There is a strong tendency in the media to, when depicting a struggle between business and creative integrity, always side with creativity — hich makes sense; movies, books, and tv shows are art forms themselves, made by a team of creative professionals who likely resent when the higher ups try to force them to warp their vision in pursuit of profits. And anyone who’s looked at the film industry lately has almost certainly lamented how creatively bankrupt it is, begging for a new idea and being ignored as we are given endless reboots, revivals, and sequels in pursuit of cash. So it seems obvious that the Netflix original drama Tastefully Yours, about a fiercely unbending chef and the restaurateur who wants to make a mint off her, would side unreservedly with the chef.
But Tastefully Yours doesn’t do that. Instead, it argues that the best way for a creative endeavor to succeed is neither unbending devotion to artistic purity nor unscrupulous devotion to profit. Instead, the core value of the series is the need to meet in the middle.
The two leads embody opposite ends of the “art vs business” spectrum. Han Beom-Woo (Kang Ha-neul) is the son of a major food conglomerate, Hanseng. He’s a skilled businessman, able to rework an entire campaign in three minutes to take advantage of the lower tax rates for domestically produced liquor over imported. Beom-woo also owns a fine-dining restaurant, Motto, that earned a Diamante star (a stand-in for the real world Michelin stars) in under a year, by finding a decently talented chef, Jang Young-Hye (Hong Hwa-young), who’s very attention-hungry and getting the best recipes for her by buying small restaurants and allowing them to fail, thus freeing the intellectual property to be used at Motto.
His polar opposite is Mo Yeon-joo (Go Min-si). She’s a chef who also runs a fine-dining restaurant, Jungjae. She is undeniably a brilliant chef, one who insists on using only the finest ingredients, either locally sourced, from small businesses, or growing them herself, and cooks in harmony with nature, altering her menu as various foods go in and out of season. She can do both complicated haute cuisine and prepare the basics so well that they become haute cuisine. Yet Yeon-joo is so rigid in her methods and vision that her restaurant is on the verge of failing.
The two get put on a collision course when Beom-woo’s shady practices get him into a PR scandal that causes his mother, Han Yeo-ul (Oh Min-ae) to exile him from the business and hand his restaurant to his brother, Seon-woo (Bae Na-ra). Yeo-ul has cultivated an image as a kind, motherly food enthusiast, but behind closed doors, cares only about her business empire, to the extent of telling her sons whichever one of them gets her a three-star restaurant first will get the company.
Beom-woo gets the idea to become Yeon-joo’s business partner, realizing that her skills in the kitchen and his outside of it would make them a force capable of defeating his brother. And while at first the narrative seems to follow the tried and trite path of the businessman learning to value people over money, it soon flips to highlight the need for Beom-woo’s contributions. Because yes, he doesn’t really understand what goes into producing ingredients and is too focused on flashy dishes and trends, but Yeon-joo’s refusal to consider making money as a factor meant she hadn’t paid rent in months. Her restaurant was hidden, with no signage, no marketing, and four seats. It doesn’t matter how good the food is if no one knows about it, can’t find it if they do, and can’t sit if they locate the place.
That is the kicker of a creative business– it needs to be both to succeed. There should be room in a restaurant for the chef to be exacting and have high standards, but they also need to make enough money to keep the lights on. Beom-woo and Yeon-joo are constantly at odds, trying to pull Jungjae closer to their side of the fight, but every single victory they have comes from when they allow themselves to balance each other out.
Yeon-joo won’t allow direct marketing, but Beom-woo makes friends in the community and uses word-of-mouth to get them a devoted customer base. They have roaring success at a food festival with Yeon-joo’s gimbap, which is glitzed up at Beom-woo’s pushing. Beom-woo insists on taking a private booking for the money, and the need to blend French and Korean cuisine without being spicy forces Yeon-joo to truly elevate her craft. They push and pull, but because both are willing to admit the other’s expertise and listen, it sparks great ideas that also keep Jungjae in the black. It even allows them to get Jungjae the coveted three stars on accident.
This gets set against the other fine-dining restaurants. Seon-woo hires Young-hye and sets out to use her to get three stars, but a creatively bankrupt person times two is two creatively bankrupt people, only with so few ethics that they resort to straight up theft, stealing Yeon-joo’s recipes for Motto. Yeon-joo’s old boss was so insistent on retaining his palate that he refused to take very needed medication for dementia. While once Beom-woo and Yeon-joo would have agreed with these decisions, their time together means they now understand that meeting in the middle is not only best for them, it allows for a better end for everyone. This gives not only satisfaction, but a peace that neither of their rigid worldviews allowed before.
Indeed, that lesson of giving a little and getting a whole lot more out of it is what fuels everyone’s happy ending. Young-hye runs a food truck, giving up a little glamour for something that is truly all about her. Yeo-ul becomes a slightly more present parent, accepting that being a bit more of a mom won’t damage her as a CEO. Beom-woo is still acquiring small restaurants, but is now supporting them rather than viewing them as content sources. And Yeon-joo is running Jungjae, but now makes enough money that she won’t lose it. No one changes a lot, but the small changes are enough to allow everyone to breathe easier.
Truly, if there is one flaw in Tastefully Yours, it’s that it’s so devoted to balance and peace that the truly terrible actions are never punished. Young-Hye is never forced to admit that she earned her three stars by stealing another chef’s work, which is not only immoral but illegal– theft of intellectual property is still theft. Yeo-ul is never made to admit to her abusive, narcissistic nature that tortured her children and warped them into adulthood. Seon-woo isn’t forced to atone for blowing up Beom-woo’s new life after Beom-woo told him he was done with the family business altogether.
Honestly, the only person who’s ever punished is Beom-woo, and far too harshly. Was he shady and manipulative in his previous life? Yes. Should he have confessed to Yeon-joo about his original plan to allow her restaurant to fail for the recipes, like he had done before? Probably. But everyone acts like he killed someone, and avoids assigning any culpability to those he did business with. After all, he didn’t steal their recipes; he bought them as intellectual property, with the restaurants, for above market value. We see how the people he approached didn’t ask many questions and just took the cash and promises. What Beom-woo did was sleazy and unethical, but he wasn’t forcing anyone to sell to him. They could have said no, but instead jumped at the pile of cash offered, when asking around probably would have revealed his pattern. It is, like much of this drama, a case of things meeting in the middle, but in this once case, Tastefully Yours insists there is only black and white.
Tastefully Yours is an above average drama. It avoids the usual clichés about business and creativity, championing balance and living in harmony over holding to rigid ideals. And in today’s world, anything that says “if people know what they’re talking about, listen, even if they don’t think like you” feels incredibly needed. But while it does falter at the one-yard line, it’s not enough to dampen the whole thing. You just have to be ready to meet Tastefully Yours in the middle.
(Images via Netflix, YouTube)
