Episode 2 was very interesting and had some exciting action. The main action in this episode was La Mure catering for a VIP couple who had come to celebrate their 30th anniversary. The task the VIPs presented to La Mure had Wei Fen Qing challenge Huo Ting En’s expertise and experience. Who’s got the cooking right? Is it Huo Ting En who’s right or Wei Fen Qing? This was what made things exciting in this episode.
We got to see Huo Ting En out of the restaurant kitchen and into a corporate office briefly. He went to his General Manager office of Yanis Chain Restaurant. (We’re assuming it’s the corporate group that owns La Mure along with many other restaurants judging by the name of the company.) We were introduced to his female secretary—Helen, she was. Then we were out of there. We like seeing Huo Ting En in his General Manager’s office (reminds us of Wu Kang Ren’s Princess’ Stand In character, Ouyang Tai! Love!!), but we don’t think we’ll be seeing Huo Ting En much in this setting when he seems to hate it so much. He didn’t want to go into his office when Peng Xiao Bin said he must and he complained as he stamped the documents on his desk without one look at them. Maybe this scene was just there to introduce Huo Tian Zhi.
Huo Tian Zhi (Nylon Chen) is Huo Ting En’s younger brother and the deputy general manager of Yanis Chain Restaurant (it’s called Yanis Chain Restaurant, right? Or maybe it’s just Yanis Restaurant). Not sure what part Huo Tian Zhi plays in the series. We only know he will be handling the business side of things whilst Huo Ting En takes care of the chef-y things at La Mure.
We’re finding Peng Xiao Bin a really fun character who’s really entertaining to watch. He’s the guy who’s around Huo Ting En being a good sidekick, but not always an effective assistant. He’s coming across as something like that. He’s the light relief character who makes funny remarks and does some funny actions that bring in humour into episodes. The actor behind this character—Liu Shu Hong—we’ve come across him in the 2015 Taiwanese drama, Love or Spend. In that drama, Liu Shu Hong played an assistant to the female lead character and liked the female lead character. He was more serious in that role. This character of his is definitely more comedic. We like this latest character of his. He works well alongside Wu Kang Ren’s Huo Ting En. We know there will be good banter going on whenever Peng Xiao Bin is with Huo Ting En.
There were a couple sweet scenes where Huo Ting En was showing some affectionate action towards Wei Fen Qing in this episode. One was at the hospital and of course the end scene! Though it’s clear that Huo Ting En’s actions are all because Wei Fen Qing reminds him of his little sister that he loved so much but lost, it’s helping to progress them to become closer. That last scene though, we’re guessing it might snap Wei Fen Qing out of her fear and possibly push him away. We’ll see in the next episode if this is what happens!
Episode 2 Recap
There’s no response from Wei Fen Qing when Huo Ting En calls her name over the phone. Huo Ting En isn’t too urgent to answer the call for help until a photo frame of him and Ting Li displayed in the room catches his attention. It reminds Huo Ting En of a call he received from Ting Li. That call had Huo Ting En hearing Ting Li crying, but not saying what was wrong. The next scene we see is Huo Ting En entering Ting Li’s hospital room where she lay on the hospital bed. We aren’t told how Ting Li ended up like this, but we see her look and smile at Huo Ting En one last time.
Huo Ting En’s memory of his last time seeing Ting Li alive (we think this was what the scene indicated) is what gets Huo Ting En to immediately leap into answering Wei Fen Qing’s distressed call. He looks for the contract Wei Fen Qing wrote yesterday evening to find the address of her place. He’s then in his car looking for the place. However, he finds it hard to find the location. He goes on foot to find the address. When Huo Ting En finds the building, he has trouble finding the floor number and getting in. In his urgency, he attempts to climb over the wall barrier to get in and search for Wei Fen Qing. A resident fortunately exits the building at this time and provides Huo Ting En entrance and information of Wei Fen Qing’s apartment being the rooftop one.
