With Season 3 fast approaching, I decided to warm up and watch the first two seasons in time. Hence, after finishing Season 1, I am here with my review of a tantalizing journey of tastes and colours brought to us in the production of this masterpiece of a drama. Without further ado, I believe one should jump straight into this bowl of bibimbap, without wasting time on fancy descriptions.
Let’s Eat, much like the later production of Drinking Solo, revolves around people living isolated lives. Lee Soo Kyung (played by Lee Soo Kyung) is a divorcee living all alone in an apartment and works as a kind of secretary to a lawyer called Kim Hak Moon (played by Shim Hyung Tak). Soo Kyung craves food, and that too deliciously crafted gourmet meals every time she is under stress. Since her boss is exceptionally mean to her, her need continues to worsen. However, since she lives alone, there are not many things she can buy, given that most Korean food involves more than one person sitting together and sharing platters. She does not like the idea of stacking her fridge and neither is she much of a cook, so her life is in a bad shape. To the extent that she goes on blind dates simply so she can eat good food. Other than her love for food, she is suspicious by nature and is quick to make assumptions on people’s characters.
One such person she meets and forms opinions on is her next door neighbour, Goo Dae Young (played by Yoon Doo Joon of Beast/Highlight). An insurance officer by profession, Dae Young secretly runs an online blog under a pseudonym of Shikshanim (which is roughly translated to a cute way of saying Mr Dinner). Soo Kyung is a regular visitor on the blog in order to gather suggestions of good places to visit for food. She is secretly head over heels in love with this invisible person, not knowing that he is her next door neighbour. Since Dae Young also has a day job and is often on the phone with one woman or the other, Soo Kyung is quick to assume that he is some kind of two-timing cheat trying to sweet-talk tens and twenties of women every single day. Due to this false assumption, Soo Kyung continues to be suspicious of Dae Young while swooning at his Internet personality.
The last member who makes up this trio of neighbourhood food lovers is Yoon Jin Yi (played by Yoon So Hee) who is a twenty-something chaebol heiress, whose father’s business has gone under, leaving her to fend for herself. As Jin Yi learns to live frugally like a common person, she becomes good friends with both Soo Kyung and Dae Young, gradually bringing the two together as a group who enjoy to eat delicious meals together at any time of the day. Other than the obvious love for food, Jin Yi, who is like a poor lost soul finds a family in the other two neighbours. She is guided by them and protected by them in ways that prove to be much more sincerer than the rich friends she has had in the past and for that matter, even her own parents. Watching her grow and become an independent woman under the shade of two adults dealing with issues in their lives head on was a rather wholesome experience.
Other than the individual stories of the characters, Let’s Eat is just an absolutely delicious meal every step of the way. The shooting of every scene involving food was done so delicately bringing out all the colours and textures of the food that was being gorged on by the many characters of the show. Even some of the unappetizing things such as chicken feet become succulent and juicy while being eaten by Soo Kyung and Dae Young. Be it traditional Korean cuisine or European food, everything was amplified by the very motions of the hands which somehow brought the food to life. Added to this was how Soo Kyung ate all of her food super hot, and sweat profusely while eating, which almost looked like she was seducing people by her manner of eating food. For me, her actions served as a seduction towards the food but it was all too obvious that a certain boss seemed to live to see her eat because that was the closest he could get to her. It appeared absolutely creepy but then the food was so good, that none of it seemed to matter.
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