These trailers sold us into choosing Love Cuisine<\/em> as our next on-air drama to watch. The trailers seemed to exert Love Cuisine<\/em> as a romance\/comedy series that will be light, fun and simple with a cooking theme. After watching a period of action dramas, light, fun and simple was exactly what we were looking for and so we decided Love Cuisine<\/em> was going to be our next on-air drama we were going to watch as it aired!<\/p>\n Episode 1 opens with a sky shot of the ocean and seaside rocks before we head underwater. A school of fish is seen perusing underwater rocks. A mermaid is also seen perusing here. We’re then taken up above the water as if we were following the eyes of the mermaid. We see seaside rocks in the distance. Cut shot onto the seaside rocks, we see Han Jie<\/em> heading towards the seaside rocks’ edge. He sets himself next to an old man fishing. Han Jie<\/em> is fishing, too. After Han Jie<\/em> has his fishing line into the water, the old man tells him he won’t be able to catch fish from his position because the wind direction is all wrong. Han Jie<\/em> disagrees and asks the old man to give him thirty minutes. Sure enough, Han Jie<\/em> proves the old man wrong when he reels in a fish in two and a half minutes. The old man is impressed.<\/p>\n Han Jie<\/em> goes in for a second round. This time, he’s baffled to what he has hooked onto as we see an unidentified object on his hook. Then, in slow motion, a mermaid surfaces from the waters, flipping her short wet hair away from her face. The old man runs behind to somewhere out of shot exclaiming it’s a sea monster, but it’s just Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> in a mermaid costume. Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> notices Han Jie<\/em> on the seaside rocks looking her way. She tries to pull her mermaid costume higher to cover herself more. The costume not doing well to cover her, she places her arms around her chest and tells Han Jie<\/em> to look away. He does.<\/p>\n “Don’t run away!” Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> then exclaims. “I’m not running away,” Han Jie<\/em> replies. But Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> wasn’t referring to Han Jie<\/em> but a young guy in a red Hawaiian shirt behind him who’s climbing onto the seaside rocks. Han Jie<\/em> is a little baffled with what’s going on, but he holds the young guy back. He then asks him why he’s being chased by a mermaid. It’s not a mermaid but his mentally-unstable man-eater of an older sister who is in such a state after being dumped by a guy, the young guy replies. After a suggestion from Han Jie<\/em> to simply take his older sister to a hospital, the young guy finishes up with saying he needs to escape; and he escapes. Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> finally is on land. She storms up to Han Jie<\/em> and asks why he hadn’t stopped the young guy. In her fury, she becomes unsteady. Han Jie<\/em> steadies her by her bare shoulders. This gains him a deathly glare from Fang Xiao Rou<\/em>, not at all appreciative that he had just prevented her from a very likely injurious fall. Han Jie<\/em> removes his hold on her. She then storms past to continue her pursuit of the young guy—but not before Han Jie<\/em> advises Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> to change out of her mermaid costume first. This only got a bark from Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> telling him he was wasting her time!<\/p>\n It’s a very unusual location to have the lead characters first meet, but the opening scene definitely got our attention and piqued our interest. This sort of classic clash of personalities of the lead characters will bring in the typical and predictable, but what comes with the typical and predictable is the extremely fun and entertaining hate-hate-turn-interest-type developments that we like. The opening scene also sets the feel of the series to be light, funny and maybe a little zany as well.<\/p>\n We suspect after Han Jie<\/em> finished fishing, he went straight home to cook what he had caught because we see him cooking at his family home in the very next scene he appears in. A table is set and Han Jie<\/em> calls his parents to eat. The dish he has cooked for his parents is Saffron Bouillabaise. This is a dish he created and is the signature dish of his famous restaurant in Europe. “It’s delicious!” his father says after having a taste of the Saffron Bouillabaise. “The fish was freshly caught. How can it not be good?” Han Jie<\/em> replies. So it seems Han Jie<\/em> did come straight home to cook after fishing!<\/p>\n From this, we can see that Han Jie<\/em> has world class cooking skills with a prestigious reputation in the world of cuisine. We also find out from this scene that Han Jie<\/em> is going to be a teacher in Si Ping High School<\/em>—a school where his father is the principal of and he has the task of getting the cooking skills of the Food and Beverage students up to competition level because their school has miserably lost many years in a row at the inter-school competitions. This is a goal he has to achieve for his father. He also has a goal of his own and it is for someone important, but this isn’t revealed at this point in the episode. We get an idea of what this goal of Han Jie’s<\/em> is a little later on in the episode in various scenes: we see a flashback of Han Jie’s<\/em> showing a cooking accident that he caused. This sees his old cooking teacher no longer able to use his right arm well. The goal has something to do with his old cooking teacher.<\/p>\n We come to a scene in Fang Xiao Rou’s<\/em> apartment where she is hanging up her mermaid costume to dry whilst she is talking to her friend, Jiang Pei Ying<\/em> (Nita Lei).<\/p>\n Here, we come to a sequence of scenes showing the events leading up to Fang Xiao Rou’s<\/em> chase of the young guy in the ocean. This young guy is Fang Xiao Rou’s<\/em> student, Ma Chong Sheng<\/em> (Hong Yan Xiang)—a student who regularly tries to skip class and he was on a cruise yacht heading to Okinawa—one where Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> seemed to be a barmaid there. (This explains the mermaid costume!) To escape his teacher, Ma Chong Sheng<\/em> jumped off. Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> also jumped off to stop him from escaping.<\/p>\n We come back to present time. Thinking what we were thinking, Jiang Pei Ying<\/em> asks Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> why she would go to such extent as a teacher—because, she who was a teacher herself, would not. Doing a good enough job was good enough for her. Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> answers that it’s because of the vow she had made on her first day of teaching: she vowed to not have one student slip through the cracks under her care. All of her students must graduate. With everything explained, the conversation changes onto talking about the excitement of the entrance of a new teacher that is to start tomorrow—the one they call, ‘Senior’.<\/p>\n We move to Si Ping High School<\/em>. It is a new semester and on a wide and open sports ground, we see students in uniform lined up and listening to the principal of the school making a speech on the announcement area above and in between the bleachers. Three teachers are seen standing on his right—Fang Xiao Rou’s<\/em> friend, Jiang Pei Ying<\/em>, a dean of the high school and one who’s an admirer of Fang Xiao Rou<\/em>. Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> is conveniently positioned below on the sports ground at front row and directly in front of the announcement podium where she will get a very good view of Han Jie<\/em> when he gets introduced. After the principal finishes his speech, first entering, is the second male lead, Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> (Duncan Chow)—the one Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> refers to as ‘Senior’. He appears from a door on the left of the principal. Claps come from everyone and Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> politely bows his head to them. Next is the fun one: Han Jie<\/em>. He appears from a door on the right of the principal. The great view Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> has of the people up on the announcement area, Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> immediately recognises Han Jie<\/em> and says aloud, ‘Daredevil?’ before hugging her arms around her chest. (We’re not sure why Han Jie’s<\/em> nickname is Daredevil. It could possibly be because he dared to stare at her in the mermaid costume that was struggling to cover her chest whilst she was in the water or maybe that he dared to grab her by her bare shoulders when she had tripped and he needed to catch her? Not sure.) Han Jie<\/em> also sees Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> from his position, expressing aloud—’Mermaid?’<\/p>\n Han Jie<\/em> and Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> join Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> as Food and Beverage teachers.<\/p>\n Through the conversation with Jiang Pei Ying<\/em> in the apartment scene earlier, Fang Xiao Rou<\/em> reveals to us that Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> was her cooking teacher. He is the second most influential person in her life (the most influential person in her life being her dad) and is someone she respects and admires a lot. In the scenes following the announcement of the new teachers at Si Ping High School<\/em>, we see her secretly putting a container of homemade cookies on Wen Zhen Yu’s<\/em> chair with a note to meet her at the roof garden, writing notes for him on a blackboard and sticking a sticky note on his desk asking him to meet up for dinner after work. Indeed, she seems to like Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> a lot. None of these actions that she does in secret gets to Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> though since it seems the stars are not aligned correctly and the powers that be wishes for Han Jie<\/em> to always be the one her gifts go to and the one she keeps meeting up with—because Han Jie<\/em> really does appear before her a lot and very rarely does Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> appear before Fang Xiao Rou<\/em>!<\/p>\n Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> is put forth as the better guy through Fang Xiao Rou<\/em>, but also others. He has an air about him that seems to make people pick him out as someone of status. The dean of Si Ping High School<\/em>, Su Ying Jun<\/em> (Wu Zhong Jiang), surely feels he is. Just by comparing the look of Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> and Han Jie<\/em>, the dean picks Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> as the more likely one to being the principal’s son. Su Ying Jun<\/em> being a character with the personality of a brown noser, when he sees Han Jie’s<\/em> assigned desk to be larger, more spacious and with better lighting and in a better location of the faculty office where a sweep of all the other desks can be done, he takes upon himself to immediately swap the desk name labels around so that Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> got the larger, more spacious desk with better lighting and location. And Han Jie<\/em>, he gave Wen Zhen Yu’s<\/em> small cubicle that was in a darker area of the faculty office to him. Such an insignificant person as Han Jie<\/em> shouldn’t have such a grand desk, he reasons.<\/p>\n No one knowing who the principal’s son was and causing people to speculate was per Han Jie’s<\/em> request to his father. He had asked his father to not reveal the father-son relationship he had with him<\/em>. This sort of set up we like a lot. Han Jie’s<\/em> colleagues misattributing his relationship with the principal to Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> will bring in some fun and exciting scenes. We’re looking forward to seeing the dean’s reaction when he realises he’s got it wrong and we’ll be waiting to see if he will try to suck up to the real son of the principal who is not as insignificant as he first thought because he is also the famous chef, Oscar Han<\/em>—the head chef of the renown three Michelin star restaurant in Europe, Olives House<\/em>!<\/p>\n Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> is actually let in on the fact that Han Jie<\/em> is the famous chef, Oscar Han<\/em>, though. Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> found out when Han Jie<\/em> had asked Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> if he wanted some homemade cookies (Fang Xiao Rou’s<\/em> homemade cookies which she had left on Wen Zhen Yu’s<\/em> chair, but became Han Jie’s<\/em> chair after the desk swap and hence the cookies were in Han Jie’s<\/em> possession). Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> had gone over to Han Jie’s<\/em> desk to take up on his offer. As he did so, he noticed Han Jie’s<\/em> photo on the Olives House<\/em> website Han Jie<\/em> was looking at on his computer and found out like that. We wonder why he was let in on this. Why was Wen Zhen Yu<\/em> let in on this knowledge when all other characters were kept in the dark?<\/p>\nRecap and Thoughts<\/h2>\n
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