When his boss, Dae Jung, goes missing in a ship accident, the company sends Woo Joo to Osaka to finish his business. On his last day in the city, Woo Joo chases someone looking exactly like Dae Jung to Taisho, an area in Osaka. He ends up losing him, but the sound of a guitar draws Woo Joo to a small bar, Pier 34. Its owner, Snow, somehow reminds him of Dae Jung, and listening to his music brings back memories. After passing out right there, Woo Joo ends up missing his flight back to Korea. He quits his job on a whim and soon meets Haruna, who is learning how to play the guitar from Snow. Woo Joo decides to stay at Pier 34 until he finds Dae Jung and so begins an unlikely vacation for him.
Emilia, a Filipino who arrived in Japan with aspirations of becoming a model, coincidentally encounters Matsuyama Mirai, an aspiring photographer. Their connection deepens as they find themselves drawn to each other. Mirai, intent on immortalising their moments together, diligently captures their essence through the lens of his camera. However, an unexpected parting disrupts the flow of their narrative. Subsequently, the saga of these two individuals unfolds beyond the shores of Japan, traversing the vast sea to the Philippines, where their story takes on new dimensions.
Mika goes all the way to Seoul to see her sweetheart Hyeong Jun who's been waiting for her. She suffers faints at the airport and she mistakes Kim Gyeon as Hyeong Jun due to trauma. Kim Gyeon also ends up falling in love with her, thus disrupting the balance between the three. Their memories start intertwining, but, before long, a tragedy occurs.
Aoi studies photography at a school in Tokyo. She undergoes a heart transplant operation and goes to the island of Okinawa to recover. Her uncle lives on the island. There, she holds a camera and walks along the island. Aoi hears the sound of a trumpet. She looks up and sees a young man playing the trumpet. His name is Ji Oh.
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.
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.
