There are basically two interacting plot lines: the first concerns the bitter rivalry between restauranteurs: Park Geun Hyung and Jang Tae-kwang. Their history is told in brief flashbacks to their youth and early days as student chefs – and, as it happens, they each tell the story from opposite perspectives and reach opposite conclusions. The audience is fairly certain of the truth and sides with Geun Hyung, who is seen rescuing a small child from a fire, which act resulted in his losing his sense of smell – death for a chef.

Geun-hyung now owns a small Chinese restaurant in Korea and, for reasons that have nothing to do with his cooking which is, despite his sensory handicap, very good. His restaurant is on the verge of going under and it has just lost its chef, Pang-dal, to the competition. Tae-kwang, on the other hand is prosperous, but not so much that he doesn't have energy and resources to bear to make certain that his old rival goes under – and, to twist the knife further, that Geun-hyung is made to sell out to him.

Hyo-dong is the son of Geun-hyung - a young man of two minds: he refuses to suffer disloyalty from others (as when he visits Pan-dal in his new kitchen and beats him good and proper), but disrespects his father's loyalty to his restaurant – not coincidentally named after Hyo-dong. In an amusing sequence of events Hyo-dong meets up with the lovely Hee-ae and they court and fall in love, only to learn that they are the son and daughter of Geun-hyung and Tae-kwang. To add to the stew, Hee-ae is studying to be a chef and Hyo-dong traipses after her only to learn he has hidden talents.

Korean soaps are never content with a single romantic duo, and so introduce another character to further spice things up. Enter: Ma Shin-ae, by far the most interesting character in the series and the more emotive of the two women that vie for the affections of Hyo-dong. Shin-ae becomes a pivotal player in the proceedings as things develop. Always just one foot away from poverty, living on the streets by her wits and talents, Shin-ae dreams of becoming a great cook and of owning a three-story restaurant ("one story for Chinese, one for Korean, one for Western"). She meets Hyo-dung under the most embarrassing circumstances: carelessly coming upon him while he is stripped to his undershorts in a department store changing room. Not to be undone by her indiscretion, he chases her through the store, still more or less undressed. This calculated silliness of the first episode leads to further improbables when Hyo-dong comes upon Shin-ae as she is taking a leak in what she hoped was a unattended sidestreet. (Things never get quite so out of hand again, I am happy to report.) When Shin-ae meets up with Hyo-dong in cooking class, the expected triangle takes shape.

The fathers of our "star-crossed lovers" are both dead set against any courtship between their children but Hyo-dong and Hee-ae have other ideas – not the ones I hoped for, alas. In fact, Hee-ae turns out to become an underdeveloped character, just as does a third romantic diad between Hee-ae's semi-ruthless brother, Hee-moon, and Shin-ae. The unexplored ironic possibilities between this two was one of the series' great disappointments for me. All About Eve, an MBC romantic drama from the previous year, was able to flesh out just such dimensions to their characters, but not so here.