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Netflix

You’ll never see a better losing dish on a reality cooking show than the ones on Netflix’s latest run at the reality genre pinches a lot familiar touchstones from other shows and adds one big point of difference: the 24 competitors are already some of the best chefs in the world, up to their necks in Michelin stars and other fancy accolades.

The tagline is “A global cooking competition,” and for once even we can’t argue: New Zealand is represented by rising culinary star Monique Fiso. She forms one half of a formidable cooking duo with Amninder Sandhu, who in 2015 was declared, by someone, somewhere, “the best female chef in India".

Like Netflix’s other attempts at the global reality blockbuster

anybody?) it does sometimes feel like it’s trying to do too much. There’s the element, all the teams on a big stage, racing the clock to create the poshest taco (the first episode is all about Mexican cuisine), then there’s cutaways about cooking philosophy and so on. You hardly get a chance to see the chefs actually cook.

It’s no spoiler to reveal their tacos all look amazing — even the ones by the Michelin-star Scottish chef who has apparently never eaten one before. They’re tasted by a trio of celebrity judges who “embody the spirit and palate” of the host country, in Mexico’s case a famous actress, a popular food writer and a former boxing champion. These three anoint the episode’s winner, and also choose a bottom three who must cook off for Mexico’s greatest living chef in the "final plate challenge".

It’s a lot to fit in to an hour — the dishes look amazing but it feels a bit like sitting down to an 18-course degustation at 7 when you’ve got a movie at 8.