If you turn the TV remote control here and there, you‘ll find an overflowing array of cooking programs.

The cooking program craze that swept through the broadcasting industry last year is hitting hard this year with an even more splendid lineup of cast members. With Netflix’s hit ‘Black and White Chef’ announcing that it will release Season 2 within the year, it seems that they are trying to preemptively secure the topic by broadcasting it in advance.

Edward Lee is leading the way. He is considered the biggest beneficiary of ‘Black and White Chef’, and will be leading the new tvN entertainment program ‘Edward Lee‘s Country Cook’ starting on the 14th.

‘Country Cook’ is a gourmet travelogue of Edward Lee and his three friends in search of their grandmother’s cooking.

They travel around the country tasting seasonal winter ingredients and reinterpreting the recipes of grandmothers in the countryside. It is also gathering attention because actors who have avoided variety shows, such as Byun Yo-han, Ko Ah-sung, and Cynthia, are all appearing, living up to Edward Lee‘s star power.

There is also someone who is drawing attention with star power that is no less than Edward Lee. Yutaka Matsushige, who has stimulated the salivary glands of viewers not only in Japan but also around the world for 12 years, goes in search of ‘Crazy Taste’ with Sung Si-kyung.

Netflix’s ‘Crazy Taste: Gourmet Friends‘ Restaurants’ (Crazy Taste), which will be released from the 27th, is a gourmet talk travel variety program where ‘mukbang masters’ representing Korea and Japan go on a trip.

The ‘Gourmet Competition’ between Sung Si-kyung, who made his mark as a ‘Mukbang YouTuber’, and Yutaka Matsushige, who showed off his fantastic mukbang in the popular Japanese drama ‘The Lonely Gourmet’, is worth watching.
‘Star Chef’ Choi Kang-rok will also be releasing Netflix’s ‘Subject Restaurant’, where they create one-of-a-kind subjective dishes without a set menu, together with entertainer Moon Sang-hoon, starting on the 22nd.

Ryu Soo-young, who even gave a lecture at Stanford University in the U.S. with ‘Cooking’, will also be releasing two cooking programs in the first half of the year.

First, the second season of ‘Jungle Rice’, which successfully opened up a world of gastronomy in an unknown jungle last year, will begin on the 27th. Ryu Soo-young will tell a food story with popular chefs who appeared on ‘Black and White Chef’, such as Choi Hyun-seok and Yoon Nam-no, set in Peru, the land of the Incas, and the emerald Caribbean Sea.

He will then present street food, a representative K-food, in Spain with Chef Fabri, Hwang Kwang-hee, and Jeon So-mi through JTBC‘Cooking Bicycle’, which is currently in preparation for airing in the first half of the year.


Reporter Lee Jeong-yeon annjoy@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.