More than Food: Let’s Discuss Bon Appétit, Your Majesty’s Straightforward Story Elements

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty is more than just a cooking show packaged in a historical drama series. Its romance, comedy, and fantasy themes complement its straightforward world-building elements. Read on and let’s chew some more of its ingredients.

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty - AsianWiki 

Lead stars Lee Chae-Min (as King Lee Heon) and Im Yoon-ah (as Cook Yeon Ji-yeong) are the main course of the series, whose chemistry spills out of the screen. Yet, the show’s filled with other ingredients that are just as essential.

The pilot episode establishes Cook Ji-yeong’s immense cooking skills. She is a swift cook who thinks quickly whenever some events suddenly turn into unexpected turns. Her wit and precision earns her the winning prize and her much-awaited dream to be a head chef in a three-Michelin-star restaurant. The same mastery saves her from the series of misfortunes she experiences in the Joseon Era. The same prowess allows the king to be clear-headed, changing his fate of becoming Korea's most dreaded tyrant to being a devoted lover instead—at least in the fictional world.  

Tropes Move the Story Forward

The combination of time travel and a dream sequence tale in the series (as implied when Cook Ji-yeong woke up in a hospital in the last episode) make up for a usual trope.Nonetheless, it was well-received by the audiences, with many becoming fans of the storyline itself—much so with the show’s happy ending. 

The story doesn’t have many complex world-building elements. It won’t have you bleed your brain to think about who is who or who is plotting which. For the most part, we already know who the real villains are. There may have been secrets, especially with regard to the king’s vindictive rage, but even that is not so much of a big revelation. However, the 12 episodes of the series still prove that one doesn’t have to engineer a complicated universe to create a well-loved story.  

Back to the Present

Throughout the show, the audience is at least vaguely aware of how the king makes it to the 21st century. Even so, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered. Are the rest of Cook (now Chef) Ji-yeong’s cooking team mere descendants of their ancestors from 500 years ago? How about Song-jae (and his “clone” in the modern era)? How come they don’t recognize her in the present? Why did Cook Ji-Yeong’s father ask for the Mangunrok in the first place? What does he know about it and the Joseon era? Why should the king keep his time-travel to the present a secret? Will there be a season 2 to answer all these?

In the end, the show presents not just mouthwatering cuisines. Above all, it strikes a lasting impression and answers the question: what does it mean to love and be loved? To love is to pursue the beloved, even when it takes hundreds of a lifetime. It is defying odds and tearing down pages of history books just to search and be reunited with the one your soul aches for. Love dares to defy the tyranny of time and proves it is still the greatest magic of all. 

To be loved is to be held in someone’s memories long after the world has forgotten your existence. 

Epilogue

Ultimately, it teaches viewers that a good meal is much more like a great story. It contains a thousand languages of affection, like how cooking is just another way of saying saranghaeyo—-at least for his majesty, who painstakingly learns to cook bibimbap just to fulfill a promise made from the blood-stained pages of Mangunrok ago. 

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