I really enjoyed this Taiwanese soap opera comedy. It is completely off the wall silly, but has romance and action and adventure. I highly recommend this show.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

This show is about Zhang Dong Guan a young man with the dream of becoming the greatest chef and the world and marrying the most beautiful woman, but he only learned incredible knife skills before his parent’s died, so he can’t cook at all. He meets up with the incredibly evil (though he doesn’t find out for a while) homeless man named Zhang Dong Gua who he takes as a disciple, but who later kills Dong Guan’s master, and joins with the evil Sheng to destory him, and even poisons him to lose his sense of taste. Zhang Dong Guan ends up at the Lu family restaurant, where he is taken in as the disciple of the master to learn Lu family cooking to the consternation of master Lu’s daughter Lu Mei Mei, who Dong Guan falls for, and gets engaged too, but she will do anything to stop the marriage. The Emperor comes to their town to find scholars from the last dynasty to help his dynasty, and he brings the Prince Fu Le Ke, who only cares about Food. They end up eating Zhang Dong Guan’s cooking, as well as rooting out some evil officials, who killed the parent’s of Xi Mei, and she has trained in Martial Arts for 20 years. Dong Guan helps clear her parent’s name and she falls for him, though he never realizes it. The Emperor ends up inviting Dong Guan to be an imperial cook in the palace, and Xi Mei is made a princess. She goes to visit her parent’s graves, and finds them cleaned and visits an old family friend in Beijing who is killed because of a deal with an evil Eunich in the Palace. Lu Mei Mei comes to Beijing to stop her wedding, and ends up causing Dong Guan to become a Eunich, though the emperor saves him, to help him find out who is behind stealing all the imperial money. Eventually they discover the chief Eunich and implicate him, but he is killed by Sheng, the Emperor’s wife’s brother who runs the palace, and is the true conspirator. Fu Le Ku falls for Mei Mei who starts cooking for the empress, and works with Zi Mei to seperate Lu Mei Mei and Zhang Dong Guan. Eventually Zhang Dong Guan is able to implicate Sheng, but only after Zhang is implicated in a murder by Sheng, and has to run, and the his master Lu is killed by Zhang Dong Gua (who also steals his cookbook). Zhang Dong Gua then shows how evil he is and tries to stop Dong Guan, and crush and innocent woman and steal her restaurant. Lu Mei Mei loses her sense of taste when her father dies, and Sheng keeps trying to get Dong Guan, even using Dong Gua to destroy the new Lu restaurant through foul play, but eventually Sheng is implicated and killed, but after he has killed Dong Gua. Dong Guan is able to restore Mei Mei’s taste, but he has to marry the woman with the shop to get the pill, and he doesn’t tell Mei Mei, so she hates him, and decides to marry Prince Fu Lu Ke, who now wants to marry Xi Mei. Dong Guan cooks Xi Mei some Chow Fun for her wedding, but uses it as a proposal, and they get married as do Xi Mei and Fu Lu Ke. And Dong Guan and Fu Lu Ke join together under the Emperor to create the 108 dishes of the Man Han Banquet!

This show is great! Silly and fun, and the action scenes with Xi Mei are excellent. This show was so much I couldn’t stop watching it, and didn’t want to!