Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Channel’s Hearts Around the Table series of films comes to an end, again with another nonsensical title, Kiki’s Fourth Ingredient (yeah, she’s an aspiring chef but it’s unclear what the ‘ingredient’ of the title refers to except to make it play into the whole food part of her story). And the question on everyone’s lips is — does it all pay off in the end?
Hearts Around the Table: Kiki’s Fourth Ingredient picks up at some point in time following Andrew’s (Steve Lund) proposal to Jenna (Ashley Newbrough) at the end of the third film. Now, Kiki has been asked to cater the wedding — even though she only has a food truck and her own appliances at home — and Kiki takes on all the responsibility … since she’s just a one-person operation. Things go wrong almost from the start as the oven at the facility goes kaput and the food supplier is out of salmon (girl, you can get great fresh salmon at Aldi or Lidl at a decent price), so she has to pivot but she can’t figure out what dish to prepare, and she has not even considered that by doing all the work herself means she’ll be busy making food while Jenna is getting married. Does she want to miss the big event?
Enter Clay Rutherford (Torrance Coombs), chef, restaurateur and Andrew’s best man, who knows a thing or two about the food business. When he and Kiki first meet, she has no idea who he is or why the fancy 7 Basil restaurant is delivering food to Angie’s house … until he reveals who he is and she gets all embarrassed about touting her pizza to him. As Clay learns more about Kiki’s plans to expand her food truck and the mission she has undertaken to make Jenna’s wedding dinner memorable (which would help show off her skills to the guests as well), he becomes concerned that she’s taking on way too much. He tries to open her eyes to how valuable a staff is, that one chef cannot do it all, he takes her to a fancy restaurant 20-course tasting menu event (where his chef friend there is just a tad condescending to Kiki and her ‘cute’ food truck business), and to a soup kitchen where he likes to volunteer once a week (keep in mind, she really should be preparing her menu since the wedding is just days away), encouraging her to create something magical for the wedding but not to deprive herself of the joy that comes with the day. She really starts to get it and comes up with a plan, even accepting Clay’s offer to use his sous chef, but the appearance of condescending Chef Crystal at the rehearsal dinner (and Clay’s demeanor making it seem like they are a thing), sends Kiki into a tailspin. Can she pull it all together and trust Clay before the big event?
Hallmark Channel
This movie, as it also deals with Jenna and Andrew’s wedding, has a major subplot that comes up when Angie presents Jenna with a box that came with her when she arrived as a foster. In it are a beautiful necklace and earrings … and a photo of Jenna’s parents, which Angie did not know was there. The image stirs up all kinds of emotions for Jenna, mainly one of anger, disappointment and sadness that her father never bothered to check up on her all these years later. Angie takes it upon herself to find out where Jenna’s father is, and when she does she shows up at his barn (?) and tells him about Jenna and that she is about to married. He refuses to accept the offer to come and talk to Jenna, saying she wouldn’t want to see him. She has no idea that he was unaware that she was put into foster care, and he didn’t know her mother had died. If he did, he would have taken her in. Angie leaves but hopes he will change his mind … and he does, popping in to the rehearsal dinner. It does not go well because Jenna feels betrayed by Angie and Andrew, who knew something was cooking with her father. But on her wedding day, Jenna has a change of heart and wants to talk to him minutes before she walks down the aisle, sending Angie frantically off to fetch him … if he’ll come back. But will knowing the truth give them a chance at a relationship, or will Jenna realize how completely different her life would have been if she hadn’t come into Angie’s home?
Hearts Around the Table: Kiki’s Fourth Ingredient actually has another subplot that involved Shari’s boyfriend Evan feeling like an outsider, but pretty much ignores Josh’s relationship with Ella, who only appears during the wedding (she’s not even at the rehearsal dinner), and Rory and Gina are also pretty non-existent (again, except for a close-up at the wedding). By this point there really were a lot of characters for writer Neale Kimmel to juggle, and while this is supposed to be Kiki’s story, Jenna’s storyline gets equal time. The end result, though, is satisfying with happy endings all around for everyone (as seen in a nice montage of moments from the previous films), so we can assume everyone lives Hallmark Happily Ever After. It will be interesting to see if we ever get to revisit the lives of these characters at some point down the road. Director Marco Deufemia does a nice job of juggling all of the subplots, never taking anything away from Kiki or Jenna. But poor Josh gets little love (and Shari is more there as support for Evan this time around). It all works, and while it is satisfying, it feels a little sad that we as an audience are not going to be hanging out with this family anymore for their Sunday dinners (Angie’s gonna need a bigger table).
Hallmark Channel
While all of the cast remains consistent with their performances from the previous film, it’s nice to finally see Kathryn Davis shine as Kiki. She makes Kiki a totally endearing character, and even though she can be a little stubborn and overly protective of her work, Davis still allows us to root for Kiki to make a statement with the food, to get her business off the ground, and to see that Clay is totally into her. For his part, Torrance Coombs makes Clay passionate about his profession, but not overly arrogant (the script leaves the arrogance up to Chef Crystal), a man who just loves to create recipes. He’s also very compassionate with Kiki, and Coombs makes us feel that he truly does have her best interest at heart, even if she can’t see it. Both Davis and Coombs work well together, and they really make us want to see where their story goes from here. Ashley Newbrough also gets to go through some emotions when it comes to her father showing up, and Rick Amsbury also brings some heart to the role of her father Theo.
This final chapter of the stories of Angie’s ‘hearts’ brings everything to a close, leaving us satisfied and happy, but also hoping there will be more stories to tell.
Hearts Around the Table: Kiki’s Fourth Ingredient has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is rated TV-G. The film is streaming on Hallmark+.
Preview – Hearts Around the Table: Kiki’s Fourth Ingredient
Hallmark Channel