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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Im Yoon-ah, Lee Chae-min
Latest Nielsen rating: 6.6 per cent
On the heels of a rare miss with her big-screen summer outing Pretty Crazy, Im Yoon-ah of Girls’ Generation is back in hit territory with the food-themed period romantic comedy Bon Appétit, Your Majesty.
Essentially a riff on the smash success Mr. Queen, this new series stars Im as a brilliant young chef who finds herself transported back to the Joseon era (1392-1897), where she is forced to serve as head cook for the tyrannical King Lee Heon (Lee Chae-min, Hierarchy), who also happens to be Joseon’s greatest gourmet.


Im is Yeon Ji-young, who, in the present, has just won a prestigious TV cooking competition in France. Her prize? The title of head chef at her very own three-Michelin-star restaurant – a prize which, needless to say, does not exist in real life.
However, while travelling back to Korea with an ancient manuscript she is hand-delivering to her historian father, a lunar eclipse and an accidental incantation send her hundreds of years back in the past.
She wakes up dangling from a tree in an animal trap, right in the middle of a royal hunt. She quickly comes face-to-face with Lee Heon and, after falling together off a cliff, he winds up as her prisoner.
She has yet to understand what has happened to her, let alone the identity of the strange man in her custody, whom she believes to be cosplaying.

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty begins a little later than this, with Ji-young already dragged to Lee Heon’s feet in the royal palace, where she stands accused of being a ghost woman, a crime worthy of a beheading.
Unsheathing his sword, Lee Heon seems ready to dole out the capital punishment himself, but he surprises everyone by slashing her bindings and appointing her as the head royal chef instead.
Turning her head and looking straight into the camera, Ji-young asks: “How did I end up here?”
While this is the only time that the show breaks the fourth wall in its opening week, it remains a stylised and very self-aware affair throughout, though not to the aggressive degree of something like the recent The First Night with the Duke, another drama featuring a Girls’ Generation icon (Seohyun) transported back to the Joseon era.

With nothing new to offer us, the show instead winks at us, beckoning us to play along and indulge in its fantasy role-play and endless spread of delectable dishes.
For her part, Im has a strong grasp of the material. She is shrill rather than sharp, more confident than kooky, and the show comfortably rests on her shoulders when she is the focus of attention.
As the handsome, aloof and cocky royal, Lee is playing a stock character where appearance is more important than substance. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that while he certainly looks the part, there isn’t much feeling to the character.
But the real star of Bon Appétit, Your Majesty may be the dishes prepared by Ji-young.
Inventively designed and beautifully photographed fusion Korean food has been a nourishing screen staple over the past few years, in films like Little Forest and the drama Tastefully Yours from earlier this year, not to mention Mr. Queen.

Since the first two episodes of Bon Appétit largely explore how Ji-young found herself at the king’s side in his abode, there has not been much of an opportunity to dig into the obligatory palace scheming of the people in the king’s orbit seeking to usurp his throne, or something similarly self-serving and nefarious.
To that end, the villains are the shrewd concubine Kang Mok-ju (Kang Han-na, Bloody Heart) and the bitter Prince Je Seon (Choi Gwi-ha, Squid Game Season 3).
While Ji-young has undoubtedly been placed in a hornet’s nest, the scope of their scheme has yet to come to the fore.
Since she seems to have been a good student of history (albeit fictional in this case), Ji-young does have the advantage of hindsight, having read of Mok-ju’s villainous ways in history books.

That said, since the Byzantine power plays that invariably pop up in these palace-set dramas tend to be the least interesting things in them, let’s hope that the focus here remains on Ji-young and her culinary skills.
But even if this show sticks to the whimsy it has shown us so far, propped up by Im’s bright disposition and her kitchen skills, will it be enough to carry us through this 12-course drama?
Bon Appétit, Your Majesty is streaming on Netflix.


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Im Yoon-ah from Girls’ Generation plays a top chef who goes back in time to the Joseon era, where she has to cook for the tyrannical king


Im Yoon-ah from Girls’ Generation plays a top chef who goes back in time to the Joseon era, where she has to cook for the tyrannical king.


Netflix K-drama Bon Appétit, Your Majesty: Im Yoon-ah leads delectable period drama

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Im Yoon-ah from Girls’ Generation plays a top chef who goes back in time to the Joseon era, where she has to cook for the tyrannical king

Im Yoon-ah from Girls’ Generation plays a top chef who goes back in time to the Joseon era, where she has to cook for the tyrannical king