If you think watching Iron Chef competitors throw down inside Kitchen Stadium is stressful enough, imagine being in the middle of the food fight. The set not only has to accommodate an intimidatingly cavernous luxury kitchen but also give hosts Alton Brown and Kristen Kish ample elbow room to observe the shenanigans directly on the floor.

“The hosts see everything,” Iron Chef: Search for an Iron Legend star Gabriela Cámara tells Tudum. “They can instruct the cameras [to be] like, ‘Oh, let’s see what Gabriela is doing.’ ” The pressure from the judges, including Andrew Zimmern, Nilou Motamed and guests like OG Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, doesn’t help either — especially since they broadcast every taxing movement. “The judges are at their little table, and they’re all looking at you,” Cámara recalls.

Adding to the high octane is the sprawling and ever-changing floor plan of Kitchen Stadium, even when it comes to what’s in the cabinets. “The pantries change for every battle,” Brown says in this behind-the-scenes set tour, showing off everything from saffron and harissa to dried pollock heads and fermented garlic. 

Take A Tour Of The 'Iron Chef: Quest For An Iron Legend' SetKristen Kish and Alton Brown give an exclusive look at the show's kitchen.

The biggest upgrade in Kitchen Stadium is how the secret ingredient is presented. “We used to just have an altar,” recounts Brown, who’s been a part of the Iron Chef family since 2004. “Now we have an entire secret ingredient chamber. [The chamber] opens up, and there’s a vast world on the other side — a world of flavor.” Sometimes there are entire farmer’s markets; other times there’s a re-creation of a torch-lined great hall fit for an actual king. Just don’t spend too long getting distracted with shopping. As Cámara says, “You can go as many times as you want, but you don’t want to go that many times.” ”

There’s a theory that time moves faster in Kitchen Stadium: “[The hardest part] is that clock that runs at two minutes per minute,” jokes Aussie chef Curtis Stone. “I genuinely don’t understand. I did a battle, and I set [my own] timer because I was like, ‘They’re messing with us.’ ”

Turns out that the clocks are honest — it’s just that the fires simply blaze brighter, hotter and quicker in Kitchen Stadium. So don’t get burned.