33-year old Han Je In is a mystery novelist who is notorious for habitual false reporting to the police in town. Her only friend is police officer Rok Hwan, who has had a crush on her since childhood. One day, Je In hears a scream of help from an apartment upstairs and reports that a serial killer lives above her but no one believes her. Convinced that Jason, the handsome man living upstairs, is a serial killer, she asks Rok Hwan to help follow him around with her. But as she learns more about Jason in her pursuit to uncover the truth, she begins to fall for him. Seeing her in this state, Rok Hwan feels a tinge of jealousy.
Matsumura Ryouko is a popular novelist in her 50s who has just found out that she has Alzheimer’s disease. In order to gain some fulfilment in her life, she decides to be a guest lecturer at a university. Through one of her students, she meets a South Korean exchange student, So Chan Hae. As they become closer, they fall in love.
Left alone on a trip to Hong Kong, Tomoko, a sales woman from Japan finds herself the victim of a purse-snatching. The police arrest the man she points out, but it turns out to be the wrong person: a young Korean man named Ji Hoon. Despite his anger and humiliation, he takes her out to dinner since she has lost all her money, and in return, she agrees to model for his amateur film. What follows is a magical and romantic two days. Upon returning to their respective countries, Tomoko must return to her nine-to-five job and Ji Hoon must resume studying to join the family business rather than pursuing his dream of becoming a film director. But soon the two begin to email each other and rekindle their relationship despite the distance and obstacles between them. Marking the very first time in television history that a drama has been co-produced between Japan and South Korea, the story shows us that love has no borders.
Love comes in all flavors. Secret Ingredient is the story of a Korean man who gives up his entire luxurious life in Seoul in search of his childhood girlfriend, someone he’s never forgotten all these years, in the hopes that she would fall in love with him, not for who they were back then or who they are now, but for what they can aspire to be: happy, fulfilled and blissfully in love with one another.
