How a Korean Drama Awakened My Nigerian Appetite for Mindful, Adventurous Cuisine

I first met Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, on a humid Lagos evening. I was sitting under the yellow swing of my living-room lamp, the evening air heavy with the scent of jollof spices cooling on the stove, when Netflix suggested Bon Appétit, Your Majesty. I was curious: a show that promised romance, royalty, time travel, and food? It seemed indulgent in just the right way. I pressed play.

From the opening sequence, a modern French-cuisine competition won by Chef Yeon Ji-yeong, immediately followed by her being thrust back in time to the Joseon dynasty, something clicked. I recognised in her a tension familiar to many Nigerians: standing between two worlds. For her, the modern and the traditional. For me, the global and the local.

Yeon Ji-yeong doesn’t arrive in the past with anything, well, except for her bag and some ingredients. She also carries techniques, tastes, sensibilities, from fine French cuisine to modern kitchen tools, but in the Joseon court, she must adapt: preserve, translate, invent. The show makes much of ingredients, fresh herbs, seasonal produce, the fallibility of supply lines, and the precision demanded by royalty.