Dine with Love (2022)

Great start that crashed and burned

I love both Gao HanYu and Jade Cheng. I love food flicks, and the focus on food as a heart-of-the-family was amazing; Recipes that could be repeated.

Episode one was everything I could have hoped for. ML notices all the social cues he should. FL is competent and capable at work, while also showing her care for work colleagues and awareness of work/life balance. ML promotes FL to director clearly through a show of her skill. We see ML as isolated and lonely, hiding his warmth and caring nature. The recipe was completely at-home repeatable. FL+ML have perfect chemistry. Second couple is a wonderful pair, and teases/supports main couple beautifully.

The next few episodes you have the usual tropes that come with lonely CEO who only has work to accompany him, and FL trying to balance it all. Some of the tropes are pleasantly flipped, like when the CEO is the one who trips and accidentally kisses the girl.

Somewhere around episode 8 I realized that I had been fast-forwarding through a lot of scenes. Repeatable recipes had vanished. Second couple stereotypical but supportive of first couple; waste of time to watch them. Third couple weirdly supporting each other's stalker behaviour; just irritating.

Main couple finally get together episode 9, at which point I realized that both ML's competence at work, and social awareness has been completely written out of the script. He does stupid stuff at the office that's completely out of character. But first dinner with mother-in-law he's completely out of it, for example literally grabbing soup-poured-for-mom and drinking it himself.

Why do script writers feel that they can have such completely implausible behaviour? I know the story is good when I want to yell at the characters. I know that the story is bad when I want to yell at the script writers.

I skipped ahead to the last episode, and watched as much of it as I could. The timing is seriously weird, both the relationship, and the show. In the relationship, they go from barely speaking to each other to marriage proposal ("I've changed") in only a few days time. In the drama, he proposes and The End.

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Watching for the Cooking Scenes, Dropping for the Main Lead

Not even making it to the last three episodes which everyone says are trash cause I for the life of me cannot understand the appeal of the male lead. He’s such a child, it’s unfathomable how he’s the romantic lead in ANY story. He was kinda fun to watch till episode 7 and now he’s spent two episodes jerking the female lead around for NO reason. I truly cannot stand any scene he’s been in the last two episodes and I’m so confused why the female lead would want to be with him any capacity.

Episode 7-9 are just him huffing around like a child, refusing to communicate, blackmailing her over and over again and being overly possessive over someone who is NOT his girlfriend or his employee. He only really seems interested in her when there’s another man around who also shows interest in her. It’s a pissing contest between two men and the female lead is just there waiting for one of them to choose her. In the earlier episodes, she had some backbone and would stand up for herself but that seemed to have dissolved into water sometime in episode 7 and now she's sitting on the sidelines waiting for the men to duke it out and decide whose going to win.

I forwarded to the part where they get together and I’ve never felt so justified in dropping a drama before. They get together because he literally forces her to kiss him in front of the SML and makes her choice for her. Then she quits her job at a company that respects her and aligns with her passion and goals to go back to his company and become his secretary?? If this is romance, sign up up for a lifetime of spinsterhood.

Pro: I genuinely enjoyed the first four to five episodes where she's teaching him to cook. The love of cooking and the art of food is some of the best parts of this show and the reason it got any points with me at all.

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Uninteresting and Cliche

So Firstly you got the typical cold, arrogant, bossy CEO and a warm and kind female lead who can cook well. And of course a cheating boyfriend and an ex girlfriend who come outta nowhere. Despite that, first few episodes were really nice, I realized there were more to the female lead than that like for instance she wasn't a door mat and is actually not dumb. And the male lead warmed up to her pretty fast, shocking I know. It was light hearted and fun, got me hooked. Romance develop then fall then back again.
After few episodes, things started getting messy and confusing, the female lead suddenly wanted to celebrate his birthday despite not knowing him well enough I guess she caught feelings, then he got mad at her because he hated his birthday, if that doesn't scream CLICHE, I don't know what will. The plot is all over the place. I liked it in the very first few episodes, it seem quite normal yet slowly developing. Then out of nowhere they became stuck and awkward. Add in an uncle and best friend, it became a chaotic mix , like they are being forced together when they actually needed time apart to think things through. An ex gf came in, and it became even more confusing like it didn't already have a confusing male lead. Not to mention the other director guy who likes her, his personality now is different from his aloof aura before and honestly I found his character to have more depth and found him interesting than the male lead for obvious reasons.
Sure, the male lead had a troublesome childhood, doesn't like birthdays, but the fl went on to celebrate his birthday even though they didn't properly know each other and it blew up in her face, typical cliché. There was a lot of things happening but at the same time none at all, it was weird and uninteresting. Still I pushed through, and they got together, then whole office knowing she is his gf, thinking she got her position because of that, blah blah, I stopped right there knowing very well it is not going to get much better.
Honestly, I liked the bestfriend and uncle duo much better, and even other leads too actually had that fire. Every character had that individuality at first, then it seem like it was managed in such a way that it fit the main leads interest and plot more, like they didn't have a life outside. Loved the moms tho.

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Family is Important

Dine is Love is not a drama where's man and woman fell in love, and then a third party came, and they reconciled. This is more than that.

Dine in Love tells about Yu Hao and Su Kelan, how both individual with two different goals, and two different paces of life, got together and decided to pass all the differences.

Although I didn't like Yu Hao's personality during several first episodes, I still watched the next episodes, just because how they presented the food beautifully. And in the end, I fell in love about how this story tells, about Su Kelan who loves her mother more than everything and Yu Hao who loves his carreer. I love how Su Kelan thought that family is everything, because once you lost them, you can't get them back. You can find a new job if you lost them, find a new car if you broke them. But if you lost your loved ones, you'll never had them back.

This story tells about how both of them renconciled their differences. About Yu Hao whom slowly repaired himself, gave Su Kelan what she wanted the most, not what he wanted the most.

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Amante e incuriosita dalla cucina asiatica come sono, ho trovato questo drama per la maggiore confortevole. Tutti i messaggi legati alla cucina, al cucinare e al mangiare insieme, il passare il tempo con le persone che amiamo senza dimenticarci di loro: questo mi è molto vicino ed è una cosa che condivido appieno. Poi i protagonisti funzionavano così bene insieme! Cioè, io ero perdutamente innamorata di questa opera che non riuscivo a smettere di vederla. La rovina si è presentata negli ultimi episodi: a parer mio la storia prende una storia "giustamente" drammatica ma ragazzi quanto è lenta! Inoltre le altre due coppie che a tratti oke, per la maggior non funzionavano davvero e non posso nascondere che qualcosa ho skippato. Poi l'introduzione di un terzo in famiglia poteva essere un buon spunto di nuova narrazione ma francamente se avessero scelto di comprare un comodino avrebbe avuto la stessa funzione: inutile, passato tutto in secondo piano.
Mi tocca ammettere che sarei in grado di rivederlo semplicemente per gustarmi quei primi 9/10 ep che mi hanno letteralmente rubato il cuore perchè sì che poi succede quel che succede ma FL e ML sono meravigliosi insieme.

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