Huo Ting En doesn’t find Wei Fen Qing in a distressed situation. He ends up creating one, though. When he reaches the rooftop apartment and out to the balcony area, he surprises Wei Fen Qing (who seemingly was hanging out the bedsheets). The surprise has her stumbling backwards and needing rescuing from going over the edge of the balcony. Both go overboard. Fortunately, a truck with cardboard boxes and woven bags of items break their fall. Wei Fen Qing is fine. Huo Ting En, though, he sustained injury to the wrist. Huo Ting En had spun Wei Feng Qing whilst they fell in order to take most of the impact. Huo Ting En is given a ride to the hospital from Wei Fen Qing on her motorcycle. This had been a frightening ride there for Huo Ting En.
After a visit to the hospital, a brief five-minute stop at the corporate office, Yanis Chain Restaurant, and a visit to an eatery Ting Li wanted to eat at when Huo Ting En and Ting Li were younger, it’s to La Mure to induct Wei Feng Qing into his staff as an apprentice. When Wei Fen Qing hears Huo Ting En direct his staff, Brian (Lin Jun Yong), to train her, she’s not happy. Wei Fen Qing asks Huo Ting En why he’s not teaching her like he said he would. He will. There are seven days and she will be able to make his dish if she has the skills.
Wei Fen Qing is still unhappy with Huo Ting En’s answer. Her dissatisfaction gets interrupted by a group of people—a special assistant and bodyguards to a VIP couple that have booked in to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in the evening. They’ve come to check that everything is in order and to ask if they’re prepared to produce the menu of dishes they ate on their wedding day, including a homemade dish the head chef made on that day.
Huo Ting En isn’t aware of such a request. A menu is something La Mure doesn’t do. The dishes La Mure offers each day are determined by the ingredients the restaurant has on the day. He asks who had agreed to it.
It was Huo Tian Zhi who had agreed to such a request. He comes in telling Huo Ting En he’d forgotten to have this information passed on to him when he had asked Yu Qing (someone Huo Tian Zhi seems to be in a relationship with) to handle the booking. Huo Ting En is fine to accept the request after Huo Tian Zhi explained to him it was he who had given the go ahead.
There seems to be no problems with the menu requested by the VIPs except for the homemade dish the head chef made on that day. They struggle to begin planning for this dish they requested when no description of this dish was provided. They cannot ask the VIPs what that homemade dish was because this shows a lack of preparation from a chef.
Meng Ru Xi comes to the rescue. A person who had interviewed the VIP, she reveals that the homemade dish the head chef of their wedding made was Laksa—Curry Laksa. It was one made by the chef of a restaurant that mainly catered for weddings. The restaurant was called, Wu’s Restaurant. She also explains that the couple had felt they failed to find the Curry Laksa with that same taste they tasted at their wedding because the chef of Wu’s Restaurant had catered to their dietary requirements. One example was the chef having changed the shrimp ingredient to a type of meat to cater to the VIP’s allergy to shrimp.
With this information from Meng Ru Xi—information that Huo Ting En is extremely grateful for and agreed to treat Meng Ru Xi to a meal—Huo Ting En asks his staff to find out who the head chef was on that day.
Wei Fen Qing is already on it. Surprising Huo Ting En and Peng Xiao Bin, they hear Wei Fen Qing on the phone asking if her father was the chef of Wu’s Restaurant.
Wei Fen Qing is told her father was. Huo Ting En go with Wei Fen Qing to Wei Fen Qing’s home to obtain the recipes. They then head out to open space by the riverside. Huo Ting En ponders about how best to create dishes that will commemorate the VIPs’ 30th anniversary. He doesn’t believe recreating the dishes is the way to go. He decides that adding his own creativity to the dishes is the way to go.
The VIPs are impressed by Huo Ting En’s creative versions of the dishes they had at their wedding. As the VIPs enjoy the dishes, the Curry Laksa dish is being made.
“Memory is also a type of taste,” Wei Fen Qing had thought earlier when she was reading the notebook she had with her. Remembering how her father prepared the laksa curry and feeling that the meat that is to be put into the Laksa dish should be prepared in the way her father had, she challenges Huo Ting En on the technique of making the meat. Huo Ting En sees her as someone not skilled enough to tell him how to prepare the meat, but with Wei Fen Qing adamant on her method of preparing the meat being the better way, Huo Ting En gives her a chance. He gets her to show it to him.
