Man in the Kitchen

Lee Roo Ri, unemployed and stuck in a tense relationship with her strict father, Lee Shin Mo, leaves for Guam looking for a break from a household built around his control and her mother Hong Young Hye's quiet unhappiness. There she meets Jung Tae Yang, a free-spirited man living by his own rules who is carrying unresolved baggage from his past as the biological son of Kevin Miller.

The encounter becomes a turning point for Roo Ri, who returns home changed and eventually takes a job at a food company, bringing her back into regular contact with her family and, before long, with Tae Yang again. Her brother, Lee So Won, a doctor, works through his own on-again, off-again relationship with Ha Yeon Joo, a woman used to getting her way, adding another strand of romantic tension to the household.

As Roo Ri and Tae Yang's paths keep crossing, the family's old wounds start to surface and heal in turn: Shin Mo's hardened exterior gradually gives way to the care he has trouble showing, and Young Hye works to build an independent life outside the marriage that wore her down. The series follows both the Lee family's slow repair and Roo Ri and Tae Yang's relationship taking shape around it.