Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 2 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Lim Yoon-a as Yeon Ji-young
Lee Chae-min as Yi Heon (King)
Kang Han-na as Kang Mok-ju
Oh Eui-sik as Im Song-jae
Choi Guy-hwa as Grand Prince Jesan

Ji-young lands in the chaehong

On a slope near the stream, Yeon Ji-young, the chef from 2025 now stranded in Joseon, spots a line of men and waves for help until Seo Gil-geum drags her down. They are soldiers rounding up women for the chaehong, the king's selection of beautiful women (and horses) for the palace. The two try to slip away and are caught anyway. Ji-young ends up in a prison at the Gyeonggi Governor's Office among other captured women in hanbok, shouting that this is kidnapping. The others tell her to save her breath.

Looking around the cell, Ji-young finally admits it: the folk-village set is real, and she has gone back in time. She flashes back to her win in Paris, the old book called the Mangunrok, and the strange man in the forest who claimed to be king. He swore he knew every royal and had never heard of Yeonhuigun, the tyrant she knows from history. Now she wonders whether he is Yeonhuigun himself. First, she decides, she has to get out.

In the yard, inspectors sort the women by age. Ji-young says she is 27 and is sent left as too old. Gil-geum claims to be 30, gets scolded for lying because she looks 17, tries 28 instead, and joins her on the left. Ji-young is relieved, and a little insulted. The women on the right go off to be dressed up. The left group goes to the chanbang, the kitchen, to cook a jeopbingaek, the formal meal a host serves visiting officials.

By the stream, guards bring the king, Yi Heon, something found near the water, and the footprints point to the governor's office. The king remarks that she has walked straight into it and rides there himself.

A steak for the Im family

In the governor's kitchen, Ji-young admires the brassware and the jeokcheol gridiron. Nobody knows what to cook or for whom, and the regular kitchen maids ran off the night before. What little food is left is fresh, as if someone cleared the kitchen out on purpose.

Hong Eon-uk, the governor's son, arrives with orders: important guests from Hanyang, the capital, need a meal with nine side dishes. Ji-young refuses to start blind. She wants their ages, their tastes and what they cannot eat. Eon-uk calls it an excuse, concedes she has a point, and warns that one wrong move could cost her life. She accepts on one condition: if the guests are satisfied, every woman in the kitchen goes home tonight. He agrees.

The guests, he explains, are Im Seo-hong, the Second Minister of Works, and his son Im Song-jae, Chief Royal Secretary. Song-jae is also an uibin, a princess's husband: he married the king's half-sister, Princess Hwisuk, and he grew up alongside the king. Flashbacks show him tearing families apart in the name of the chaehong. The Ims are notorious for finding fault with every hospitality meal, then collecting a bribe or ordering torture. Ji-young decides someone should teach them not to play games with food.

The kitchen women thank Ji-young for speaking up and agree to follow her lead. They have gathered every ingredient they can find, but there is no main dish until Gil-geum sniffs out a large cut of beef hidden in a pot. Ji-young announces a French-style steak, a word the women mishear as stack.

In the residence, Eon-uk tells his father, Governor Hong Gyeong-dal, that the cook seemed sincere about food. The governor cares more about his granddaughter, Mi-hyang, who has left the village with her nanny. He says coldly that she is dead to him now.

The women work through the regional pantry: pyogo mushrooms from Mount Nogo, anchovies from Deokjeok Island, and fermented shrimp from Mapo Port, roasted or stir-fried to a powder. The beef is the problem, a tough cut from a farm bull with almost no fat. Ji-young remembers the Sangajapbang, an old cookbook her father showed her, and its jeonchisu method for meat too tough to cut. It matches a French technique she knows well, sous vide. She sends Gil-geum running for hanji, the expensive Korean mulberry paper.

At Jahongwon, the palace office she runs, Kang Mok-ju waits anxiously for news of the king, who has the Urimwi, the royal guard, with him. She asks her court lady whether the Ims have reached the governor's office. What she really wants to know is how proud Governor Hong will look when his granddaughter is taken for the chaehong. At the governor's gate, Eon-uk welcomes the Ims.

In the kitchen, Ji-young matures the beef in kelp to tenderize it and seals it in oiled paper. Then she mixes boiling and cold water, scoop by scoop, until it sits around 55°C. With no thermometer, she tests it with her bare hand until her skin turns red, explaining to Gil-geum that long, gentle heat softens the protein myosin.

