Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 4 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
Seo Yi-sook as Grand Queen Dowager In-ju
Shin Eun-jung as Queen Dowager Jahyeon
Choi Guy-hwa as Grand Prince Jesan
Oh Eui-sik as Im Song-jae
Kim Kwang-kyu as Eom Bong-sik
Hong Jin-gi as Maeng Man-su
Jang Gwang as Chang-seon

In the courtyard of Grand Queen Dowager In-ju's quarters, the cook-off that decides whether Yeon Ji-young, the chef from 2025, keeps her arms finally begins. The Grand Queen Dowager, the king's grandmother, reveals a theme written in cursive that nobody can read at first: filial piety. Every dish must use tofu and doenjang, the fermented soybean paste, and the cooks have two hours from around noon. Ji-young knows a traditional palace dish will never beat the senior cooks, so she settles on the doenjang pasta her father used to make her. King Yi Heon warns her there will be no mercy, then smirks, and she fumes at him in silence.

Kang Mok-ju, the king's long-serving consort, and Queen Dowager Jahyeon watch with the royal party. The Grand Queen Dowager remarks that the king has grown quite close to his gwinyeo cook (the word means female ghost). She adds that she has been tired lately and has lost her appetite. Yi Heon says that makes the contest more interesting, and he hopes the new cook can restore it. Her skill, he adds, has already talked him out of killing her once. Mok-ju keeps her real aim to herself. What she wants to cut today, she thinks, is not the cook's arm but the king's heart that leans toward her.

Ji-young loses her ingredients

At Saongwon, the office that supplies the royal kitchen, Ji-young finds the shelves stripped by the other cooks and the remaining tofu smashed. There is not enough doenjang left for anything. She spots a bunch of very fresh spinach, a green she knows reached Korea in the late Goryeo and early Joseon years. It suits a queen with weak bones and anemia, she decides. Eunuch Yoon, the kitchen steward, says there is no jeolmi doenjang left, which Ji-young works out is the black-soybean kind. Then he leads her to a batch of three-year-old doenjang in the backyard.

Elsewhere, a group of ministers grumbles that even if the wench wins, she can never be accepted as chief royal cook. They turn to Grand Prince Jesan, the king's uncle, for a view. He knocks over a cup with his weak hands and announces he must find the outhouse at once. The ministers get no answer, which seems to be the point.

Back in the courtyard, Chef Eom Bong-sik and Chef Maeng Man-su trade advice that is really a pair of insults. Chef Eom warns that uneven fish slices will burst Chef Maeng's eomandu, the royal dumplings wrapped in fish. Chef Maeng tells him to mind the tofu in his yeonpotang, a clear soup of pan-fried tofu. Among the onlookers, First Junior Consort Sung sneers that Ji-young is blanching muknamul, greens meant to be dried before eating. His grandmother tells the women to be quiet, and Yi Heon tells her that lips may lie but the tongue never does.

A refreshing savory flavor

As she cooks, Ji-young turns over what Eunuch Yoon has told her about the king's grandmother. On the day she entered the palace as a girl, she cried so hard she could not eat. The last food her mother made her was a doenjang soup with rice, using paste from near the Seomjin River. She has spent her life describing its refreshing savory taste, and no palace cook has ever matched it. Ji-young starts to doubt her pasta, and Seo Gil-geum has to tell her to concentrate.

Nearby, Chef Eom runs out of green onions and asks Chef Maeng to lend him some. Chef Maeng refuses, pointing out that poor preparation is grounds for elimination, and the two senior cooks end up grappling at their stations. Watching the squabble, Ji-young suddenly knows what the soup needs. She bolts from her station in the middle of the contest, and the guards haul her back before the royal family.

Ji-young asks for permission to fetch one more ingredient. Mok-ju objects that the gwinyeo has seen what the others are making and wants to change course because she is losing. Yi Heon proposes a compromise: let her fetch it, and if she still loses, both arms go instead of one. Ji-young curses him in her head while the court calls it a splendid idea. The Grand Queen Dowager agrees, warning that if the request proves to be a ruse, Ji-young will pay with her life.

Clams, spinach and filial piety

With no time to go herself, Ji-young sends Gil-geum. As she goes, the name card of Chu-wol, Mok-ju's inspector court lady, appears on screen. Ji-young fries tofu in hot oil and stirs fresh spinach straight into the broth, to the onlookers' disbelief. Yi Heon asks whether this is a new dish or whether she has lost her mind. Gil-geum finally runs in late, with blood on her head, and hands over a basket.

