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The
Series : 8 (of 10)
First there was the manhwa (comic):
HERE - then a 2007 movie: Le Grand Chef,
and finally the 2008 television series with the same
title.
Bong Joo and Sung Chan are raised like brothers by the
owner and head chef of one of Korea's most prestigious
restaurants: Unamjung. Bong Joo is the blood son of
aging Chef Oh and expects to take over the family
business on his father's retirement, which is imminent.
But Oh has a particular affection for his adopted son,
Sung Chan, whose interest in becoming a master chef has
not remained consistent over the years.
As our story gets under way, Sung Chan has returned to
Unamjung, evidently afire with a newfound determination
to be the best that he can be. Bong Joo is the elder and
the more ambitious of the two and he is also feels
appropriately entitled to his inheritance, which entails
marriage to the beautiful Joo Hee whose interest in the
younger brother is not entirely clear.
The difficulty for Chef Oh is that Bong Joo does not
particularly want to carry on the conservative
traditions of his father, but prefers to export the
glories of Korean cuisine internationally and scale its
offerings accordingly. Oh is worried that both cannot be
done without undermining traditional values. Put simply,
if Bong Joo can source his fish, meat and vegetables at
a better price and still maintain quality good enough
for most of his clients, why should he pay more just to
satisfy the god of cooking for the freshest & finest
ingredients! He calculates that Unamjung's reputation
will do the work for him. Sung Chan leans to the more
traditional ways, which might not be the ticket for a
New Age
market.
So Chef Oh devises a competition that he feels should
resolve all questions. But just at the critical moment,
Sung Chan learns that it is he, and not his brother,
whom he clearly loves and respects, who is the
legitimate heir to the late royal chef and not Bong
Joo's family, a fact which Chef Oh has deliberately kept
secret all these years. To avoid further embarrassment
for the Oh family, Sung Chan leaves on an odyssey that
takes him far from restaurant politics, though he can't
resist keeping his hand in the food business.
While away, Sung Chan has a series of adventures,
perhaps the most emotionally powerful is his finding the
aging maker of knives in seriously failing health. Times
have been hard for the old man lately, who may have
little time left to reconcile with his son, now in
prison. I’ll say no more about how this all develops,
the better for your discovery of it. But suffice to say
the episode is worth the entire set. It is also here in
this story, among many other places, that Kim Rae Won
shows what he is made of. Rae Won puts me in mind of
James Dean, who was so good at showing what was on the
surface to be the tip of an emotional iceberg – or,
rather a volcano, ready to erupt. Rae Won has humor, he
is charmingly awkward with romance, yet he can be tough,
and he is utterly convincing in a broad range of roles
(to wit, the films: My Little Bride and Mr. Socrates).
Kim Raw Won is a national treasure.
In a way Kim is the good news and the bad for this
series, for hardly anyone else dominates the screen as
persuasively. But if anyone comes close, it is young
Choi Jae Kwon in the supportive role of Shik Gaek
(coincidentally the same name as the comic on which the
series is based), fellow kitchen intern and friend of
Sung Chan. Shik Gaek holds onto the belief that Sung
Chan will return to Unamjung even though he has no idea
why he left. It's a device used in many a play, but
rarely do we find ourselves as committed to the belief
as the character. Shik Gaek holds a kind of naïve faith
that causes him to stick his neck out in ways that a
"normal" person, even a friend, would hesitate to do.
His moments of disappointment and ecstasy are so
intimate I dare you watch without taking
your eyes off him.
Two other principal males: Kwon Oh Joong as Oh Bong Joo
and Choi Bool Ahn as Head Chef Oh supply the morally
confused antagonist and the ethically confused father
respectively. You may remember Kwon Oh Joong as the
scar-faced lieutenant in Damo. His character suffers
even more here, even though he tries hard to displace
that suffering by attacking his brother. The script and
the actor who delivers it are better than other recent
Korean TV series at conveying the pain of his dilemma.
Choi Bool Am has been active in Korean cinema for 40
years. On the little screen he played the part of the
emperor in the hit series, Palace, and here he brings
the necessary gravitas to the role of a man burdened by
divided obligations and loyalties.
The Grand Chef favors the men: they are the more
interesting, more well-rounded characters, and the
actors do a wonderful job at bringing dimension to what
are already good outlines. As the story develops, it is
primarily the envious male chefs in the kitchen and
various business and crime figures that give the drama
its edge. The two principal women - Nam Sang Mi as Jin
Soo and Kim So Yun as Joo Hee – are offered nothing like
the breath or scale of the emotional range of the men.
Jin Soo is a fiery, wannabe news reporter who gets by on
luck, charm and her good looks – and not much else. She
has a habit of talking to herself to such as extent that
we can't tell if the actress who plays her is very good
since she violates one of the basic acting school
lessons: feel it, don't show it. Sang Mi is always
showing it. I guess it makes her character somewhat
endearing considering how not very smart she is.
Joo Hee is so low key here as to be make Kim So Yun all
but unrecognizable, for this is the same actress who was
so amazing at projecting the ruthless and vulnerable
dichotomy of Young MI in All About Eve. After a
flirtation with feature film in Seven Swords, So Yun has
returned to TV where she has yet to find her muse. Her
Joo Hee has evident emotional connections with both of
the leading men in this story, but something holds her
back from exploring or expressing what that might be.
(I'm sure we'll learn more about this in Vol. 2.)
While there is no new ground breaking in The Grand
Chef, it is a very well-made series with several
exceptional performances and a considerable amount of
extended local photography – more, I think, than any
Korean series I've seen so far. There is far less
reliance on the by now tired technique of instant
flashback. On the other hand, the device of the
competition is back in full force – actually a series of
competitions - to sort out another rightful heir. And we
have the two competing brothers, one of whose histories
involves a curious secret going back to the last royal
chef who was removed when the Japanese took over the
country before WWII.
Later in the story, a national contest takes center
stage where Sung Chan's newfound friends compete against
his alma mater, among others. The organizers want the
contestants to address more meaty questions, such as
where to find the best charcoal or which cow will yield
the highest ratio of top quality beef to fat. While this
takes the participants on a tour of Korea's stockyards,
other contests bring them to the country's fisheries and
forests, while another leads them on a quest to find the
best butcher in the country. In part, it's all just an
excuse – and a very good excuse it is – to introduce new
characters to the story and take the camera out of the
set and explore the country.
The series' 24 episodes picked up a loyal following that
sagged a little just before the last episode, but the
finale was several points higher than any previous. YAE
has divided the series' 24 episodes into two volumes of
12 episodes each: 4 discs for Vol. 1, 5 discs for Vol.
2.
Recommendation: 8
Another Korean drama centering on food – beautifully,
often inventively photographed, with engaging characters
and excellent performances from Kim Rae Won, young Choi
Jae Kwon, and all the veteran actors. I plan a follow-up
on Vol. 2 in a few weeks. Warmly Recommended.
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