In the annex, Song-jae inspects the selected women and mocks each face. His father grumbles that there is no great beauty to bring the king. Song-jae suggests Governor Hong's granddaughter, and Eon-uk protests that Mi-hyang is just a child.

When the beef comes out of the bath, the kitchen women taste it and are stunned, and one of them mangles the name into sous vido. Ji-young still has to sear it, and sends them for rice straw.

The king comes to dinner

At dinner, Seo-hong brings up the governor's letters asking the king to depose Fourth Junior Consort Kang, Mok-ju, which caused an uproar at court. He insists the chaehong visit is unrelated, then rejects the meal on sight. A governor's table should show his region's land and harvest, he says, and this is a few slices of meat, a barbarian's dinner. The Hongs apologize, blame a new cook and offer to punish her. The women are dragged out of their holding room, Gil-geum still pocketing food.

In the courtyard, Ji-young will not stay quiet. She asks whether the guests have even tasted the food, and claims the plate holds the essence of the region. Song-jae answers by bringing in Mi-hyang, who had just left, along with a chaehong plaque marked as a royal command. If the cook is right, the Ims will accept the meal as a proper jeopbingaek and leave in peace. If not, the girl goes with them. Ji-young realizes this smirking man is the chaehong inspector himself, and she recognizes the name Hong Gyeong-dal when she hears it. Pressed to bet her life, she reasons she has no way home anyway, and agrees.

Song-jae takes a bite, and in voice-over swoons over meat that melts and a sauce he has never tasted. Ji-young's own voice-over explains the trick: the mushrooms, anchovies and shrimp each carry a different umami compound, and together they work like modern MSG. Out loud, Song-jae calls it common boiled beef with no nature in it. Ji-young points out that the dipping salt holds all three regional ingredients, and he still calls her a liar. Governor Hong explodes. He has never eaten anything so good, he says, and the Ims are lying to steal his granddaughter. He lunges at Song-jae and Eon-uk has to hold him back. Song-jae orders Ji-young beaten, and as the guards move in, a voice calls a halt: the king has arrived.

Ji-young knows the voice. The fool from the forest walks in and calls her gwinyeo, the female ghost he took her for. He really is Yeonhuigun. She replays every insult she threw at him and silently apologizes to her father. The king makes her taste the food first, then eats.

In voice-over he marvels at the tenderness and the savory depth of the seasoning, and asks what it is. Ji-young, impressed that he can pick out MSG at all, calls it an item for enriching flavor. He praises the pickled omija berries and grilled green onions on the side. Then he declares it "the greatest taste on the land." He admits it tasted oddly nostalgic, and that it is the first meal in a long while to satisfy him. Asked why he trashed it, Song-jae claims his humble tongue could not appreciate a king's meal. Ji-young mutters that he earned his reputation for treachery.

The king then questions her as if at a job interview. Asked why a woman would cook for a living, she credits her father's love of cooking. She tells him she is 27 and unmarried, which he finds a pity. When she confesses she comes from 500 years in the future, he concludes she is not right in the head, though her talent has saved her today.

She begs to be let go. Instead he orders Song-jae to lock her up and bring her to the palace tomorrow, and to prepare Governor Hong's granddaughter as well. Ji-young freezes. Hong Gyeong-dal's granddaughter is the spark for the Gapshin purge, the king's revenge for his mother's death. As the room empties, she mutters that he is the absolute worst.

That night, Governor Hong confronts the king in the courtyard. He accuses him of neglecting the state for a woman's embrace and holding the lives of officials and commoners cheap. He urges him to punish the treacherous subjects and the women who feed on his power. The king asks whether he worries about the nation only now that his own family is at stake. For driving the king's mother to her death, the governor must live and suffer for years, exiled to the far end of North Hamgyong Province.

Two escapes in one night

In the prison, every other woman has been released while Ji-young and Gil-geum stay locked up. Needing to get home before the palace swallows her, Ji-young tells Gil-geum the truth. Gil-geum believes her, because she smelled something she had never smelled before when they met. Ji-young explains the flight from Paris, the spilled coffee and the book she opened in the plane bathroom. Then it hits her. The Mangunrok is in her handbag, and she lost the handbag at the cliff.

