Entertaining, but don't watch on an empty stomach.
Overall, this was a fun and entertaining drama. It has a lot of different elements that made it enjoyable, from the main romance and light comedy to serious political drama and martial arts combat and of course, lots of food! And for the most part that crazy mix makes perfect sense. Most of the characters are interesting and show real growth in ways that keep you engaged. The plot has a very good core premise with some nice creative twists that keep things from being obvious. They also do a good job of avoiding some of the more annoying plot tropes common in so many romance dramas. The plot does drag down a bit in the low-to-mid 20s episodes as they fill time with some side plots. And some goofy character behavior that worked early on did become tiring around that point. But the plot recovered very well over the last half-dozen episodes and finished strong.The actors are all very well cast and really deliver well on their roles. Both leads are excellent and have great chemistry. The production values - costumes, sets, special effects, camera-work, etc, are all top quality with only minor, irrelevant glitches here and there.
Caution: Do not watch while hungry unless you have food to eat.
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Flawed but enjoyable and worth watching.
Not going to be remembered as one of the classics, but still this was an overall an enjoyable series to watch. You do need to tough it out to get past some silliness in the first half-dozen episodes. But then it gets pretty good from there.First the negatives: The plot bogs down here or there - especially early in the series - with some outright silliness that is grit-your-teeth cringy. Especially the FL's behavior in the first few episodes. She's a mid-20s mature woman who acts like a silly teenager. And the ML's character is very flat and stereotypical almost throughout the whole series.
But overall the positives outweighed these negatives for me. The overall plot is good with some will paced 'reveals' of important backstory elements as you go. The series has a good pacing of action scenes without focusing too much on that and the choreography for the fights is pretty good. The scenery and cinematography are very good. Lots of great visual candy in this series with some nice sets. And while the FL's character is annoying early on, she shows a lot of growth throughout and ultimately, imho, it is her character that carries the series over the last half as she almost single-handedly has to generate all the chemistry between her and the ML, whose character is simply written to be too flat and mysterious to the point of being barely interesting. You care about their relationship, but primarily because of the FL and actor Xuan Lu's ability to share herself with the audience. I don't blame Gao Wei Guang - he's a very good actor and I think he does the best he can with the material. It's just the way his character is written is fairly stereotypical and limited.
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