Most romantic comedy K-dramas follow similar formulas: The two main characters don’t like each other, then like each other, then it goes back and forth until they get together for good. The differences are in the details. In a new Korean romcom on Netflix, the details involve a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that serves extraordinary food.
Opening Shot: The glass-and-steel headquarters of the food conglomerate Hansang.
The Gist: Han Beom-woo (Kang Ha-neul) is a director of Hansang and one of two sons of the company’s chairperson. He’s determined to get three Diamant stars for Motto, the flagship of the restaurant division he runs. One of the ways he does that is by buying out independent restaurants to obtain rights to their recipes, which he then orders his chefs to replicate. For instance, he personally drives his Bentley to a tiny but busy restaurant to blackmail the owner’s recalcitrant son to sell the restaurant — and its popular grilled abalone dish — to him.
Part of this is due to a rivalry he has with his brother, Han Seon-woo (Bae Na-ra), who is the director of a different division; his flagship restaurant has already garnered two stars. Their mother, who’s even more exacting than her sons, says the first to three stars will take over for her.
Motto is about to launch a new menu with a signature truffle dish, but one of Beom-woo’s executives finds out that Jungjae, a restaurant in the small town of Jeonju is also serving something similar. Given the vow that Motto serve unique dishes, Beom-woo goes to the town to try to buy the restaurant out.
What he finds is that Mo Yeon-joo (Go Min-si), the chef and owner of the tiny, out-of-the-way restaurant, is stubborn, determined to make the best food she can, and is completely enchanting to him. He wants her to recreate her dish, but she needs beef rump from a particular farm, which is impossible to find. But find he does (after buying out the entire butcher shop), but then she takes him on a hike to find a pine mushroom that’s ripe for picking.
He finally tries the dish and is amazed. But she refuses to be bought out, and thinks corporate restaurants lack the passion needed to create great food. Beom-woo goes back to Seoul, only to find out that his brother Seon-woo has managed to undermine him to the point where the board votes him out of the director position. For her part, Yeon-joo knows that making food to her high standards doesn’t matter if she’s drowning in debt.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take any romantic comedy K-drama on Netflix and you can put it in this category, so we’ll just pick the first one we Googled: Love Next Door.
Our Take: Fans of Korean romcoms will likely enjoy Tastefully Yours. It keeps things pretty simple, plot-wise, with the arrogant, spoiled corporate scion partnering — then falling for — the salt-of-the-earth chef who just happens to be young and beautiful.
Creator Han Jun-hee and writer Jung Soo-yoon make sure that viewers know that Beom-woo isn’t a complete jerk for no reason, though. They establish from the start that, for one, he knows what he’s doing as far as being able to market a fine dining establishment, and that his exacting nature is driven by a bitter rivalry with his brother. In turn, that rivalry is fueled by their mother, who pits the two of them against each other every chance she gets.
There isn’t as much backstory to Mo Yeon-joo, but there doesn’t have to be; we just know that she grows her own vegetables, and carefully cultivates the soybeans to make her homemade tofu. Their business partnership, with all of its clashes and and arguments, is going to be the driving force of this show’s first season, and while the show isn’t as hilarious as it thinks it is, the chemistry between its stars is more than enough to keep the interest of romcom fans.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Beom-woo goes back to talk to Yeon-joo. She crushes out his cigarette, pointing to a sign that smokers in front of her restaurant will be beheaded, then tells him to follow her inside.
Sleeper Star: Whoever makes the food featured in the series is the real star, as it all looks ridiculously good.
Most Pilot-y Line: There’s an extended scene where Beom-woo confronts Motto’s chef at a photo shoot that could have been reduced by about half and still make perfect sense.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Tastefully Yours is a fun watch because of the chemistry between its stars and the insanely good-looking food that is featured in the first episode.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.