Two Rival Chefs, a Flour Slap, and a No.1 Rating on 1N2D

When two of Korea's most well-known chefs stepped onto the set of KBS 2TV's Two Days and One Night (1박2일), nobody was quite sure what to expect. What viewers got was something closer to a cooking comedy than a standard variety show segment — complete with an unrehearsed flour slap that left the entire cast momentarily speechless. The April 5 episode of Two Days and One Night Season 4, the second part of a cooking battle filmed in the coastal city of Mokpo, pulled a 5.9% national rating and hit a per-minute peak of 9.6%, finishing first in its time slot.

The two chefs at the center of it all — Jeong Ho-young and Sam Kim — are no strangers to competitive cooking on television. They first squared off on Netflix's Black and White Chef: Culinary Class Wars Season 2, a high-stakes competition series that spent months dominating Korean streaming charts. Their rematch on Two Days and One Night was a deliberately lighter affair, but it turned out to be no less entertaining.

A Rivalry Rebuilt Into a Friendship

Before the Mokpo cooking battle, Jeong Ho-young and Sam Kim were cordial professional acquaintances. After Black and White Chef, the dynamic shifted significantly. The two chefs have spoken about how the experience of competing together — and against each other — changed their relationship. They went from referring to each other formally as "셰프님" (Chef) to using the warmer, more personal term "형" (older brother), a shift in Korean speech register that signals a meaningful deepening of friendship.

That warmth was visible throughout the Two Days and One Night episode. When the flour slap incident happened — Jeong Ho-young suddenly striking Sam Kim with a handful of flour during a game sequence — it landed as absurd comedy precisely because the audience had watched two serious professionals spend months cooking with intense precision. Seeing Jeong Ho-young abandon that seriousness for a completely unpredictable, childlike prank made the moment genuinely funny rather than jarring.

The regular members of the cast shared the reaction. Dindin, one of the show's five current regular members, summed up the room: "The chefs' variety instincts are no joke." The rest of the cast — Kim Jong-min, Moon Se-yoon, Lee Joon, and Yoo Seon-ho — similarly found themselves caught between surprise and laughter.

The Battle: Sam Kim's Team Wins, 7 to 4

The structure of the Mokpo food battle divided both chefs into competing teams and asked them to cook using fresh seasonal ingredients from the region — a culinary and logistical challenge that plays differently outside of a professional kitchen. Jeong Ho-young captained a team of four including Dindin, Lee Joon, and Yoo Seon-ho. Sam Kim led the three-person group of Kim Jong-min and Moon Se-yoon.

Despite being outnumbered, Sam Kim's team prevailed, winning the tasting vote 7 to 4. The penalty for the losing side was characteristically Two Days and One Night in spirit: Jeong Ho-young's team was assigned to serve as chefs for a late-night meal, essentially continuing to cook after already losing a cooking competition.

Sam Kim, asked for his post-battle feedback to the opposing team, offered two pieces of advice with his characteristic directness: "Cook with a bit more effort, and please don't make everything so sweet." Jeong Ho-young, accepting the loss, responded: "It would be a lie to say it wasn't hard. But it was fun. We laughed the whole way through."

Who Are These Two Chefs?

For viewers less familiar with the Korean culinary scene, Jeong Ho-young and Sam Kim represent two distinct paths through the profession. Jeong Ho-young, born in 1976, specialized in Japanese cuisine and studied at the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Japan before returning to Seoul to build a restaurant group that now includes several locations under the Kaden brand umbrella. He is the kind of chef whose skill is most legible in the quiet precision of his technique.

Sam Kim (real name Kim Hee-tae), born in 1977, trained at the Le Cordon Bleu Hollywood campus, where he graduated at the top of his class. He later worked in several high-profile American restaurants before returning to Seoul, where he now operates Osteria Sam Kim in Hapjeong and Trattoria Sam Kim in Sinsa-dong, both Italian-leaning restaurants that draw consistently strong reviews. The American-trained background gives Sam Kim a cooking style that sits slightly outside the mainstream of Korean celebrity chef culture, which is part of what has made him such an interesting figure on competitive cooking television.

Ratings and What They Mean for the Show

The first part of the Mokpo battle, which aired March 29, drew 7.2% nationally and a per-minute peak of 10%. The second part on April 5 came in slightly lower at 5.9% but maintained the first-place position in its time slot. For a show that has been on the air in various seasons since 2007, maintaining consistent first-place finishes in a competitive Sunday lineup reflects both the durability of the format and the value of bringing in guests who can surprise an audience that has been watching for years.

Sam Kim, when asked by the cast whether he would return to the show in the future, gave an answer that was diplomatically noncommittal: "I'll really think about it," he said — the Korean entertainment equivalent of a very warm maybe. Whether that translates into another appearance remains to be seen, but the flour slap moment has already made it into the clips that fans compile to illustrate what Two Days and One Night does better than most variety shows: create genuinely unscripted moments that feel worth watching twice.

For the show itself, the cooking battle format has proven to be one of the more reliable ways to bring fresh energy into a format that viewers know extremely well. Bringing in guests who are genuinely skilled at something — and who have a real prior relationship with each other — gives the regular cast something to react to rather than drive, which often produces the show's funniest moments. The Jeong Ho-young and Sam Kim pairing worked because the two chefs had already established who they were to each other through Black and White Chef; Two Days and One Night simply gave them a different arena to continue that conversation, one flour slap at a time.