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.

• Bobby Flay
• Michael Symon
• Alton Brown