Nobody watching can name the mystery ingredient she tips into the pot. Mok-ju worries aloud that the food might make them ill and offers to have the cook stopped. Yi Heon turns cold and furious. The contest exists only because they doubted his choice, he says. Stopping it on a technicality before anyone tastes the food would mock his royal command. His grandmother smooths it over, and he tells her he knows the whole event was arranged to get rid of his cook.

Time is called. Chef Maeng serves his eomandu, wrapped in gray mullet sliced thin enough to see through, and Yi Heon praises it in loving detail. The catch: the doenjang appears only in a dipping sauce of vinegar and honey. For filial piety, Chef Maeng says the king is the father of his people, who send him tribute as children would. Yi Heon points out that this would make every dish in the palace a work of filial piety.

Chef Eom's yeonpotang uses minced chicken, water parsley, jeolmi doenjang, Jinan mushrooms and caterpillar fungus. His filial piety is a family gathered around a warm pot, and he cites the old book Myeongsim Bogam. She agrees, but Yi Heon asks whether such an extravagant dish really speaks of a child's love. Then Ji-young sets down a plain bowl, and somebody scoffs that it is just soup.

Yi Heon tastes it and clearly recognizes what she added. When Ji-young launches into a long explanation, he threatens her arm, and the Grand Queen Dowager cuts in to say the food speaks of filial piety. A flashback shows her as a girl, refusing to eat on the day she left home. Her mother pleads with her, having sent all the way to the Seomjin River for the doenjang. She meant to lecture the cook, she says, and has instead been served a dish that questions the very idea.

The last ingredient was clams, Ji-young explains. Yi Heon adds that in Joseon only people along the Seomjin and Nakdong rivers could eat them, and Mok-ju mutters that this is how the wench seduces him. The spinach, Ji-young says, was for the tremor in the Grand Queen Dowager's hands and her unsteady balance, because food and medicine share one source. The Grand Queen Dowager promises to stop questioning who Ji-young is and asks her to cook it again. Ji-young wins, tells her absent father she made it, and is named chief royal cook.

The straw cutters

Yi Heon is not finished. He orders the two losing cooks to kneel at the straw cutters, and their arms go under the blades. Ji-young throws herself in the way, arguing that maiming the cooks who kept his grandmother healthy would be unfilial. Yi Heon asks whether she wants to die for lecturing him. "I wish to live. And so must they," she answers.

His grandmother steps in with a confession. She chose filial piety to shame Ji-young, because the cook had served deer to a king who despises deer. He hunts them because the late king was so fond of them. Ji-young has made her rethink the idea, she says, and she suggests the losers learn from the new chief royal cook. The two cooks beg for mercy, and Yi Heon spares Chef Eom and Chef Maeng and sends the straw cutters away.

His grandmother invites him to tea. Yi Heon declines with a barb: the soup must have reminded her of someone she missed, since she is so unusually generous today. Back in her quarters, her women fret that the king may know about the incident, and she cuts them off. He thinks his mother died of an illness, she reminds them, with no idea she was stripped of her title and poisoned. If she could go back in time, she says, she would make the same decision.

On his way back, Yi Heon replays what Im Song-jae, his Chief Royal Secretary, told him about Mok-ju's role. The rumor about his exile of Governor Hong Gyeong-dal began at Jahongwon, the palace office Mok-ju runs. He tells Chang-seon, his chief eunuch, to take him there.

A fit at Jahongwon

In the royal kitchen, the senior cooks offer Ji-young grudging thanks, Chef Maeng at great length. Ji-young, hungry, asks whether any eomandu are left over, and there are none. Gil-geum finally explains her head. Someone knocked her down on her way back from Saongwon, and she hit the ground but kept hold of the clam basket. She never saw the attacker's face. A man shouted and the attacker fled, and it was the handsome jester, Gong-gil.

At Jahongwon, Chu-wol calls Ji-young a spy and offers to have her kidnapped and sold. Mok-ju refuses, because the cook has luck on her side, and says she will set a trap instead. Then Yi Heon arrives. He accuses her of arranging the contest and of starting the rumor that he exiled Governor Hong for Ji-young's sake, which questions his authority.

Mok-ju hits back where it hurts. He used to lie awake hunting the enemy who drove his mother to her death, she says, and he swore revenge. Now he is protecting a woman of unknown birth. Misunderstandings take root, she adds, just as the late king misunderstood his mother. Her words loop in his head, and he begins to shake. He rejects her attempt to calm him and orders her to leave him alone.

