Summary
In Episode 7, Tastefully Yours wisely does away with the love triangle dynamic and instead sets the leads on a clearer collision course for the remaining few episodes.
I wasn’t keen on Tastefully Yours across its last couple of episodes, which seemed to miss the point of the show’s breezy small-town charm a little bit. The culinary focus was still there, granted, but the indulgence in cliches, especially the good old love triangle, felt a little sudden and forced. Episode 7 of the K-Drama seems to agree, since it mostly does away with that angle entirely, which hopefully means the remaining episodes will return to the status quo (however much the inevitable reveal about Beom-woo’s initial purpose with Jungjae looms on the horizon).
Before that, though, we do actually have to deal with the leftover romantic tension, and of course, the follow-on from last week’s reveal that Hansang is partnering up with Le Murir and Jeon Min, Beom-woo’s newly arrived romantic rival, is also a shoo-in for his former job.
Beom-woo learns this from Young-hye, which confuses him, but he has other matters to consider – namely, Min and Yeon-joo laughing and canoodling in dangerously close proximity. Min wants Yeon-woo to return to the restaurant with him and lays it on thick about how he coped after she left, but she isn’t especially reciprocal. In fact, it doesn’t take her long to plant an excited kiss on Beom-woo when he gives her a meaningful suggestion for what to serve for Chef Tatsuo (this is ostensibly why she’s here, if you recall).
Part of Beom-woo’s problem with Min, beyond the obvious, is that he clearly sees himself in him. The ruthless manipulator is straight out of the corporate playbook, and both men know full well that neither of their intentions towards Yeon-joo were particularly pure, even if Beom-woo might have changed his mind since then (Yeong-hye is also stealing the recipe book from Jungjae at around this time, as if to prove the point.) It creates a frosty dynamic between the pair that is pesky to navigate since both want to get one up on the other, but neither wants the finger pointed at them in front of Yeon-joo.
If nothing else, Tastefully Yours doesn’t forget about its underlying foodie themes in Episode 7. Tatsuo loves the meal that Yeon-joo prepares for him, naturally, and is able to recall her through her cooking immediately. He even takes the opportunity to apologize for the pufferfish error that caused her resignation in the first place, which is a nice bit of full-circle payoff. The show’s arguably better at this simple stuff than it is at the character drama, or at least, the passion for food seems more sincere than the drama. That all comes to a head when Min announces his takeover of Le Murir and Yeon-joo doubts his intentions, accusing him of throwing Tatsuo’s medication away, which he claims that Tatsuo himself does, with the naive hope that he’ll get better either way.
The disagreement gives Beom-woo a justification to get involved, and everything devolves into a slanging match and eventually physical violence until Tatsuo himself calms everything down. I’m glad that the sillier, more made-for-TV calamity was averted here in favour of a more peaceful resolution wherein everyone hashes out their differences and reconciles. It’s a nice way of leaving all of this behind and moving on to other things – namely, whether Beom-woo can prevent Yeong-hye from using the stolen recipes.
That’ll no doubt be the focus of the remaining three episodes, and it’s just as well, though there’s also the issue of Beom-woo’s reinstatement to the Hansang board to consider and the precise circumstances of that. Yeong-hye’s actions are going to land Beom-woo in hot water with Yeon-joo, and whether their blossoming relationship can withstand that pressure is the big question everyone will want an answer to (though I think we can probably guess).
RELATED:
