Late last September, the Netflix platform finished showing the Korean series “Bon Appétit, Your Majesty,” which is a dramatic work that uses food as a memory and a means of rebuilding identity. Every dish in the story calls for a feeling, and reshapes relationships and destinies through the five senses, most notably taste.
The events take place inside the Joseon Royal Palace, where cooking is not considered a luxury or personal pleasure, but rather a political act that reflects the balance of power: Who provides the food? Who is deprived of it? Which dishes are placed before the king?
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With this vision, cooking turns into a language of power, domination and submission, redefining the concepts of closeness and distance, fear and trust, loyalty and betrayal.
The series mixes historical fiction, romance, and comedy, presenting food not only as an aesthetic element, but as a central narrative thread around which characters and conflicts intersect.
Between the fragility of power and the strength of taste
The series has achieved widespread public success since its premiere, as it topped the list of the most watched non-original Korean works on Netflix, and also became the most watched on the Korean TVN channel, maintaining its position on trend lists and audience discussions on social media sites despite weeks having passed since its end.
The story centers around Yoon Ji-young, a contemporary chef who suddenly finds herself, and in a mysterious way, transported through time to the Joseon era, the time of the last king of Korea. There, she encounters the character of King Yi Hyun, who is known for his meticulousness and extreme sensitivity in tasting food.
In a world ruled by authority and strict traditions, Ji-young’s culinary skills become a means of survival and influence, after she is tasked with preparing special dishes for the king. From the palace kitchen, a complex journey begins that combines confrontation and closeness, gradually revealing the fragility of power and the power of taste, and how flavor can shake the throne more than politics does.
4 reasons for success
The work had many technical positives that helped its success, most notably:
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Intelligent dramatic treatment
The scenario succeeded in transforming food into dramatic language by using a structural repetition of episodes (challenge, preparation, taste, effect), which resulted in a familiar rhythm without falling into the trap of monotony, while maintaining a logical connection between the characters’ motivations and the results of their actions.
The text is credited with its ability to employ comedy within authoritarian situations without vulgarity, and most importantly, to employ cooking as a tool for communication and a means of relieving tension and building bonds across different times and classes.
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Acting performance
Actress Lim Yeon Ah excelled in presenting the cheerful and influential character of the chef, based on expressive lightness without superficiality. She also excelled in her scenes inside the kitchen, which reflected the professional superiority of the character.
While actor Lee Chae Min excelled in embodying the character of the reserved king who gradually begins to reveal deeper features and inner fragility. It is worth noting that the harmony that was clearly evident between the two heroes was one of the most important reasons for the audience’s interaction with the story.
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Directing and visual language
The work had an attractive visual direction, as the director relied on the visual contrast between the wide shots of the palace to highlight the strictness of the monarchy, and the close-up shots of the kitchen and its delightful details to highlight the sensory dynamism of the cooking process, which was presented using funny visual effects far from the visual burden.
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Music and sound design
The series’ makers did well to invest the soundtrack in building the moment, and focused on the dramatic tension during cooking competitions or confrontation scenes in the palace courtyards, with a distinct sound design that included sounds such as the grinding of knives, the boiling of pots, and the sound of steam to provide an integrated and more realistic sensory experience.
Despite the previous positives, the work was not without its few flaws, the most obvious of which are the slow pace of some episodes in the middle, and the dramatic threads not burdening the secondary characters as they should. Some opposition characters had limited expression, and finally the ending was not filled with drama, although it indicated the possibility of a second season.
Between the original text and the drama
The Korean series “Congratulations, Your Majesty” is based on the web novel “Survival as Chef Yeonsangun,” but the makers made significant changes to the original text. They changed some names and historical details to ease the story’s connection to real events and give it greater dramatic flexibility.
This allowed the series greater freedom to build characters and develop relationships without documentary restrictions, and this made the general viewer easily engage in the fantasy world that combines history and imagination.
The director and writing team also added new secondary characters to enrich the plot and escalate the dramatic tension, in addition to focusing on the visual aspect by presenting a new food recipe in each episode, which enhanced the visual and audio television experience.
The work added clearer doses of sarcastic comedy and romance between the cook and the king, transforming the relationship from a political and cultural dimension into a human experience that combines passion and power.
Cooking in korean drama
“Congratulations, Your Majesty” is not the only Korean drama in which cooking is placed at the heart of the dramatic narrative. There are other famous works such as the series “Pasta/Pasta,” “Gourmet,” and “Wok of Love/Wok of Love,” all of which received high views and ratings.
Previous works were similar in using the kitchen as a central dramatic tool, and dealing with either it or the preparation of recipes as a scene of tension, power struggle, and the personal and emotional development of the heroes. Taking care to invest in lighting, visual language, and sound to activate all of the viewer’s senses, which usually happens in parallel with a romantic story fueled by ambition and love.
However, the most prominent thing that distinguished “Congratulations, Your Majesty” from the rest of the works was that its plot was based on a fantasy element represented by time travel, and this gave the story an interesting historical dimension and a complex character that combined dream and reality. In addition to the use of cooking as a political element, which turned things such as the palace, the king, hunger, and flavors into symbols that went beyond superficial meaning.
“Congratulations, Your Majesty,” is a short Korean drama of 12 episodes that succeeded in raising the level of “kitchen drama” to a new dimension and distinguished itself within that category. It can be described as an enjoyable experience of a light and sensual nature, where feelings intersect with food in a fun, historical context.
Despite some calm in the middle and the stereotypicality of some characters, the work remains a suitable choice for audiences looking for a warm story with an elegant visual imprint.
The series was directed by Jang Tae-yoo, and the main lead roles were Lim Yeon-ah and Lee Chae-min.