One of the most-watched K-dramas of 2025 so far, Netflix’s Tastefully Yours stars Squid Game’s Kang Ha-neul as Han Beom-woo, a ruthless manager at his mother’s soulless food conglomerate, Hansang, whose entire life philosophy is challenged when he meets Mo Yeon-joo (The Frog’s Go Min-si), a brilliant but stubborn fine dining chef who runs a one-table restaurant in remote Jeonju.
When we meet Beom-woo, he is obsessed with building a restaurant that will get Hansang a coveted three-star rating in the fictional Diamant system. His mother, Han Yeo-ul (When Life Gives You Tangerines’ Oh Min-ae), has built Hansang by herself, prioritizing the company over her children. Now, she pits brothers Beom-woo and Han Seon-woo (Weak Hero Class 2’s Bae Na-ra) against one another in a race for the Diamant rating. Hoping to finally earn the love and approval she has withheld throughout their lives, they compete for the accomplishment.
Beom-woo’s aspirational path to three-star success is paved not by hard, honest work, but rather by deceit. His conman playbook involves buying independent restaurants, stealing their recipes to use for his flagship establishment Motto, and shutting them down. However, when he goes to Jeonju and meets Yeon-joo, something changes for him. Over the course of 10 episodes, Beom-woo and Yeon-joo fall in love and build a found family in Yeon-joo’s Jeonju restaurant with locals Jin Myeong-sook (Hellbound’s Kim Shin-rok) and Shin Chun-seung (Crash Landing on You’s Yoo Su-bin) as their co-workers. In the process, Beom-woo becomes a much better person, though the changes come with their fair share of drama.
Beom-woo’s downfall
When Beom-woo’s past as a Hansang executive who steals other restaurant’s recipes comes out at the end of Episode 8, the idyllic life he’s built starts to falls apart. Yeon-joo, Myeong-sook, and Chun-seung understandably feel betrayed, especially when it’s revealed that one of Yeon-joo’s recipes is being served at Motto as Chef Jang Young-hye’s (Buried Hearts’ Hong Hwa-yeon) original creation. When Diamant judges eat the dish, they are impressed, putting Motto on track to become the first-ever Korean restaurant to earn three stars.
However, Yeon-joo’s recipe was not stolen by Beom-woo. The thief is Young-hye and Beom-woo’s former right-hand man Lee Yu-jin (Taxi Driver’s Bae Yoo-ram), but our male lead frustratingly doesn’t take the time to explain that to Yeon-joo. To be fair, he taught Young-hye and Yu-jin those underhanded tactics. Beom-woo also never stood up to his mother, when she ordered him to shut down Jeongjae; if it exists, it poses a threat to Motto’s success.
Yeon-joo retreats to the monastery where she grew up, and Beom-woo heads to Seoul, where he cleans out his office at Motto and spends a lot of the penultimate episode sulking and drinking alone at bars. The news that finally jolts him out of his self-pity comes in the form of an unexpected announcement from the French-based Diamant Guide: both Motto and Jeongjae have earned three stars.
Jeongjae’s three stars
Chef Yeon-joo has never cared much about industry recognition. Though she was trained at CIA and cooked in one of the best fine dining restaurants in Japan before opening Jeongjae, she defines success in ways other than reaching for rating stars. If the people who come to her restaurant enjoy the food she makes for them, then she has done her job well. Still, her sincere, creative, and meticulous work could not help but find recognition.
Earlier in the season, Beom-woo took a tricky job for Jeongjae: a multinational engaged couple wanted a restaurant for their parents’ meeting. Her parents would be coming from France, and his father would be joining from Korea. They needed to find food that would complement both of their palates, and set the scene for the joining of their two families across cultural boundaries. Yeon-joo manages to strike the perfect balance, and they all leave happy.
Unbeknownst to the Jeongjae staff, the French father was actually the Editor-in-Chief of the Diamant Guide. When it comes time for this year’s ruling, he puts a special word in for Jeongjae, a restaurant outside of Seoul of which few “important” people have ever heard. Notably, this moment never would have come without Beom-woo’s arrival at Jeongjae. While Beom-woo had been taught to care only about profit and industry success, Yeon-joo arguably cared too much about the sanctity of the recipe, not taking into account any business considerations or the preferences of the people she cooks for. Together, they balance one another out.
The announcement of Jeongjae’s three stars angers Han Yeo-ul, who has spent her life working for a goal that seemingly comes to Yeon-joo and Jeongjae easily. In Episode 9, she orchestrates a TV competition showdown between the two restaurants, and plans to shut Jeongjae down, no matter what the outcome.
