Kim Rae-Won stars as the warm hearted chef-in-training Lee Sung-Chan, while actress Nam Sang-Mi plays a silly country girl, Kim Jin-soo, who trails Lee with high hopes of becoming a food columnist. Veteran actor Choi Bul-Am appears as Master Oh Sook-soo, Lee's stepfather and the only person who truly believes in Lee's potential.
Sung-Chan is a happy and bright young man who loves to cook. Leaving the heavy responsibility of becoming the head chef of Oh's famous restaurant to his stepbrother, he explores the world of cooking and discovers that he's actually good at it. When Oh announces that he will not choose his own son to become the owner and head chef, cold-hearted jealousy and competition arise.
It wouldn't have been a culinary piece without pulling the classic "like my mother used to make it" move with the nostalgia hit like Ratatouille. Cooking extravaganza, orgasm by taste, sabotaging rats, exotic ingredients, old rivals, and lvl 99 hidden chefs, they're all here as you would expect from such a theme. However, I wish it stuck to its culinary theme more tightly. There were a few detours here and there that didn't fit well. The butcher arc, specifically the first 2 rounds, was an example of the drama shifting away from the main characters and cooking. The drama also added a little bit of "supposed" romance but it was one of the driest displays of romance ever, they even turned it into a quick love square for one episode. The brothers rivalry was meh, I didn't like its progression nor its resolution. Aside from everything else, the one thing that pushed me to the limits was the inclusion of the deplorable trope of excessive constant interrupts. More often than not, cutting scenes and conversations short. This deplorable trope left such a nasty sour taste that I couldn't shake it off. It ruined what I might have liked about the drama.
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