When Korea's Top Chefs Walked Into a Convenience Store and Made History
Season one of Culinary Class Wars — Netflix's Korean cooking competition that pits Michelin-starred White Spoon veterans against scrappy Black Spoon challengers — produced one of the most compelling single rounds in reality cooking history. In episode eight, the chefs who had lost the previous elimination were handed one final lifeline: walk into a convenience store, choose whatever ingredients you can find on the shelves, and cook something the judges would remember. No restaurant pantry. No premium suppliers. No advance planning. What followed was not a consolation round — it was a demonstration of exactly what separates a trained culinary mind from everyone else. Napoli Matfia made a chestnut tiramisu that judge Ahn Sung-jae described as worthy of a hotel fine dining menu. Cooking Maniac produced a pad Thai built on ramyeon noodles and crab sticks. The round proved something the show had been hinting at across every episode: great cooking is a system of thought, not a product of expensive ingredients. This guide breaks down the three most iconic dishes from that CVS challenge — with full at-home recipes — and then goes further, into the gourmet CVS logic that any home cook can apply right now.
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| One dropper of truffle oil, one white plate, three convenience store ingredients. This is what Culinary Class Wars taught the world about the distance between "instant" and "impressive." |
The Show That Redefined What Convenience Store Food Can Be
Culinary Class Wars premiered on Netflix in September 2024 and became, within weeks, the first web variety show to rank first in Gallup Korea's preferred programs survey — a distinction that had previously belonged only to prestige dramas. It won the Grand Prize in the Broadcast category at the 61st Baeksang Arts Awards in May 2025, the first entertainment program to receive that honor in the award's history. Season two aired from December 2025 through January 2026, and Netflix announced a third season before the second had even finished airing. The show's cultural penetration extended well beyond viewing figures: CU convenience store collaborated with winner Chef Kwon Sung-joon (Napoli Matfia) to sell a commercial version of his chestnut tiramisu for approximately ₩4,800. It sold out immediately and became scarce within days. The product made Michelin-level thinking accessible to anyone with five thousand won and a CVS nearby.
The CVS challenge round crystallized the show's central argument into its purest form. The format — one hour, convenience store ingredients only, no additional equipment beyond what the store could supply — strips away every variable except culinary intelligence. What the top chefs demonstrated in that round was not improvisation. It was the application of classical technique to non-classical materials: understanding emulsification, layering, seasoning ratios, and texture contrast well enough to produce those results with chestnut snack bags and instant noodles. That is exactly the knowledge this guide translates into home-kitchen terms.
Three Dishes, Three Techniques, One Convenience Store
The three recipes below are adapted from the show's CVS challenge round and the official Netflix Korea recipe releases that followed. Each one is built around a core technique that extends beyond the dish itself — once you understand the principle, you can apply it to dozens of other CVS combinations.
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| The Culinary Class Wars CVS challenge, plated for editorial. Three dishes, three techniques, zero restaurant budget — and every ingredient from a convenience store shelf. |
Recipe 1: Napoli Matfia's Chestnut Tiramisu
This is the dish that won the round and launched a thousand home-cook attempts. Chef Kwon Sung-joon's insight was to treat packaged chestnut snacks — a standard Korean CVS item, sold in small foil bags for approximately ₩800 — as the equivalent of mascarpone's flavor base. By cooking the chestnuts down with milk and blending them into a puree, then folding that puree with cream cheese and whipped cream, he created a "chestnut sabayon" that mimics the richness of traditional tiramisu without a single egg or any specialist dairy. The structural logic — alternating soaked biscuit layers with a cream mixture, topped with grated chocolate — follows classical tiramisu assembly exactly. The CVS substitutions are almost invisible in the final result.
To make it at home, you need two bags of roasted peeled chestnut snacks (approximately 80g total), 135ml of whole milk, two tablespoons of cream cheese at room temperature, one pack of whole-wheat digestive biscuits (the Korean "Diget" brand is the exact product used on the show, but any digestive biscuit works), one toffee nut latte pouch or a cup of strong hazelnut coffee, 400ml of heavy cream, 75g of sugar, and one bar of dark chocolate for grating. Begin by simmering the chestnuts in the milk for three to four minutes until slightly softened, then blend the two together with the cream cheese until completely smooth — the consistency should be thick and pale, closer to a paste than a liquid. Separately, whip the heavy cream with the sugar to soft peaks, then fold the chilled chestnut mixture in gently. Pour the toffee latte into a shallow bowl and dip each biscuit briefly — no more than two seconds per side or they will disintegrate. Layer the soaked biscuits at the base of a glass or ramekin, followed by the chestnut cream, then another biscuit layer, then cream to the top. Grate frozen dark chocolate over the surface and finish with a small scattering of toasted granola. Refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. The result, on the day of making, is silky and rich with a deep chestnut warmth running through the cream. By the following day, the texture firms into something closer to a chilled cheesecake — equally good, differently structured.
