Topic: Chocolate

[Noel_Vera]

On Netflix: the Korean soap Chocolate,  about a boy named Kang who likes to cook (his mother runs a harborside diner) and prepares dinner for a hungry little girl named Cha-yang (her mother wants her to be a model, so she's on a near-starvation diet). Turns out the boy is son of the family black sheep--he eloped with the housekeeper (Kang's mom). Now Kang and mom are back because grandmother wants to put him in charge of the family business, a famous hospital, though he has a rival in the matriarch's other grandson Jun.

Years pass. Kang is now a neurosurgeon, Cha-young the chef in a French restaurant. They meet, and she recognizes him but he doesn't; worse, she just accepted the proposal of a persistent suitor, whose best friend turns out to be Kang (I've been there, sort of).

 The soap is ridiculous, the medical melodrama is to be fair somewhat well researched, tho I wouldn't trust these characters to saw open my skull. The food porn however is superb, and many a melodramatic plot point turns on this dish or that snack. Turns out Kang's best friend has brain cancer and a hankering for dumpling stew. Kang being a neurosurgeon can afford the best stews all over Korea but Best Friend ain't satisfied: he wants Cha-young's stew and ONLY her stew.

I find this entirely believable, and no I don't think it's the cancer eating away at his brain. So Kang has to go to Greece, and while the sight of him sends her heart a-flutter, he's only annoyed because she turned Best Friend down.

What can I say? I've been seeking high and low for dumpling stew, and I haunt the local Korean restaurant, asking if they've seen the series (they did) and if this was the stew he asked for (it was, or so they say). It's delicious, but I wonder.