Tastefully Yours: Episodes 1-2 » Dramabeans
Tastefully Yours: Episodes 1-2
by Unit
“Tastefully yours” sure sounds like a fun way to sign off an email. And speaking of fun, Tastefully Yours is off to a delightful start! We’re served with the reluctant partnership of an arrogant chaebol and a small town chef who doesn’t give a hoot about him, and sparks are sure to fly off this delicious platter.
EPISODES 1-2
Our tasteful show kicks off with an introduction to our — as of now, slightly distasteful — hero, director HAN BEOM-WOO (Kang Haneul) of Hansang Foods. Beom-woo seeks maximum profits, and his fav pastime is acquiring recipes and restaurants from both willing and unwilling parties. He doesn’t take no for an answer and utilizes blackmail, theft, threats, legal loopholes… or whatever else gets the job done. Beom-woo is currently on a quest to achieve a three-star rating for his restaurant, Motto, and to this effect, he acquires a famous neobiani recipe for the seasonal menu.
Why is Beom-woo so obsessed with achieving three stars? Well, his older brother and rival, managing director HAN SUN-WOO’s (Bae Nara) restaurant, La Lecel, has two stars while Motto has just one. And their mother, CHAIRWOMAN HAN (Oh Mi-ae) has decreed that the first son to achieve three stars will be the next owner of Hansang. Let the succession games begin! Beom-woo is excited for the upcoming launch of his three-star menu. But there’s one tiny problem. A day before the launch, he learns there’s another restaurant that also has neobiani as its main dish. What?!
Motto prides itself on the uniqueness of their dishes, so Beom-woo drives down to Jeonju from Seoul to investigate this never-before-heard-of rival restaurant. The fine dining restaurant Beom-woo expects to see is actually a hole-in-the-wall place, and the middle-aged person he assumes would be running the place is our very youthful heroine, chef MO YEON-JOO (Go Min-shi) of Jungjae restaurant. Pfft. Beom-woo and Yeon-joo’s meet is not very cute as she has utmost respect for the sanctity of her space, and she doesn’t fancy typical rich boys who think they can “name your price” their way out of apologizing for stepping on her precious homegrown cabbage.
After a reluctant apology, Beom-woo shows Yeon-joo the picture of her neobiani on social media, and orders a plate. “It’s not neobiani, it’s seopsanjeok, you doofus,” she corrects him. Ouch! But whatever the name of the dish might be, she can’t cook for him because she has run out of ingredients. A desperate Beom-woo has no choice but to go ingredient hunting — which is no easy task because Yeon-joo is very picky and uncompromising. She wants exactly what she wants from exactly where she wants it. After a stressful ingredients run that involves black card transactions, collecting eggs from stubborn chickens, tasting raw beef (*faints in salmonella*) and hiking for mushrooms, it’s time for our chef to cook.
Beom-woo snacks on Yeon-joo’s kimchi in the meantime, and has flashbacks to warm memories of eating his grandmother’s kimchi when he was much younger. Then he slaps himself to snap out of falling in love with Yeon-joo while she cooks. Lol. Beom-woo notes that Yeon-joo’s ingredients, recipe, and final dish is completely different from his neobiani — and later on, she points out the difference between his neobiani and her seopsanjeok. Relieved that Motto and Jungjae are serving different dishes, Beom-woo almost doesn’t taste Yeon-joo’s cooking — and screw his check, I personally took offense at this disrespect — but his hunger is greater than his pride, so he sits to eat.
Beom-woo is blown away by the masterful flavors that attack his taste buds, but good businessmen never praise the chef for a job well done. Instead, they completely level their plate, and offer to do the chef the “favor of acquiring her restaurant.” Smh. But Yeon-joo is not interested in selling to the money-grubbing and soulless hands of capitalism. She places more value in the effort and sincerity behind each meal, unlike Beom-woo who only cares about how much money he can make per plate. Before he leaves, Yeon-joo gives him free food for thought. She tells him to think about non-monetary reasons for running a restaurant, and if he has a passion for the business. I’d say the money is passion enough, but that’s just me.
Beom-woo’s ruthless acquisitions soon come to bite him in the ass when a man attempts suicide after being blackmailed into selling his parents’ restaurant. Hansang’s stock price nosedives, and Sun-woo champions Beom-woo’s dismissal from the company. Our hero reluctantly visits the victim to apologize and overhears a phone conversation that proves Sun-woo orchestrated the suicide attempt brouhaha in order to get rid of him. But when Beom-woo reports his brother to their mom, she doesn’t care. He provided his brother the ammunition to shoot with, and winning is all that matters to the chairwoman. Sun-woo takes the reins at Motto, and Beom-woo’s succession goal now hangs in the balance. How does a man achieve three stars without a restaurant? Well, that will be the true test of his abilities.
As dramaland coincidence would have it, there’s a fine dining restaurant in Jeonju whose owner just so happens to have a pile of unpaid utility bills and a one-month deadline to pay her rent or get kicked out. Yep. Our heroine’s restaurant is urgently in need of funds, and Beom-woo offers to take care of the money problems in return for acquiring the restaurant. Yeon-joo flat out turns down the acquisition — but she says she might consider an investment if he agrees to work at Jungjae.