Elsewhere, Jesan muses that the gwinyeo cook must be something special. An ally suggests he taste her food when he dines with the king at the physical examination next month. A subordinate reports that the attack on the king in Salgoji Forest was the work of Director Kim Yang-son, acting alone. Kim Yang-son's brother, Kim I-son, had his body defiled in the Muin purge, an earlier purge of scholars. A masked assassin as fast as the wind slipped away from Jesan's men. The subordinate asks for time to hunt him down, but Jesan tells him to forget the assassin, because a more urgent job against an important figure must be done tonight.

At Ji-young's quarters, Song-jae promises he will find her bag one day and brings jewelry so she can win the king's favor. Ji-young and Gil-geum insist there is no flirting going on, though Gil-geum garbles the word. Song-jae calls them ungrateful and asks if Ji-young really thinks her skills alone saved her. Before he can explain, she is called to cook.

Doenjang pasta for a tyrant

Eunuch Yoon brings bad news to the kitchen: the king had a fit at Jahongwon and has shut himself in his chambers. Someone could die serving tonight's meal. The cooks tell Ji-young about his fits. He accuses people of poisoning him, throws tables, and trembles while hearing voices, and only Mok-ju can calm him. Wondering whether the tyrant's rages come from a wounded heart, Ji-young decides to cook something to console him.

In his chambers, Yi Heon throws everyone out, then stops the chief royal cook, the woman with the blue ribbon, and tells her to stay. She serves doenjang pasta made with buckwheat noodles, stir-fried doenjang, spinach and clams. He snaps that he already had doenjang today. Her attempt to teach him the word pasta turns into a string of mishearings. Eventually she twirls a bite for him and feeds him herself.

He likes it and describes it as precisely as ever. Ji-young explains that her father made this dish whenever she was upset, and that her mother died when she was small. Yi Heon tells her she must have been lonely, as alone as he is. He offers to send word to her father. She says, again, that she is from the future, and that the Mangunrok, the old book in her handbag that brought her to Joseon, would prove it. He admits he threw her bundle off the cliff.

Yi Heon makes her a deal. If she can tell him his future correctly, he will believe her and send troops to recover the bundle. In her head, Ji-young thinks of the Gapshin purge, the king's revenge for his mother's death, and of the revolt that will dethrone him. Aloud, she tells him only to get through this year and hold back his anger. "Beware of those close to you," she adds.

Alone, Yi Heon writes the day's record, noting that the chief royal cook took first place. For years he has waited on his Principal Drafter, Yi Jang-gyun, to dig up the draft history of what happened to his mother 20 years ago. Tonight the drafter is due. Turning over the word Mangunrok, Yi Heon wonders if it means yearning for the clouds, and he writes the word into his own book.

Then Shin Su-hyeok, commander of the Urimwi royal guard, brings bad news. Jang-gyun never reached their meeting at the North Gate. Su-hyeok found his identification plaque in a pool of blood, and a flashback shows the attack. No one else knew of the king's order, Yi Heon says, so he can trust no one. He decides he was always alone anyway.

He asks Chang-seon for a drink. Worried about an empty stomach, Chang-seon sends for a juansang, a late-night table of food and wine. Ji-young, grumbling that the king never sleeps, carries it in and finds him reeking of alcohol. He pulls her close, and when she tries to speak, he stops her. "Stay as you are. Just for a while." Then he kisses her.

Thoughts

The cook-off is a delight because it is really a mystery story. The episode title blanks out the first ingredient, and the show makes us wait alongside the Grand Queen Dowager for the reveal. Clams are a lovely answer: humble, regional and completely obvious once you hear them. The dish works on the palate and as an argument. The best part is the Grand Queen Dowager realizing that a theme she chose to shame the cook has been turned back on her. Ji-young's inner panic about accidentally inventing a Joseon recipe is a good running joke, too.

The second half rearranges the board. We now know the Grand Queen Dowager took part in whatever happened to Deposed Queen Yeon and would do it again. Mok-ju knows more than she says. Jang-gyun disappears on the very night Jesan sends his man on an urgent job, which may be coincidence but does not feel like it. Chu-wol's name card arriving just as Gil-geum leaves also feels like a pointed hint about who knocked her down. Ji-young's advice to beware those close to him lands harder after all that.

The episode also gives Yi Heon's cruelty a context without excusing it. He gleefully doubles Ji-young's stakes at the cook-off and is ready to take two arms on a whim. Hours later, old voices are tearing him apart and the one man he trusted with his mother's secret is gone. That last kiss reads as much like grief as romance, and I suspect neither of them knows what to do with it.

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