19 titles, most popular first
In Joseon, at a time when women had little influence, the orphaned Jang-geum enters the royal kitchen as a young apprentice cook. Determined and hardworking, she sets out to master the secrets of Korean cooking and medicine, in a story inspired by a real woman of the era.
Na Bong-sun is a timid assistant chef with low self-esteem who can sometimes see ghosts. When she is possessed by Shin Soon-ae, the ghost of a young woman set on finding romance before she moves on, Bong-sun suddenly turns bold and confident, catching the eye of her arrogant star chef boss, Kang Sun-woo.
Kim Sam-soon is a loud, gifted pastry chef nearing thirty who hates her old-fashioned name. On Christmas Eve she is dumped by her cheating boyfriend and loses her job. Hyun Jin-heon, owner of a fancy French restaurant, hires her, and when she needs money to save her mother's house, he offers it if she will pose as his girlfriend.
Seo Yoo-kyung has spent years as a kitchen assistant at the Italian restaurant La Sfera, dreaming of becoming a real chef. When strict new head chef Choi Hyun-wook arrives from Italy and starts letting the women in the kitchen go, she becomes the last one left and must fight hard to keep her place.
Lee Jung-joo has worked hard all her life without catching a break, and after seven years at a Seoul clothing company she loses her job, her home and her boyfriend almost at once. Reluctantly starting over on Jeju Island, she meets Baek Gun-woo, a carefree, smooth-talking restaurant owner from a rich family whom she first takes for a con artist.
Yeon Ji-yeong is a modern French-cuisine chef who has just won a top prize in Paris. On her flight home to Seoul, a solar eclipse sends her back to the Joseon era. She lands in the court of King Lee Heon, a feared ruler with a refined palate, and must win him over with her cooking.
Yang Eun-bi, a student in her mid-twenties, is studying for the civil service exam so she can become a high school teacher. She runs into Cha Chi-soo, the arrogant heir to Korea's biggest food company, and likes him until she learns he is just a high school senior. Then she discovers her late father has left his ramen shop to a stranger, Choi Kang-hyuk.
Min Chae-won is the eldest granddaughter of a family that has run a noodle factory on the edge of Seoul for three generations. Married into the wealthy family behind Golden Dragon Food, she has endured years of hostility from a mother-in-law who never accepted her, and when her husband cheats, she decides to leave him.
Four single neighbors love living alone but share one problem: restaurants are not made for eating by yourself. Lee Soo-kyung, a happily divorced paralegal, Goo Dae-young, a mysterious food lover, and design student Yoon Jin-yi start eating out together and slowly become part of each other's lives, while a murder case shakes their neighborhood.
A man who once dreamed of being a cook grows up to become a neurosurgeon instead, while a woman takes up cooking because of him. Their story is drawn from the 1995 collapse of the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul.
Two families run rival Chinese restaurants. Hyo-dong, whose father built their now-struggling restaurant through decades of hard work, meets the charming Hee-ae and Shin-ae, a poor but determined student, at a cooking class, and as he chases his dream of becoming a top chef, he falls for Hee-ae while the rivalry between the restaurants heats up.
Go Seung-ji is a gifted pastry chef whose prickly, cold exterior hides a kind and caring heart, much like a hedgehog. Pan Da-yang is a cheerful, easygoing café owner who takes life as calmly as a panda. The story centers on these two very different personalities.
Grieving his father, Kang Seong-jae enlists and is sent to a unit in Ganglim. Despite topping boot camp, he is put under special watch because he grew up poor with only one parent, and his food-truck experience with his mother gets him assigned to Yoon Dong-hyeon, a famously hopeless veteran cook. Then a strange virtual screen pops up, giving him a mission to feed the troops.
Jo Hee-ra is a witch who runs a restaurant where desperate people come hoping a special meal will make their wishes come true. But every wish has a price: in return, each customer must give up the thing they value most in their life.
Abandoned by her boyfriend after their baby is born, a desperate Lee Soo-jung gives her daughter up for adoption and moves to the United States, renaming herself Rena Jung. Twenty years later she returns to Korea as a glamorous celebrity chef willing to fake credentials and use people to get ahead. Her goal is a loveless match with Park Min-joon, the cold eldest son of TNC Group's chairman.
In this time-slip romantic comedy adapted from a web novel, Heo Gyun, who lives in the Joseon era, is suddenly thrown four centuries forward into the future, where he sets about opening a restaurant of his own.
Goo Dae-young is stuck in a rut now that he is in his thirties. To recover, he sets out to revisit the dishes he loved in his twenties, joined by his old college classmate Lee Ji-woo, and over shared meals the two look back on memories from their past.
Yeo Bong-soon grew up in the countryside and gets the chance to work as a chef at the Blue House, the presidential residence. People there first see her as naive and old-fashioned, including Nam Bong-ki, a lazy, self-centered presidential guard, while her heart already belongs to Jang Joon-won, a doctor she once saved on a mountain near her home.
Eun-jae is a proud, stubborn 20-year-old who loves cooking, so she leaves high school early and runs off to a cooking school in Vicenza, Italy, along with a devoted friend. There she meets Han Yi-joon, heir to a family hotel and restaurant business, who has come to find the mother who left him as a child.