Wei Fen Qing uses a cheaper cut of meat that she had asked Ah Wei to deliver to her along with the other ingredients she needed. We’re shown a flashback of Wei Fen Qing’s father marinating the meat with scallion, ginger, pineapple and five-spice powder. A heavy object is then placed on top.
“Mr. Tang, Mrs. Tang: the following dish is the homemade dish that the chef had served after dessert. Please have a taste,” Huo Ting En says to the VIPs when he brings the curry laksa to their table. The reaction is exclamation and praise. It is that taste they experienced 30 years ago.
When the VIPs tasted the dish, Wei Fen Qing was asked to witness the reaction. She thinks it’s a reaction to the one she made and is ecstatic and proud of herself. However, she finds out that it wasn’t her cooking that the VIPs had enjoyed thoroughly. It was Huo Ting En’s. After the end of service, Huo Ting En asks Wei Fen Qing to try a bowl of the curry laksa that was served to the VIPs. Her reaction is less than impressed. It’s bland. Huo Ting En begins to explain that though she did well this evening and agreed with her when she felt memory is a type of taste as taste brings up past memories, she didn’t take into account of how people’s taste evolves and changes over time. What people found tasty thirty years ago may differ from what they find tasty now. It was demonstrated today with the VIPs praising his ‘bland’ version of that homemade dish her father made thirty years ago. Huo Ting En explains that the Tangs would have found her father’s curry laksa from thirty years ago too salty and too spicy now because they’ve since adapted to eating dishes that are low in fat and salt due to both of them having high blood pressure. Wei Fen Qing’s lesson for today, then, is to not look for a taste of the past. She must cook according to people’s tastes.
Huo Ting En wraps up the conversation with recognising the day having been a very important day for Wei Fen Qing. He asks if it’s because she wanted to reproduce her father’s dish. It is part of the reason. The other is to uphold La Mure’s reputation. Huo Ting En asks one more question that takes the conversation in a direction Huo Ting En finds uncomfortable continuing. Huo Ting En asks Wei Fen Qing why she must work in the night market—whether it was because of that guy (Ah Wei) who he feels is her boyfriend. It’s foolish if it is, he says. It’s foolish to give up her dreams to work in the night markets for him. He adds that selling ordinary curry in the night market won’t earn a reputation.
Huo Ting En’s poor regard for the night markets offends Wei Fen Qing. She sternly tells him not to look down on them. The stern tone seem to bring Huo Ting En to realise that the person standing in front of him is Wei Fen Qing and not a family member who he can tell what’s good for them. He takes his words back, asking Wei Feng Qing to disregard the latter part of their conversation. He orders Wei Fen Qing to head back into the kitchen to practice until he allows her to go home, leaving Wei Fen Qing unsatisfied with him abruptly ending the conversation and not explaining the meaning behind what he said.
The episode closes with Huo Ting En back at La Mure’s kitchen after a meal with Meng Ru Xi at her apartment. He finds Wei Fen Qing at the kitchen bench practicising her knife skills as she imitates his critique of her knife skills being not up to standard. She switches to saying Huo Ting En’s face as not being up to standard. Huo Ting En disappears for a moment. The kitchen lights turn off. Wei Fen Qing turns scared, stops cutting, lowers herself to the floor and crawls away from the kitchen bench. Huo Ting En returns. He expectantly looks for her down in the area below the kitchen bench. His expression is concern when he doesn’t find her there.
Wei Fen Qing has gone out to the dining area and she’s hugging her knees, shaking. Huo Ting En finds her there. When he taps Wei Fen Qing on the shoulder and calls her name, Wei Fen Qing immediately grabs hold of Huo Ting En’s hand and asks him to not leave her. She switches to holding onto his leg. Huo Ting En’s words and actions softens more. He takes hold of her hand around his leg and gently reassures her. “Don’t be afraid. It’s me,” he tells her. He tells her not to be afraid once more before he slowly bends down and envelops her.
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