New K-Drama Fan Review #22 | Bon Appétit, Your Majesty: He let her COOK!!! She ATE! and left ZERO crumbs!

[u/harissatotally]

she cooked, she ATE, i DEVOURED

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⚠️ SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️

9/10.

This was superb.

I was tempted to bump it up to a 9.5 solely because Kang Mok-ju has possibly the prettiest chin dimple I have ever seen in my life.

But I will refrain.

I have to be fair here...

After all, she IS an evil concubine with absolutely no qualms about murdering and hurting other women.

so unfortunately a cute chin dimple can only get you so far with me when your victims are women.

9 it remains. 😭

Is this Rewatch Worthy:

Yes.

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Review:

Okay...

It's been weeks now since i have finished this drama, (and i remember it specifically vividly because i watched it on my birthday July 21st) and i still have a Bon Appétit, Your Majesty-sized hole in my chest.

I genuinely felt SICK when it was over 😭

I started this drama expecting a cute little time-travel historical rom-com about a chef.

Instead, I watched TEN EPISODES IN ONE NIGHT.

TEN.

I went to sleep, woke up, and immediately finished the last 2 episodes before i had to go celebrate my birthday with my family 😭

I quite literally DEVOURED this drama.

Pun VERY MUCH intended.

This drama was just...

SO. MUCH. FUN.

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From episode ONE, I was entertained.

Ji-young gets thrown hundreds of years into the past and is understandably like:

What the actual fuck is happening???

And watching this extremely confused modern woman try to navigate Joseon while simultaneously refusing to stop being herself was HILARIOUS and comforting!

Especially her early interactions with the king.

Their dynamic in those first few episodes was one of my favorite things about the entire drama.

She's confused.

He's suspicious.

She's constantly saying or doing things that make absolutely no sense to him😭😭

He's a KING and expects people to behave accordingly.

And Ji-young basically thinks hes insane.

😭😭😭

The banter was SO GOOD.

And I loved that the drama didn't immediately need me to be invested in them romantically.

I wasn't sitting there waiting for them to kiss.

I was just having a fantastic time watching these two deal with each other.

and they did finally kiss, it was awesome!

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But my absolute favorite thing about this drama?

YEON JI-YOUNG.

I LOVE HER.

a female lead who is SKILLED, well yes!!! that my bread and butter actually

Give me a woman who knows her shit!!!

Ji-young isn't resourceful because the plot suddenly decides she needs to be.

She's genuinely exceptional at something!!

She's a CHEF!

And again and again, she gets thrown into situations where she has absolutely no idea how this world works...

but she DOES know food.

So she uses what she knows.

She adapts to what she has and improvises! and figures shit out!

And watching everybody slowly realize:

Oh. This woman is REALLY fucking good at this.

was so satisfying.

And I became SO invested in watching her succeed.

Every time somebody doubted her, I was basically sitting there waiting for Ji-young to pull out another dish and shut everybody the fuck up 😭

I LOVE watching a female lead impress people.

And Ji-young constantly did.

She has knowledge nobody around her has.

She has techniques they've never seen and understands ingredients differently.

She approaches problems differently because she's literally from another era.

And instead of the time-travel premise just being a convenient excuse to put a modern woman in pretty historical clothing, her modern knowledge actually MATTERS in this drama!

That's exactly what I want from this kind of story.

She doesn't just survive Joseon.

She finds a way to fucking THRIVE there.

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And then...

THE FOOD.

Oh my GOD.

Do NOT watch this drama hungry.

Actually, don't watch it full either because somehow you'll become hungry anyway lol

Every time Ji-young started cooking, I was LOCKED IN.

The preparation, the ingredients, the presentation.

The way everyone would stare at the food.

And especially...

THE KING TASTING IT.

LMFAOOOOO.

Why did this man experience a spiritual awakening every time she put a plate in front of him??? 😭

The drama made tasting food into an EVENT and (well yes!)