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| Chestnuts, toffee latte, digestive biscuits, cream cheese. Judge Ahn Sung-jae called it "worth a hefty price at a hotel." It costs about $4 to make at home. |
Recipe 2: Cooking Maniac's CVS Pad Thai
The pad Thai produced in the Culinary Class Wars CVS round was built on Neoguri ramen noodles — Nongshim's thick udon-style instant noodles, chosen specifically for their width and chew, which approximate the rice noodles of traditional pad Thai more closely than any other CVS option. The technique requires one critical step that most home cooks skip: blanching the noodles in boiling water, then immediately cooling them in ice water and draining thoroughly before any stir-frying begins. This removes the excess starch coating that would otherwise cause the noodles to clump in the wok and ensures they fry properly rather than steaming.
The ingredients are: one pack of Neoguri ramen (noodles only — discard or set aside the soup packet), one can of chicken breast or sliced fish cake from the hot bar, one pack of imitation crab sticks, bean sprouts, half an onion, two garlic cloves, canola oil, soy sauce, one teaspoon of sugar, a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, and optionally the Neoguri seasoning packet used sparingly as an umami base rather than as soup stock. Blanch the noodles and bean sprouts together for sixty seconds, drain, and cool immediately. In a hot pan with a thin layer of canola oil, fry the sliced onion and garlic until they begin to color, then add soy sauce and a small amount of the seasoning packet — roughly one third of the packet — and stir until dissolved into the oil. Add the protein, stir-fry for ninety seconds, then add the noodles and bean sprouts and toss everything together on high heat. Finish with the sugar and lemon juice, tossed in at the last moment before plating. The result is a wok-fried noodle dish with a clear pad Thai flavor profile — sweet, savory, slightly sour, with the Neoguri noodles providing that essential chew. Plate it on a white dish with a lime wedge and a scattering of crushed peanuts if available, and the presentation closes the gap between street food and restaurant delivery entirely.
Recipe 3: The CVS Risotto Principle (Any Starchy Base, Any Broth)
This third recipe is not taken directly from the show but applies the exact logic the show demonstrated — using classical technique with CVS materials — to produce something the show itself gestured toward without fully articulating. Risotto is fundamentally about starch release: the slow addition of hot liquid to a starchy grain, with constant agitation to encourage the starch to dissolve into the broth and create a creamy sauce without any added cream. The CVS version replaces arborio rice with the rice from a triangle kimbap or a CVS rice container, uses instant soup stock (the broth from any ramyeon packet diluted to about three times the standard water ratio) as the liquid, and finishes with string cheese pulled apart and stirred in at the end as the fat element that traditional risotto achieves with butter and parmesan.
Heat a small amount of butter or oil in a pan, add the cooked CVS rice, and stir to coat each grain. Begin adding the diluted ramyeon broth one small ladleful at a time — approximately 60ml per addition — stirring constantly between each addition and waiting until the liquid is mostly absorbed before adding the next. This process takes eight to ten minutes and cannot be rushed. As the starch releases, the mixture will become progressively creamier and more cohesive. When the rice reaches the right consistency — loose enough to spread slightly when plated, firm enough to hold a shape — remove from heat and stir in pulled string cheese. The cheese melts into the broth and rice, adding a mild dairy richness that rounds the savory ramyeon base. Plate on a wide white dish, finish with a few drops of truffle oil if available (sold at some premium Korean CVS stores and at most Korean supermarkets), and add any micro-green or herb from the refrigerated produce section. What you have is a dish that photographs like a restaurant course and cost approximately ₩3,000 to produce.
The Principle Behind All Three: Technique Over Ingredient
The Culinary Class Wars CVS challenge round was, at its core, a demonstration of culinary grammar. Classical cooking is not a collection of specific recipes — it is a set of principles about heat, time, texture, fat, acid, and seasoning that apply to whatever materials are available. The chefs who performed best in that round were the ones who immediately identified which classical techniques their CVS ingredients could support: Chef Kwon saw that chestnuts behaved like a nut paste that could be treated like mascarpone; Cooking Maniac saw that thick ramyeon noodles, properly prepared, could carry the structural logic of pad Thai; others identified that convenience store broth packets, diluted correctly, contained enough glutamate and salt to function as professional-quality stock.
This is the knowledge that translates directly into home cooking. The CVS store is not a limitation — it is a constraint that forces clarity. When you cannot default to premium ingredients, you have to understand your techniques well enough to make simpler ones perform. The results, as the show demonstrated to a global audience across two full seasons, are frequently more interesting than what emerges from a well-stocked pantry, because every decision had to be intentional. Which of these three dishes are you most likely to attempt first?
Data Sources
Culinary Class Wars Season 1 Viewership and Awards — Gallup Korea Survey, September–October 2024; 61st Baeksang Arts Awards, May 2025. CU x Napoli Matfia Chestnut Tiramisu Collaboration — BGF Retail Press Release, October 2024. Netflix Korea Official Recipe Release — Culinary Class Wars Episode 8 CVS Challenge, October 2024. Culinary Class Wars Season 2 and Season 3 Renewal — Netflix Korea Official Announcement, January 2026.
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