The actors do well at giving emotion to some fairly lackluster script. The soundtrack was actually pretty good. Unfortunately, that's pretty much the end of the good parts of this series.

The major faults lie in three main things:

First, from the very first episode there was a lot of staring at each other and pausing for unnecessary amounts of time between sentences. I have no idea what they hoped to accomplish with this, but it added to my annoyance and not much else. Who talks like that? No one. It was awkward and forced.

Second, the basic plot of the story is that the chef decides to hire an untrained boy to be a chef in his restaurant and compete in a cooking competition based on the fact that the boy is naturally talented and we discover he enjoys cooking. They spend time together, boom -- love story. Good enough, right? But the competition just started and suddenly nothing else is said about it. Like, the main plot just got dropped with no reasoning. It was left totally open with no conclusion and not even a climax to that part of the story. It was simply never mentioned again.

Third (this is a little bit of a spoiler so beware), there were some fairly confusing moments. Aue (the older chef) sort of confesses having feelings (if you count a candlelight dinner just the two of them and longing stares as confession) for Aek (the boy). Aek goes a little crazy, getting wildly upset over this subtle confession. He runs off crying and falls, hurting his arm. Enter a side character who suddenly seems to be poised to get between the two leads, but no, that also drops off unexpectedly without having any real relationship to the rest of the series. Aek talks to his mom, making sure it's okay with her if he is straight but has feelings for one guy. She says that's okay and he goes back to Aue as if nothing happened. Like, hey, I'm back and I'm opening my arms to hug you. Less subtle accepting of confession, but still, the whole thing was confusing. Did he have to have a mental breakdown and get seriously angry over the thought that a guy might like him? His reaction was out of proportion and made no sense.

Basically: it's kind of a boring story overall, but the food looked really delicious. No sexy scenes, so younger people can watch this without worry. It's too confusing and has dropped plot lines, as though they were planning to have more episodes but got told they were canceled so they decided to just end it as quickly as possible. Pretty much a letdown.