Dating in the Kitchen

Welcome back to Hallyu Reviews! We hope you enjoyed Sabrina’s review of "Doom at Your Service" last week. If you missed it, be sure to go back and have a read!

This week we take a look at the Chinese Drama (C-drama) “Dating in the Kitchen.” 

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

This series hits all the traditional tropes, and as much as I hate to say it, although it was a pretty classic drama, I still love its cheesiness. It is your typical tsundere. The lead male, Lu Jin (Lin Yu Shen), is an older businessman with a controlling mother who neglected his emotional needs as a young child. Gu Sheng Nan (Zhao Lu Si), the female lead, is free-spirited, cute, energetic, and young. Can a young chef and an overbearing foodie fight all the odds and fall in love together? 

Courtesy of Amazon

Gu Sheng Nan is a wannabe chef, she currently works in the kitchen, but only as a helper. However, the other chefs love it when she cooks. The hotel is currently searching for new ownership. One day while Nan is working on cooking her “Finger-licking Fried Rice” for her team members, there is a small fire, and the new potential owner, Lu Jin, happens to walk into the storage room to put it out with his cigar when he gets doused with a bowl full of water. This is their first awful encounter. The second encounter is when Gu Sheng is working to avenge her friend, Xu Zhao Di, who tries to attract men with money using a stage name, Celine. She was lied to and they are going to meet and destroy the jerk’s car. Well, I’m sure you guessed it, yep, Nan gets the car wrong and ends up plastering Lu Jin’s Ferrari with flour. And to save the best for last - the final straw that broke the camel’s back…Lu Jin is a foodie, and has a particular taste, well he apparently really likes the food that Gu Sheng fixes, even though she is not an actual “chef” at the restaurant. After the fire incident she is, of course, fired, and then begged to come back, but she is hired as the chef for room 1123, only room 1123. Big Trumpet is still the main chef. Her two friends find out, Xu Zhao Di and Gao Qua An (her Uncle) and host a celebration for her in an executive suite beside 1123. Now after drinking, she decides to walk next door and greet and thank the guest in 1123 for giving her a new “Chef” position, so with one boot on and in pajamas and a bathrobe, she climbs across the wall and makes her way to the room next door. When, you guessed it, she realizes the guest in 1123 is the same owner of the Ferrari she just totaled, and the man she doused with water. She is, of course, in BIG trouble. So he slowly tortures her by making her make several food dishes late at night. It isn’t until he orders Witches Brew, and she makes a mushroom soup that she really does get fired. He declares that he will no longer eat anything she cooks and doesn’t want to see her ever again, that she is his jinx. 

Courtesy of Chinese Drama

Fussy Lu really is fussy about his food and ends up at a food stall run by Sheng Nan’s grandfather. Sheng Nan happens to be in the kitchen cooking when he stops by and he takes a memento of the spoon she used to keep her hair up. I think this is when he started to get feelings for her. She signs a contract to cook meals for him in order to pay off her debt. It's when she dresses cute and tries to be overly attractive to him that she begins to fall for him. She originally has a spoon on a board with the debt amount and she is so excited to see it move forward in terms of canceling debt, but then you start to see the spoon tracker move backwards. She doesn’t want him to stop coming for his meals. The problem is, neither one will admit their feelings for the other. Until there is competition on both sides, Li Man, Lu Jin’s secretary, comes to steal him away in both a literal sense and a physical sense. She definitely wants to sink her claws into him permanently and even though Gu Sheng acts like it doesn’t bother her, it clearly does. Same with Sheng Nan. Cheng Zi Qain, Sheng Nan’s childhood friend, has been appointed as the new manager after the acquisition of the hotel and he clearly has his eyes set on Sheng Nan, but Fussy Lu is not happy about that. The relationship definitely seems to be over when Lu Jin’s brother comes back to town and tells him he has feelings for Gu Sheng Nan, of course it is all a ploy that poor Sheng Nan is caught in the middle of over dueling companies. 

Courtesy of IMDb

In the end, the best friends end up dating, the big brother beats the little brother in terms of companies, and Gu Sheng Nan and Lu Jin end up Happily Ever After, with even his mother’s approval in the end. YAY!

Swoonworthy moments!

As the cooking continues to become more elaborate, Gu Sheng Nan gets a package for a Zhao Min, a famous character, and signs for it. Lu Jin then starts ordering packages for Zhang Wuji, the male counterpart of the same drama. It was really sweet when Gu Sheng Nan asks him where Zhou Zhirou is, the other female lead, and he responds “there isn't one in his drama”, even though Li Man would definitely fill that role in this drama. Then they start getting all kinds of packages. It’s like they are playing house with each other. Super sweet.

Lu Jin’s mom invites Gu Sheng Nan to dinner and she is super excited but doesn’t realize it is a trap! She ends up in a dinner with the board of directors and Quan An, Li Man, and Lu Jin. First, Li Man tricks her into toasting the Director, which does not go over well. Then his mom, the Director, makes her cook for everyone. Way to go Lu Jin who stands up for her and starts to cook in her place as she runs away visibly upset at what just happened. Ugh evil mom moments are the worst! 

Gu Sheng Nan’s grandad ends up in the hospital and while there she meets Lu Zheng, Lu Jin’s little brother, whose dad is also in the hospital. He goes to visit her stall one day where she is being bullied into giving a free meal to some jerk who put a false hair into a dish that he has clearly already devoured. It was sweet the way he protected and stood up for, because you can clearly tell that she is exhausted working hard to keep up her grandfather’s business. It helps show what a nice guy Lu Zheng can be, without the strings attached. 

Gu Sheng Nan gets a cold and says she wants to eat canned fruit, Lu Jin doesn’t want her to have canned fruit because of all the preservatives. So he orders boxes of fresh fruit to his office and makes her canned fruit, painstakingly…it’s so sweet…Literally. 

Final Verdict: WATCH

Do I love it?…Yes...Can I predict what is going to happen in the series…? Every single bit…But truth be told, it’s fun, it's cute and I’d watch it again. It’s a watch - but not a must watch… 

So there it is, our review of “Dating in the Kitchen.”  What did you think?!  Thank you for joining us on this journey. 

Have a favorite K-drama you think we should review, comment down below!!  We look forward to seeing you back again next week!

Up next, “Hotel Del Luna”