In the courtyard, the king and Song-jae spar like the old friends they are. Then the king orders every chaehong woman released except the cook and her companion. He will not take Mi-hyang either, since she becomes a government slave once her grandfather is exiled. The chaehong, he admits, was only an excuse to avenge his mother, and the girl gave him a reason to exile the governor. Song-jae warns that Grand Queen Dowager In-ju may suspect revenge, but the king brushes it off.

Back at the cells, Eon-uk keeps the word he gave in the kitchen. He hands over supplies and points the women to the back gate. Ji-young thanks him and tells him that tyrant will get what is coming to him one day. Soon after, Song-jae reports to the king that the cooks have escaped.

On the road, Gil-geum explains that she is alone. Her father, an officer at the Left Jeolla Naval Base, was framed and taken away. Her mother was killed by bandits on their way to Hanyang to find him. Ji-young invites her to come back to the future, where she can be anything. Gil-geum's dream is to become senior court lady of the royal kitchen, so Ji-young promises to teach her to cook while she is here.

At the cliff, the pair search the dark slope for the handbag and find the king waiting instead. Ji-young explains that his arrow sent the bag flying, and that the book inside is what brought her to Joseon. He asks whether it was worth another act of treason to break out for it, and she says it is as important as her life. He produces the bag, lets her see it, then tosses it away, telling her she now has no reason to run. She swallows her pride and promises to do anything he says if he gets it back.

Into Bongdeokgung

The next day, Ji-young and Gil-geum ride caged toward the capital. Gil-geum had hoped to enter the palace as a kitchen maid, not a prisoner, and the two promise to protect each other. Ji-young vows to get the Mangunrok back whatever it takes. Asked why he is bringing the woman at all, the king says, "Because I do not want her to die a peaceful death."

In a hidden meeting, Mok-ju meets Grand Prince Jesan, whom she addresses only as Your Highness. On the attack on the king, Jesan believes one of their own struck early against orders, and he already has the culprit followed. He tells Mok-ju to keep greeting the king as always and keep him lost in curiosity about his mother. Later, at Jahongwon, she tells her court lady Chu-wol she expects the king to bring Governor Hong's beautiful granddaughter. She plans to torment the girl until she withers.

On the road, village children pelt the cart and jeer at the gwinyeo. The king stops them, because no one harms what belongs to him. That, he confirms, means Ji-young. She may not see anyone, go anywhere or speak to anyone without his permission. She should play mute, deaf and blind if she wants to survive the palace, and he promises her a special residence.

At Bongdeokgung, the royal palace, Ji-young thinks she has been taken in place of Governor Hong's granddaughter. Maybe that means she has stopped the purge, which is cold comfort. She sums up her new home: "This truly is Hell Joseon."

Mok-ju greets the king with practiced devotion, and he leads her straight to his prisoner, a criminal whose talent is too good to waste on an execution. Mok-ju notes he has never brought a woman back himself in all her years at court. Ji-young knows the name Kang Mok-ju from history: the most villainous woman in Joseon, who wrapped Yeonhuigun around her finger. Mok-ju offers to train the newcomer at Jahongwon. The king refuses, saying she is not that kind of woman. Then he moves in close to Ji-young while Mok-ju watches and tells her she will cling to him one day and beg for her life.

Thoughts

The sous vide set piece is the best kind of cooking-show nonsense. It is completely implausible, explained with enough chemistry to sound convincing, and anchored by Ji-young scalding her own hand to get the water right. I also like that the dish wins on a technicality the villains cannot argue with: every regional ingredient the Ims said was missing is in the dipping salt. Song-jae lying to her face while his voice-over moans with pleasure is the funniest beat of the episode, and Oh Eui-sik plays the smirk perfectly.

The king is harder to read, which seems to be the point. He frees the women, leaves a child behind, and calls the whole chaehong a cover for revenge, in the same night he sentences an old man to a living punishment. His talk of owning her is creepy, but he keeps putting Ji-young where he can watch her. He calls the steak oddly nostalgic, and the bibimbap at the hunting grounds made him think of his mother. I suspect her cooking matters to him more than he lets on.

The real alarm bell is Mok-ju. She frets over the king's safety in one scene and takes orders from Jesan in the next. She has also just watched him bring a woman home himself for the first time in all her years at court. Ji-young believes she may have changed history by taking Mi-hyang's place. If she is right, she has also put herself in the path of the most dangerous woman in the palace.

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