Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 6 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
Choi Guy-hwa as Grand Prince Jesan
Oh Eui-sik as Im Song-jae
Lee Joo-ahn as Gong-gil
Jang Gwang as Chang-seon
Kim Kwang-kyu as Eom Bong-sik
Hong Jin-gi as Maeng Man-su
Kim Hyun-mok as Min Gae-deok
Jo Jae-yoon as Tang Bailong
Moon Seung-you as Ya Feixiu

A handbag without its book

In Jangwonseo, the palace greenhouse, King Yi Heon has just returned the handbag of Yeon Ji-young, the chef from 2025 stranded in Joseon. In his head, the real reason is that he has begun to see her as a woman. Out loud, he says he likes her cooking, and a few awkward steps later they both end up on the ground. Ji-young shrugs off a scraped palm, while the king wants the royal physician and every kitchen knife dulled. Then she opens the bag. Her passport and wallet are there, but her phone is gone, and so is the Mangunrok, the old book that brought her to Joseon.

Im Song-jae, the Chief Royal Secretary, passed the bag to the king and swears it held no book. Yi Heon guesses it fell out over the cliff in Salgoji Forest, though Ji-young cannot see why only the book would. He promises troops to comb the forest once the Ming envoys leave, and a nationwide reward if they fail. She insists she must get back to the future, and he vows to find the book at any cost.

In the royal kitchen, the cooks are toasting with seoktanju, a liquor that Eom Bong-sik, Chef Eom, has fermented for seven days. Ji-young arrives late and is coaxed into a taste. Soon the whole kitchen is keeping the beat while she sings a ballad about her missing book. She wakes with a pounding head. Seo Gil-geum tells her Chef Eom cooked the king's dinner, and that she repeated the king's promise 35 times, by Gil-geum's count. Alone, Yi Heon wonders what future she means.

The envoy who will not eat

At the morning assembly, word comes from the reception official in Yangju that the Ming envoy refuses Joseon food. The ministers smell a pretext for new demands, and Yi Heon notes that the last tribute held no ginseng. He rejects a plan to hire Han cooks and says the envoys can go hungry, since they brought three cooks anyway. He calls the ministers' worry timid diplomacy and orders strict protocol. The officials settle on the hamayeon, the banquet a king holds for an arriving envoy.

In the kitchen, Ji-young is asked for refreshments and told the chief envoy is a eunuch with a famous palate who all but raised the current emperor. On his route through Uiju, Pyeongyang and Yangju, he has pitted his cooks against Joseon's and humiliated every one. She decides to serve something he has never tasted.

At Taepyeonggwan, the official reception hall, Yi Heon greets the envoy, Yu Kun, through an interpreter. Back in the royal kitchen, Ji-young's colleagues brief her on the three Ming cooks, who double as bodyguards. Tang Bailong, last of a Sichuan clan wiped out for treason, beat China's famous inns and took their signboards. His niece and pupil, Ya Feixiu, is the fairy of Sichuan fare. Kong Wenli, said to descend from Confucius, is the master of Shandong cooking. Ji-young finds it all straight out of a martial arts novel. At the hall, Yi Heon mentions his own special chief royal cook, and Yu Kun has already heard of the gwinyeo, the female-ghost cook.

Black sesame macarons and a bad hand signal

Ji-young's secret weapon is butter, which the cooks mangle into batter, botto and balta. Someone recognizes it as suyu, its old name, once stirred into a royal goji berry tea. In the talks, Yu Kun demands 50 tribute women and double the ginseng. Yi Heon refuses the women and ties any ginseng to the gifts the Ming send back. Since the Ming gifts have not changed, he asks why Joseon alone must pay more. Yu Kun asks whether the King of Joseon dares question the Emperor.

The refreshments are Joseon-style macarons: black sesame and almond shells flavored with mugwort, dates, gardenia and rice, around a cream of butter, sugar and black sesame. Yu Kun has his three cooks taste them first, then asks about the cook, and Ji-young introduces herself. He proposes that she and the Ming cooks compete to settle the tribute terms. While she mutters at the king to say no, Yi Heon calls it a great idea. He makes it a team match, three cooks a side over three rounds, with the king and Yu Kun judging and an outside taster breaking any tie.

Afterward, Ji-young is furious, because the king read her frantic hand signal as a yes. When she tells him to keep politics political, he answers, "Cooking is politics." Losing would be treason, and so would refusing, once the petitions pile up. She dies either way, and he is pleased she finally understands. He promises to find the Mangunrok if she wins. She reminds him he already promised that, and he corrects her: "I never promised I would let you leave." Then he tells her to win.

Plots around the envoy

Grand Queen Dowager In-ju, the king's grandmother, hears of the contest. Sure that Yu Kun does not know of her ties to the Ming imperial family, she will write to the Ming Emperor. Over Ji-young's macarons, Kang Mok-ju wants someone else on the team, and the name of Maeng Man-su, Chef Maeng, comes up. Grand Prince Jesan, the king's uncle, tells her to be patient; in time he will hand her Ji-young as a gift. A loss, they reason, will shame the king, win Yu Kun the ginseng and justify replacing him.

At Taepyeonggwan, the Right State Councilor brings Yu Kun a message from Jesan. The king has fits and sees things that are not there, and the Emperor should know. In exchange for a guaranteed Ming win, the councilor urges Yu Kun to demand 100 women and the right to harvest all of Joseon's ginseng. When Yu Kun balks, the councilor leaves behind a dated ledger of every gift the envoy has taken. With his three cooks beside him, Yu Kun sneers at a court this divided and sends Feixiu to test Joseon's cooks.