Beom-woo initially laughs off Yeon-joo’s suggestion like some big joke. But he’s the more desperate one here, so he agrees to work for a month as restaurant manager. But lest we think he is a changed man after his fall from grace, his plan is to steal all Yeon-joo’s recipes and achieve the three-star rating at his own restaurant. Smh. In the meantime, he resumes managerial duties at Jungjae, and starts by pointing out everything that is wrong with the place: the outrageousness of the cost to sales rate, the dull aesthetics, poor use of dining hall space, and lack of staff.
Yeon-joo absolutely refuses to skimp on ingredients in favor of profit, and she couldn’t care less about remodeling or adding more tables to the dining hall. But she agrees to hire an extra hand, and JIN MYUNG-SOOK (Kim Shin-rok) comes onboard. Myung-sook is a restaurant veteran with 15 years of experience, and she can do everything from prepping ingredients to waiting tables — to washing dishes while watching dramas. Heh. Beom-woo does not like Yeon-joo’s choice of hire and would rather she go for someone more “elite.” But according to their contract, everything — and everyone — that has to do with the kitchen is solely her decision, just like the dining hall is his sole purview.
Beom-woo’s classy vibe clashes with Yeon-joo and Myung-sook’s casual vibes, and they spend their first day bickering over the variance in working styles. Beom-woo is on edge about driving up sales, and his famous city buddies/regular customers have either cut him off after his fall from grace, or are unwilling to travel down to Jeonju to eat. It doesn’t help that his credit cards have been cancelled and he had to exchange his expensive suit for a room at a local inn. Lool. So when Myung-sook accidentally spills kimchi — from kimchi pancakes that Beom-woo already told her not to make during working hours — on the fancy white table that he sold his luxury wristwatch to buy, he loses it and lashes out at the ladies.
Beom-woo storms out of the restaurant and ends up in the company of two neighborhood ahjussis who agree that Yeon-joo can be quite stubborn. But they point out that she’s an excellent chef, and people with Beom-woo’s marketing and managerial skills are needed so that people like Yeon-joo can shine. Beom-woo returns to the restaurant with the chili powder Yeon-joo likes — courtesy of one of the ahjussis — as a peace offering. By then, Myung-sook has cleaned and polished the stained table, and Yeon-joo has brought out the pretty serving plates that Beom-woo requested for social media aesthetics. Aw. The ahjussis drop by — bringing other customers with them — and the team gets to work to satisfy the hungry stomachs. Beom-woo even tells Myung-sook to serve her kimchi pancakes to the customers on the house. Double aw.
The team is on their way to a celebratory dinner after work, when SHIN CHUN-SEUNG (Yoo Soo-bin), the son of Myung-sook’s previous boss, shows up to accuse Yeon-joo and Beom-woo of poaching Myung-sook. This is how we learn that Myung-sook wasn’t respected at her previous restaurant. She bluffed that Yeon-joo scouted her with upgraded working conditions in hopes that they would match the outrageous offer, but they didn’t, so she left. Myung-sook apologizes for using Yeon-joo to bluff, but she says it’s the only way she could hold her head high up because she doesn’t have special skills. “Your 15-year experience is a skill in itself,” Yeon-joo assures Myung-sook, and it’s not a bluff that she’s going to be made a chef in Jungjae. Because as far as Yeon-joo is concerned, Myung-sook is already a chef.
Speaking of poaching, La Lecel hires Motto’s head chef, JANG YOUNG-HYE (Hong Hwa-yeon). Young-hye promises to get Sun-woo the three stars now that she can focus on her cooking — and it serves Beom-woo right for stifling his chef’s creativity by forcing her to recreate stolen recipes. Heh. Yeon-joo steps out of the restaurant in time to hear a drunk Beom-woo vowing to steal all Jungjae’s recipes in order to crush La Lecel, but before she can react to that, an equally drunk Chun-seung comes around again to look for Myung-sook. Yeon-joo easily tosses Chun-seung aside before the situation escalates, then she faces Beom-woo to demand answers about why he really came to Jungjae. Knowing Beom-woo, he’ll probably bluff his way out of telling her the truth. But we’ll know for sure when we return next week.
This was a great premiere, and I enjoyed every bit of it. It’s refreshing, funny, and gives off the old school rom-com vibes. Beom-woo is a far cry from the “perfect” chaebol male lead, and I love that he’s this flawed, because it gives us a chance to watch him undergo real character growth. For all his arrogance and seeming bravado, I observed that Beom-woo seems a little scared of the slightest notion of physical violence, and I wonder if there’s a backstory here or I’m just overthinking it. Maybe the real backstory will reveal why he has no real love for the food business like Sun-woo noted.
Either way, it’s great that Beom-woo has met his match in Yeon-joo. They have such great natural chemistry whether they’re bickering or working together or just staring at each other, and I’m sure Yeon-joo’s passion for food will rub off on Beom-woo and make him genuinely fall in love with the art of gastronomy rather than just the dollar signs attached to the menu. Found family themes are one of my catnips, and I look forward to the chaotic Jungjae squad finding a home in each other, and working together to get that three-star rating.
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