Stream It Or Skip It?

While people love Korean rom-coms, their beats are as predicable as American rom-coms. So when interesting storytelling elements are introduced around those usual story beats, viewers take notice. In a new Netflix series, the central characters who eventually fall for each other is a Joseon king who is considered a tyrant and a chef from 2025 who travels back in time and ends up cooking for him.

Opening Shot: A woman who is being held captive is presented before the king.

The Gist: The king, Lee Yi Heon (Lee Chae-min), looks like he’s going to kill the woman himself, but he says that she made him food that confused him, in both good and bad ways. So instead of stabbing her, he uses his sword to cut the ropes she’s tied up with. He decrees that the woman, Yeon Ji-yeong (Im Yoon-ah), will be his chef, but if any of her meals fail to delight him, she’ll be executed.

Ji-yeong breaks the fourth wall to mention that she’s not from the Joseon era, but from 2025. “How did I get here?” she asks, which is when we see a modern-day French cooking competition. Ji-yeong is in the finals, competing against three male chefs; she ends up winning when, needing to improvise after her stove goes on the fritz, smokes a venison steak over burning rice straw.

Before she leaves Paris, her father calls and asks her to pick up a book from a professor he knows at the Sorbonne. She’s flying back to South Korea during a total solar eclipse, and while the eclipse is happening, Ji-yeong finds herself in the lavatory, cleaning spilled coffee off the ancient book. That’s when she realizes it’s a cookbook and flips through it. Suddenly, she’s transported from that plane and finds herself in an animal trap somewhere in the middle of the forest. Her phone isn’t getting any signal.

Yi Heon, who is out on a hunt despite this being the anniversary of her mother’s death, comes across Ji-yeong. Because she still thinks she’s in 2025, she thinks the king is cosplaying being a Joseon royal. He shoots an arrow that hits her handbag and sends it over a cliff. Then, a mysterious arrow comes out of nowhere and hits Yi Heon in the shoulder, and the two tumble over the cliff into the water.

While the noblemen and courtesans back at the palace try to figure out where the king went, Ji-yeong manages to ties up Yi Heon, and the two of them find a supposedly abandoned house. There, Ji-yeong makes Gochujang Butter Bibimbap, using gochujang and butter from 2025 that was in her coat pocket.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Bon Appétit, Your Majesty is like Outlander, but with food as a central part of the story.

Our Take: The first episode of Bon Appétit, Your Majesty runs 80 minutes, so a lot goes on; while at the supposedly abandoned house, Ji-yeong befriends Seo Gil-geum (Yoon Seo-ah), who hides out there so she doesn’t become one of the king’s courtesans. She has grown many of the vegetables and herbs that Ji-yeong uses in her bibimbap.

Then there is the threat back in the kingdom of people who want to overthrow Yi Heon, mainly because of his reputation of being a tyrant, and the fact that he’d rather hunt than his other royal duties.

In essence, though, the show is a romcom where a 21st century chef cooks for a 16th-century tyrant in an effort to stay alive. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be romantic during the first episode, but all the elements are there in the first episode: The meet-cute, the conflict that defines their early days together, the odd situation that throws them together in interesting ways.

An aspect of the time-travel premise that might get old is hearing Ji-yeong marvel at the fact that modern conveniences aren’t available to her, and the people she talks to mispronouncing terms that don’t exist in Joseon times, like “supermarket” or “movie.”

What we’re looking forward to is seeing how Ji-yeong’s modern sensibilities, especially regarding women’s rights, come in conflict with how Yi Heon deals with people in his kingdom. It seems unlikely that she’s just going to capitulate to him and become like one of his courtesans. She’ll have her own opinions, and the king will tolerate them as long as she makes food as good as the bibimbap. Indeed, each episode is named after a recipe in the book, and that recipe will likely be a centerpiece of that episode. It’s a fun way to structure a romcom, as does the time-travel premise.

Photo: LJW/Netflix

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Ji-yeong and Gil-geum look for Ji-yeong’s handbag; Yi Heon, having been found by members of his court, comes upon the two women. Ji-yeong things they’re being rescued, but they’re about to be captured.

Sleeper Star: Yoon Seo-ah’s character, Seo Gil-geum, seems to be the only secondary character to get any kind of backstory in the first episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: The scene where Jo-yeong hurtles through time is a bit cheesy.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Bon Appétit, Your Majesty doubles down on interesting K-drama wrinkles, couching the romcom structure around both time-travel and cooking, both of which serve to liven up the story between the main characters.

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.