Dale Mackay, Jeanie Roland, Hong Thaimee, and Kevin Tien, who will go head-to-head in the first five episodes before taking on Iron Chefs Alex Guarnaschelli, Michael Symon and Iron Chef Gauntlet season 1 winner Stephanie Izard in the finale. If the last chef standing can beat out the pros, they’ll go on to claim what Brown calls “the most celebrated culinary title on Earth or maybe in the whole galaxy.”
Noticeable absent from the competition is Bobby Flay. After participating in the first Iron Chef Gauntlet and later Iron Chef Showdown, the Food Network star tore off his apron in the middle of a Showdown battle to show off a shirt that read “THIS IS MY LAST IRON CHEF BATTLE EVER.”
Flay told PEOPLE in February that his decision to leave the show was because he wanted to leave on a “high note.”
“I’ve done over 100 Iron Chef competitions, and frankly they are exhausting,” he said during the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. “They are exhausting physically but, even moreso, they are exhausting emotionally.”
But season two of Iron Chef Gauntlet is still bound to bring the heat with Guarnaschelli, Symon and newbie Izard in the competition.
“Can anyone beat these kitchen stadium legends and become the next Iron Chef? Maybe, maybe not,” Brown teases. “Tune in to find out.”