The TV competition winner
One of the least successful elements of Tastefully Yours’ ending comes in the execution of the TV cooking competition between Motto and Jeongjae. Though not a terrible story idea for a climactic event around which to build the series’ climax, the set-up is rushed and doesn’t include Yeon-joo, who is at her monastery home for much of the competition. As our female lead and someone whose sincerity and skill we’re told throughout the series is integral to Jeongjae’s success, it’s a jarring and unearned conclusion. Though it is powerful to see Myeong-sook succeed as a chef from a non-traditional background, the episode and series as a whole does not lean into this theme.
In the end, the competition’s stakes are further invalidated when Yeo-ul lies and says that Motto and Jeongjae tied when really Jeongjae got more votes from the food influencers and judges. The competition falls apart, with the Diamant judge leaving in protest, but there seem to be no actual consequences to this twist. When Yeon-joo shows up and challenges Yeo-ul to her own competition—Yeon-joo will cook for the Yeo-ul, and will abandon Jeongjae if the CEO doesn’t like it— PD Kim, the character directing the entire production under Yeo-ul’s orders, pivots to a new ending. At this point, it’s unclear what shape this TV special will even take, given that it was mostly shot as a cooking competition program. Tastefully Yours does not care to explain it, either.
While the cooking competition ends up feeling like wasted time, Yeon-joo’s challenge does not. She uses the framing of a challenge to get Yeo-ul to sit down with her two sons and enjoy a home cooked meal in a way she never did when they were children. The meal is inspired by Beom-woo’s memories of his grandmother’s cabbage kimchi and by the shrimp jeon Yeo-ul claimed on a TV show she cooked for her sons when they were children. Though Yeo-ul walks out after the cameras cut, she is obviously affected by the moment. She tells Yeon-joo and Beom-woo they can keep their restaurant.
How Tastefully Yours ends
Tastefully Yours got where it was going in 10 episodes (which is notably less time than this K-drama genre usually gets to tell a story) but not always in the most efficient or effective manner. A mid-season subplot involving Yeon-joo’s culinary and romantic past in Sapporo wasted precious narrative time that could have been given to the Jeonju setting and characters. (Though it’s always nice to see actor Yoo Yeon-seok (When the Phone Rings, Hospital Playlist), who plays Yeon-joo’s ex here).
Beom-woo’s growth from a bad person to a good guy happens, but feels somewhat unearned. The finale’s reveal that he eventually helps one of his previous victims get their family restaurant back is vital, but it comes after Yeon-joo—and the audience—is meant to forgive him.
Beom-woo’s growth, and the confirmation of his romantic relationship with Yeon-joo, is hurt by the absence of a scene that has Beom-woo telling Yeon-joo the whole story and putting his actions and growth in context to prove his understanding. Instead, that work is done by other characters. We see Yeon-joo’s monk mother, Yu-jin, and Sun-woo all telling Yeon-joo that Beom-woo is sincere, but are robbed of the opportunity to see Beom-woo prove that he has changed through a big risk or a moment of true vulnerability—the stuff that can move a K-drama from enjoyable to iconic.
Still, Tastefully Yours is buoyed by its commitment to the rich theme of sincerely cooked food as a potentially life-changing force, with warm visual direction to back it up. You can’t help but root for the Jeongjae crew. They all end up together, committed to the family and home they have found in one another. The series ends with Yeon-joo and Beom-woo happily in a relationship, kissing in the garden behind Jeongjae where they first met.
The Park Ji-hoon cameo
K-dramas have a glorious tradition of random actor cameos shoehorned into the main plot in creative ways. For Tastefully Yours, this came in the form of Park Ji-hoon, the star of action teen drama Weak Hero. We see snippets of Park in the fictional TV series Myeong-sook is watching throughout the series. Called Lovely Jogger, it is obviously a reference to last year’s K-drama phenomenon Lovely Runner. Park stars as Eun-jae, seemingly a play off of the Lovely Runner main character’s name, Sun-jae.
In the Tastefully Yours finale, Eun-jae shows up at Chun-seung’s family gukbap restaurant, where he and Myeong-sook are hosting a cooking class together. Myeong-sook freaks out about the arrival of the star, but it’s Chun-seung who shares a particularly intense moment with Eun-jae. While serving Eun-jae water, Chun-seung pauses to get a better look at his face, and asks “If you don’t me asking, which high school do you go to?” The smile drops off Eun-jae’s face as the music builds.
This is all a reference to Weak Hero Class 2, in which Park stars as Si-eun, an introverted high school student who takes on the school bullies. Yoo co-stars as Choi Hyo-man, a bully who targets Si-eun upon his arrival at Eunjang High School. Tastefully Yours and Weak Hero share much of the same production team in creator Han Jun-hee and director Park Dan-hee (Weak Hero Class 1, only). The series share another actor in Bae Na-ra, who plays Beom-woo’s older brother, Sun-woo, in Tastefully Yours, and antagonist Na Baek-jin in Weak Hero Class 2.
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