TV dramas have been screened at film festivals in recent years, but this marks the first time for the Jeonju International Film Festival.

Tastefully Yours is a romantic comedy revolving around Han Beom-woo (played by Kang Ha Neul), the second-generation heir of a food company conglomerate and Mo Yeon-joo (played by Go Min Si), a stubborn chef with a small restaurant in Jeonju.

[WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD] 

For the screening at the film festival (which was the world premiere for the drama), we got to watch the first two episodes of the drama, so to be fair, there’s not a lot to say since at two episodes, the drama has barely begun. But already there’s so much anticipation for this drama!

Han Beom-woo is introduced as a ‘recipe hunter’, someone who basically goes around forcing successful small businesses to sell their business (and recipes) to him in order for him to replicate these recipes for his own restaurant. Apparently he and his brother are fighting to take over the family business, with their mother giving them a mission – to obtain a Michelin 3 stars for their restaurants. Whoever succeeds gets the business. I personally hate it when parents pit their children against one another but it’s for the plot… We always need villains in stories, right?

Since Beom-woo doesn’t know much about cooking, he hires a celebrity chef for his restaurant, but insists on her replicating the recipe he has decided on for the main course, obsessing over the plating way more than the taste. I know plating is important but shouldn’t the taste still be the most important factor regardless? Just as he okays the dish, his assistant shows him a post by another restaurant that is basically serving the exact same dish with the exact same look, in Jeonju! How can this be allowed?!

So of course Beom-woo has to go down to Jeonju to check out this restaurant himself. There he meets the chef Yeon-joo, who initially refuses to make the dish because she ran out of ingredients. But is he going to give up just like that? Of course not. He goes out of his way to buy the type of beef she wants (he almost got caught in his lie but was lucky that one out of the many beef cuts he bought turned out to be legit), goes hiking to get the exact type of mushroom… Only to just smile in satisfaction without even tasting the dish after Yeon-joo presents it to him. Apparently he didn’t consider it a worthy opponent to his restaurant’s dish.  But after all that work, he’s hungry, and so he reluctantly sits down to eat the dish… and basically licks the plate clean. It’s obviously delicious.

In the meantime, he receives news that the owner of the most recent business he was trying to buy over had attempted suicide. Initially worried that he had caused someone that much mental anguish, he quickly visits him at the hospital only to overhear him talking to his brother… It was all a plot to get him in trouble. Not like we ever expect people to play fair in these situations but when Beom-woo tells his mum, she doesn’t even care, telling him he’ll figure it out.

So he goes back to Jeonju with a plan to buy over Yeon-joo’s recipes, but only manages to write up a contract to work together for now. While he’s already annoyed with this unsuccessful attempt, he also loses his car, his credit card gets declined, and he’s forced to give up his designer outfit in order to afford a room at a motel. How far he’s fallen…

But it’s okay! He’s determined to do well with Yeon-joo, and somehow steal her recipes. That’s the plan for now anyway. But already in the two episodes, we see the sparks between the two leads (at one point, Beom-woo even slaps himself because he was getting entranced by Yeon-joo’s beauty) so I highly doubt Beom-woo will end up succeeding in his initial plan.

If the first two episodes are a good gauge, this is going to be quite a hilarious drama, because there were already so many moments that had the audience laughing out loud during the screening. We’re already looking forward to it!

Catch it on Netflix beginning May 12th!

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This drama was screened at the 2025 Jeonju International Film Festival.