The cooking battles move even faster now, piling technique on top of technique until you're not sure what just happened, then a judge takes one bite and the entire match flips. Season 2 understands that the absurdity is the point: a perfectly executed dumpling can topple an opponent the same way a sword move would in any other show. It never pretends to be serious about any of this, which is exactly why the ridiculous stakes actually land.

Mao is back in nineteenth-century China, in the fictional Era of the Cooking Wars, when top chefs fight for respect and power at the risk of losing everything. A huge ship sits off the coast of Shanghai, and on its great warship pavilion the Cooking Underworld faces the Guangdong chefs in a cooking battle. At stake are a legendary utensil and the life of Master Tang Li, the father of Sanjie, and the score is tied at one win each. The deciding match sets Mao against his old enemy Shao An, and in little more than ten hours the fate of Shanghai, the thriving City of Devils, will be settled. This sequel runs twelve episodes and adapts Ogawa Etsushi's adventure cooking manga, with a comic touch.