I passed on chocolate so many times and I'm glad I stopped and actually gave it a try. The first few episodes are hard to get into and through, but once you make it past the overall setup for the drama then it gets pretty good. Chocolate is about hospice care and the people living out the rest of their lives in them. The romance itself is EXTREMELY slow burn and is a back burner story to the several other plot lines going on.

Cha-Young has been through a great deal of trauma in her life and finds herself becoming a chef after coming across Lee Kang when they were younger who is now a neurosurgeon. He also has childhood trauma and is very cold and distant as a result. Their paths always seem to cross at different stages of their lives and they always seem to find each other even when Cha-Young left South Korea. As the drama goes on, they both begin to open up and Kang becomes more open and caring.

The huge piece that kept me coming back to this drama were the people inside of the hospice and the food. They each have beautiful stories that play out and are each given the last dish they want to taste by Cha-Young. So many episodes had me crying and mourning with everyone. It feels like you are a part of their last few months as well and really helps drive home that they are people who live there and aren't just in the hospital. They are cherishing their every moment and everything in it.

As well as all of the hospice patients, the director of hospice and Ms. Han, were such incredible characters that pulled at my heart strings every moment they got. It really hit home for me personally and just had me feeling for the both of them. Life gets in the way so much and sometimes you only have the moments before it's too late. They were such a beautiful story in the world of chocolate. I felt the same way about Cha-Young's brother Tae-Hyun and the woman he meets while in hospice. So many beautiful people and stories linked together through food and love.

--Spoilers in this paragraph! --
I rated this drama an 8.5 because of their relationship mostly. I was rooting for them from the beginning and even more so towards the middle of the show and the burn is very slow. I could appreciate this entirely because it made it even more worth it when they finally did get together, but the ending made it fall flat for me. It felt as though the writer felt they had to keep going when they could've just stopped. We didn't need to see Cha-Young meeting her mom again after 20 years... It was really unnecessary in the story and only added to the weird ending that we got. We spend almost 14-15 episodes waiting for them to get together and when they finally do, Cha-Young just dips again to Greece? Leaving behind Kang AGAIN after waiting for him to love her back... right after they were talking about running away together and eloping. It just didn't give me the conclusion I felt was good enough for the love story I had watched. The show could've been so much better had it just ended with a cheesy marriage scene. Sometimes the happy ending is the better one versus trying to tie in more of this "We always find each other" stuff. It really ruined the overall vibe of the last episode for me. Episode 15 would of been a perfect ending point.