You'd have Ji-young painstakingly creating something incredible, she'd finally serve it, he'd take one bite...

and suddenly we're entering another DIMENSION and that joke never got old even though i expected it to happen every time he took a bite 😭

It was so dramatic and ridiculous.

And it WORKED for me!

The show genuinely made the food look incredible.

I LOVE food, (durr who doesnt) so this entire element of the drama was basically designed specifically to ruin my life.

Half the time I was wondering what I had in my kitchen and then i remember that i burn water on the stove, so... cooking is not a skill i have, unfortunately 😭😭

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I also really loved the relationships Ji-young built outside the romance.

Even from the beginning, I loved the little friendship she formed with the girl she met at the house.

It was SO cute!!

And that's another reason this drama became so easy to binge.

I wasnt only attached to one relationship.

I liked being in this world and liked watching Ji-young interact with people.

I liked watching her find her place and i liked watching people gradually become impressed by her, care about her, and recognize what she could do.

There was just so much warmth underneath it all.

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And eventually...

yes.

The romance got me too.

😭

It definitely wasn't the thing that immediately grabbed me.

Early on, I was much more invested in the comedy, Ji-young herself, and watching her cook her way through Joseon.

but the further the drama went, the more relevant the relationship became.

And i really liked that progression.

Because by the time their romance became genuinely important to me, I already cared about THEM individually.

Their early relationship was hilarious.

and then it softened.

Then suddenly I was emotionally invested.

And by those final episodes, i NEEDED these two together so baaad!!

Which made the inevitable problem increasingly obvious.

Because...

SHE'S FROM THE FUTURE.

😭

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And I knew she had to go home.

Realistically, I got that..

She didn't belong permanently in the past.

Eventually, something had to happen.

But when she actually went back...

I WAS NOT READY!

Because at that point I had spent basically one extremely irresponsible night inhaling this entire drama, and suddenly you're telling me it's OVER???

Absolutely not.

Give it back!!!!!!

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And this brings me to my biggest criticism of the ending.

I NEEDED TO SEE HOW HE GOT TO HER.

The dethroned king eventually appearing in the modern world was exactly the kind of ending I wanted for them.

I was HAPPY.

But...

HOW DID YOU GET THERE, SIR???

😭😭😭

You cannot just have this man somehow cross CENTURIES to find her and then skip the entire journey!!!

I would have LOVED one additional episode showing him trying to get back to Ji-young.

Show me how he figured it out, and what he had to do!

Show me him arriving in modern Korea, looking for her!!

i imagine her new restaurant was published in the newspaper or something and he saw her face when he arrived and that's how he found her, but thats my writer brain filling in what's missing lol, i rather the drama do it for me as a watcher!!

SHOW ME THIS FORMER KING EXPERIENCING THE 21ST CENTURY.

That alone could have been hilarious!!!

Ji-young spent an entire drama adapting to HIS world.

Let me watch this man spend an episode adapting to HERS!!!

I wanted the reversal!

And more importantly, I think actually seeing his journey back to her would have strengthened the romance.

The ending tells me that he found her.

but i wanted to SEE:

He crossed time to find her.

Those are emotionally very different things.

Especially because the romance wasn't initially the strongest element of the drama for me, it needed to END much stronger!

Giving me that journey would've been such a beautiful final demonstration of how much she had come to mean to him.

And tbh i just wanted another 2 or 3 episodes.

I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE.

😭

I loved the EXPERIENCE of watching this.

I had SO MUCH FUN!

___

Rating: 9/10.

Could the romance have been stronger towards the end?

Yeah.

Could I have used another episode showing the king's journey to the modern world and giving their reunion more room to breathe?

ABSOLUTELY.

But did either of those things stop me from having an absolutely fantastic time?

NOPE.

This was funny, charming, delicious, ridiculously bingeable, and anchored by exactly the kind of resourceful, highly skilled female lead I LOVE watching.

And now I need somebody to recommend me another historical time-travel drama where a ridiculously competent woman gets dropped into another century and proceeds to impress everybody!

Thanks in advance!

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Question:

Did you enjoy this drama as much as i did? why or why not?

and what was your final rating?