Restaurant kitchens are a pressurized stew of brutal hours, high stress and sleep deprivation. Acting out goes with the territory and anyone lower in the hierarchy is fair game. But the familiar macho posturing of celebrity chefs has reached a tipping point.

Now with an influx of women at the helm of restaurants, and a younger generation unwilling to submit to the brutal conditions once considered the norm, the rules of “kitchen culture” as we know it are being rewritten.

The Heat takes viewers behind-the-scenes to meet pioneers who broke through the glass ceiling, including Anne Sophie Pic of Maison Pic in Valence, France – the only three-Michelin starred female chef in France and one of only a handful in the world, she has been dubbed “the “Queen of French Cuisine”; Angela Hartnett of Murano in London – a beloved UK star and two-Michelin starred chef who survived Gordon Ramsay’s kitchens to become his first female protége; Iron Chef and Top Chef Master Anita Lo, – she led the first all female team to beat an Iron Chef in the U.S. and closes her beloved Greenwich Village restaurant Annisa, after 17 years.

We’ll also meet the hungry talents of a new generation, including award-winning chef and media darling Amanda Cohen of the trendy vegetarian restaurant, Dirt Candy in New York’s Lower East Side; rising star Victoria Blamey, who received critical accolades for her culinary skills at the famed Greenwich Village Chumley’s in New York; Toronto favourite Suzanne Barr of Saturday Dinette, The Gladstone and Kid Chocolate, who is diversifying kitchens one restaurant at a time; renegade Toronto chef Charlotte Langley, who has done away with traditional brick and mortar to host elaborate dinners off the grid, as well as Toronto writer/former line cook Ivy Knight on why she left the industry.

From grass roots to haute cuisine, The Heat is a compelling and illuminating journey into the culinary world.