A Hundred Banquets

A cast of everyday people + Hangzhou cuisine, an intangible cultural heritage + two female leads

Chen Anqiao is a self-taught genius, but because she’s a woman, she isn’t even allowed near the stove.

Qin Shiyi is a returning overseas professional who is dismissed as a pretty face the moment she arrives. The data, standards, and supply chain she brings are sneered at by the old masters, who say she doesn’t understand the “soul” of Chinese cooking.

When a shocking scandal erupts over a million-yuan wedding banquet served with cheap premade dishes, the two women are forced together. These two outsiders decide to turn the men’s kitchen upside down.

She’s pushed to the very bottom of the kitchen’s pecking order, but wins the support of a group of forgotten, eccentric old masters who stand by her.

She launches the citywide sensation known as the “Hundred Banquets,” transforming Hangzhou cuisine on the brink of extinction into an Eastern aesthetic feast that can be eaten, heard, and experienced immersively.

But success brings out the fangs of big capital. She’s pressured to force her out, and she discovers she has been dragged into the poisoning case from five years ago that destroyed her family’s business.

Should she stay true to herself, or build a glamorous business empire?

They choose a third path: wielding food as a blade and heritage as a shield, they rebuild their own rules amid the ruins of this world of fame and fortune.