Gong-gil, the king's jester, has been eavesdropping. He barely escapes and tells Yi Heon these are no ordinary cooks, and that the councilor met the envoy. The councilor assures Jesan that Yu Kun has the ledger's first volume while the second stays with them. Jesan calls the contest the start of a new Joseon dynasty, and they agree a draft of the historical record will soon serve its purpose. Mok-ju asks Chef Maeng what became of the arsenic she gave him. Then she tells him he will compete, and Joseon must lose.

Market day and a kitchen raid

The cooks seed gochu, the chili peppers Ji-young found among the greenhouse poisons, though they still believe the plants can kill. She plans to dry and grind them for a paste. Eunuch Yoon summons her about the travel plaque she requested, since she needs the mill at Unjongga. Yi Heon insists on coming. When she admits her only spare clothes are Gil-geum's, he scoffs. He calls for Chang-seon and tells her to meet him at Gyemumun, a small gate beside Bongdeokgung's north gate.

At the market, Ji-young admires an ornament like the one tied to the Mangunrok but passes at ten nip. Yi Heon presses money on her before slipping off on an errand. It saves her when the mill charges five nip instead of two. She wanders off to browse as a sun-shower breaks, and the king, waiting with his escort, starts to worry.

At the palace, Feixiu walks into the royal kitchen and bites into a chili. Her verdict on Chef Eom's knife work gets a polite translation, then a blunt one. A green onion chopping contest follows. Min Gae-deok, whom the kitchen calls Cook Min, steps up to defend his seniors. The others back him, since Feixiu looks like the youngest of the Ming three.

In the rain, the escort is still searching when Ji-young returns with irises, butkkot in Korean, picked to soothe the king's mind. When the flowers drop, he offers to buy prettier ones, but she gathers them anyway. A face-wiping squabble turns into a chase, and he forgives her insolence because of the gift. He asks whether the gocho, his word for the peppers, can really win. She reminds him of the gochujang bibimbap at the thatched house that brought him to tears. He hands her the ornament from the stall, and alone she wonders how she will face him if she loses.

Back at the palace, Feixiu passes her and says she got lucky today. Gil-geum explains the wrecked kitchen. Feixiu chopped like a Shaolin warrior and beat Cook Min, then a cook who admits to fearing knives, then Chef Maeng, outpaced for the first time. Ji-young reads Feixiu's green onions as a show-off's work and declares war. The losers vow a rematch, and everyone pledges help. Her slang confuses them, but the chant for the royal kitchen to rise, fight and win comes through loud.

At Taepyeonggwan, Feixiu reports pathetic knife skills, an absent chief cook and a sample of Joseon's seasoning, which smells like mala but not quite. Elsewhere, Song-jae tells his father, Im Seo-hong, that the Grand Queen Dowager is devising a plan. When Seo-hong frets about a loss, Song-jae reminds him the envoys are on Joseon soil.

The draw sets the stakes

At the banquet, themes are drawn as paired characters. Yi Heon and Yu Kun pick mu, nonexistent, and yuk, meat, so round one is a meat dish nobody has ever seen. Ji-young, drawing against Tang Bailong, gets ji, know, and yeok, change. The Ming side wants a redraw. Instead the pair is read as a lesson in diplomacy, so in round two each team cooks the other nation's food. Yu Kun's easy acceptance unsettles the Joseon side.

Jesan, as Superintendent of Saongwon, the office that supplies the royal kitchen, draws with Kong Wenli and gets tang, soup, and sam, ginseng. The final round is a ginseng soup, a Ming strength. Yu Kun raises the stakes to 100 women and Joseon's ginseng harvest. Joseon counters that a win halves the tribute and lets it buy sugarcane and flour freely before harvest. Yu Kun claims only the Emperor can agree. Offered the old terms instead, he promises to petition hard if the Ming lose.

Song-jae is told to record it all. The three rounds will last one sijin in total, about two hours. Preparation stretches from three days to five, and the contest is set for misi, in the early afternoon, at Huijeongdang. As the cooks bow, Feixiu gets back the knife she left in the kitchen, its blade ruined, and the Ming side bristles. Ji-young has a promise for the envoys: "I'll give you a blazing hot taste."

Thoughts

Two lines carry this episode. The first is Yi Heon's claim that cooking is politics, which he tosses off like a joke and which turns out to be the whole plot. Every table here is a negotiating table, from the macarons to the ledger of bribes, and the cook-off is just the one with an audience. The second is his quiet correction about the book. He will find the Mangunrok; he never said she could use it. It is the most honest he has been with her, and it lands as a confession and a threat at once, which is very much his style.

The villains finally show their hand. Jesan is trading away the ginseng harvest and calling it a new dynasty, while his camp holds the ledger's second volume as insurance. Mok-ju's question about the arsenic says poison is still on her menu. She has told Chef Maeng he will compete and must lose, and I am curious whether he obeys now that Feixiu has humiliated him in his own kitchen. The Grand Queen Dowager's letter to the Emperor is a wild card, and I cannot yet tell whose side it serves.

The market date was pure fluff, and I loved it. The irises, the ornament he noticed her eyeing and the chase in the rain play like a first date neither will admit to. It also costs something: the secret seasoning is no longer secret, and Feixiu leaves with a sample. Yu Kun's calm about round two makes me think the Ming side knows Joseon food far better than the court realizes.

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