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Pasta (2010)
Pasta
파스타
(Jan – Mar 2010)
who’s in it
Gong HyoJin (Guns & Talk - film)
Lee SunGyun (Coffee Prince, Triple)
Lee HaNee/Lee Honey as (Partner)
Alex (Clazziquai – singer)
Kim TaeHo (Hometown Legends)
No MinWoo
Hyun Woo (Dream)
what’s it about
La Sfera, il ristorante italiano, has lost its way under the disorganized leadership of an imported Italian chef, so they give the boot to the ruddy-cheeked foreigner (thankfully sparing us from any more of his bad acting) and replace him with the next best thing, a Korean chef that has been formally trained in Italy—a finicky purist when it comes to Italian cuisine. Cue Lee SunGyun, who is witty and charming—when out of the kitchen. In it, he’s a raging tyrant. Gong HyoJin plays the diligent and well-liked aspiring chef in that kitchen. She’s just been promoted to pasta assistant after quietly suffering in the role of the maknae kitchen assistant for three long years. When this new chef comes barging in with his Italian creds and disrupts her quaint and comfortable universe, she’s both challenged and frightened (and fired).
This universe also includes handsome Alex, who plays a genial and cucumber-cool businessman who enjoys eating at La Sfera, and especially enjoys baiting Gong HyoJin, and by baiting, of course, I mean quasi-flirting, even if she’s clueless to it.
Last, we have Honey Lee who plays best friend to Alex and a celebrity chef (think Barefoot Contessa meets Rachel Ray) who isn’t fulfilled in her life or career despite her successes…it’s the absence of the right man that’s bringing her down. She’s still desperately in love with our leading man Lee SunGyun, despite their nasty breakup during their formative culinary training years in Italy…the bad news for her? Well, it seems neither of these two equally desirable men are interested her pasta anymore.
commitment
20 episodes
network
MBC
wildcard factor
It’s a dueling war of wickedly handsome men—of the mature variety, not the just-out-of-puberty type. Now, there is nothing wrong with young and sweet dessert wines, but certainly never underestimate the value of a nicely aged one either. These two opposites strutted their stuff to convince you they were the real deal and the one to make a pasta assistant (and you) swoon into a plate.
On the one delicious hand, you had the dashing Prince Charming played by Alex (wonderfully, by the way), guaranteed to make any girl giggle in delight with one of his ‘I have a secret and I’m not telling you’ grins. On the other equivalently tasty hand, you had the gruff but charismatic Beast, minus all the fur, hair, and fang. Well, maybe a little fang, he did have a bit of a bite, this one. The Beast…er, the head chef, played by Lee SunGyun, technically got more screen time than Alex but both men sparkled like new stainless steel appliances in their assigned roles and it was a tough decision as to who came off more palatable, if I may employ a foodie descriptive. The easy answer would be Alex with his puppy dog smiles and all around twinkling demeanor, but the more complex appeal was definitely played by Lee SunGyun. Truthfully, I’d never cared for him or his character in Coffee Prince, but here, he was pretty darn sexy. Maybe jerks are just sexier in general? In a tv show context, of course. It gives them more room to grow. By the end, I didn’t even care how the whole thing ended as long as both Alex and Chef Lee SunGyun were happy.
first impressions
The poster is a good representation of the drama: simple, classy and clearly visible. Clearly visible, you ask? What does that even mean? Well, it’s very bright and up front about who the characters were, in terms of personality, and what kind of development was needed for each of them. The obvious comparisons can be made to Beethoven Virus (nasty genius coming in to shake things up, firing and hiring, firing and hiring) and The Grand Chef (preparation of haute cuisine, although Italian not French, nor upgraded Korean like in Grand), but after a couple of episodes it became very clear that Pasta was nothing like either of the shows I’ve just mentioned despite the passing similarities. It actually reminded me a lot of another show, but more on that later. Pasta wanted to stay a romantic comedy until the very end and it succeeds in staying relatively angst-free and light-hearted without much of a plot, but as a mollifying incentive for those bothered by the zipless storyline, Pasta provided instead some very well-developed and intriguing characters.
After the initial episodes, I couldn’t decide if Lee SunGyun was charming or too slick and scathing for my liking. He definitely sided heavily toward the arsehole scale at first, especially his distaste for women in the kitchen. On the other hand, it was more than obvious something else going on here than a mere sexist desire to keep women in their place, which ironically, in this case was out of the kitchen. This man had been burned and not just by olive oil.
I will also note, Lee SunGyun and Gong HyoJin had one of the cutest first encounters I’d ever seen in a drama. One metaphor down, a million to go!
From the very start, you’d be hard pressed to find anything specifically wrong with this show, although you may be tempted to interpret your lack of excited hysteria for this drama as boredom which may lead to some quick channel switching (you know, the kind of hysteria you may feel for, say, a show like You’re Beautiful). For me, I encouraged myself to focus on the appealing characters—Gong HyoJin’s quiet determination, Lee SunGyun’s witty but explosive menace interjected with his characteristic crooked smile, Alex’s silky smoothness (man oh man was this guy dreamy in this role), Honey Lee’s courage in trying to undo a past mistake and win her man’s love back, and of course, the fun and frivolous staff that worked at La Sfera. This show really hooked me at around episode 3 and I couldn’t wait to enjoy all the people in it and see what happened when they started opening up and enjoying one another!
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