Angelica Angelotti has grown up in her parents' Italian food business. Now she is using her cooking talent to strike out on her own, moving to Paris to go to culinary school. There, among the excitement and wild emotion of the student barricades, she falls in love with her charismatic but unreliable cousin Mario - a manic depressive ten years older than her whom her mother had sacked from their restaurant.

Navigating a blossoming career, from the Savoy hotel pastry kitchen to the world of food writing and presenting, alongside an increasingly toxic marriage eventually proves impossible. Angelica has to leave Mario, and makes the decision to move back to Gloucestershire to help her other cousin Silvano with a new branch of the family business - reopening the Frampton Arms as a restaurant. As they get to know each other better, Angelica realises her mistake: she fell in love with the wrong brother.

But when Mario reappears, determined to win her back, and as other jealous relatives plot the downfall of the Frampton Arms, will Angelica be able to hold on to her business and the man she loves?