‘Tastefully Yours’ Episode 1 Recap – Comfort Food In Television Form

Sometimes what people want from their entertainment is comfort and familiarity, and that definitely seems to be the kind of audience Tastefully Yours is courting, at least as far as Episode 1 is concerned. A show like this – reminiscent, at least for me, of The Potato Lab in its opposites-attract romance and passionate foodstuff focus – makes for a good antidote to something like Heavenly Ever After, which is more conceptually ambitious but can lack the core engagement of a recognisable, almost archetypal narrative.

There’s definitely a sense of those broad character types in Beom-woo and Yeon-joo, but it’s early days yet, so there’s plenty of time for more nuance to emerge. As ever, this is a table-setting premiere, but that’s more appropriate here than just a turn of phrase since food is very much at the heart of the show and is rendered with rather exquisite visuals and focus.

Interestingly, though, Beom-woo’s primary defining characteristic – one of them, anyway – in the early going is a complete lack of interest in the aspects of food that most passionate cooks and eaters would focus on. This is vital since he’s a director within Hansang Group, a corporate entity that owns many restaurants but doesn’t care what they serve as long as it’s according to stringent, predefined, money-making recipes. There’s no room for creativity or individuality. Hansang is the cuisine equivalent of Continental Studios from Apple TV+’s The Studio.

And Beom-woo is the bludgeon that Hansang wields to strong-arm restaurateurs into selling up and head chefs into abiding by the rules. Hansang’s a family affair, too. The chairwoman is Beom-woo’s mother, and he’s competing with his brother, Sun-woo, to become the next owner. Whoever’s restaurant next gets a three-star rating will take over. Beom-woo feels he has a golden ticket with his fine dining establishment, Motto, but there’s a slight problem – a competing restaurant in Jeonju is serving one of their unique dishes.

And thus we meet Yeon-joo, who’s basically the opposite. Tastefully Yours Episode 1 immediately makes the differences between these two characters and their approaches clear, going through a fairly long-winded process of Yeon-joo labouring over personally acquiring the right ingredients for her dish, which turns out to be different from the one being served at Motto. Yeon-joo’s passion for food and the quality of her output begins to stir something in Beom-woo, an appreciation for the sometimes transporting power of great grub, but because he’s used to getting his own way by force, he immediately tries to buy Yeon-joo’s homely little restaurant.

Needless to say, Yeon-joo’s having none of it, and she reiterates what is clearly going to be the show’s core underlying theme – that there’s an earnestness that goes into cooking that can only be appreciated by people who truly value food, and not just those who profit from selling it. Yeon-joo and Beom-woo are on completely different wavelengths here. But they’re about to need each other more than the other necessarily realized, as is always the way of the K-Drama.

For Yeon-joo, she has money issues – she’s behind on her rent, and her dreams are contingent on being able to pay it. For Beom-woo, he needs a way to prove himself. Motto is a bust, since in an underhanded tactic, Sun-woo has set him up to take the blame for the attempted suicide of a man he threatened earlier. He needs to think outside the box to regain his position, and the quality of Yeon-joo’s food seems like a potential way back. But she’ll take some convincing, money woes or not.

It’s a decent start, if an unremarkable one, introducing the leads, the core conflict, and the most essential ideas. We can see where it’s going already, but as suggested at the top, that’s largely fine. Sometimes that predictability is what you want. Hopefully, Tastefully Yours can deliver it in an engaging, entertaining way, though.

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