In 1987, a 350-pound high school senior named Paul Bannister left New Jersey and traveled across the country eating competitively. He met and eventually married Carrie, his size and weight, and connected with Walter Carmichael, the wealthy owner of a national chain of steakhouses. It’s now thirty years later and Walter is recently deceased, leaving Paul as the sole heir of a billion-dollar empire. Not having the need to tamper with success, he’s continued the traditions set in place by his mentor, ruling the empire without question. In the highest of culinary circles, Paul Bannister is revered as a deity for his ability to accurately deconstruct and then recommend enhancements to the most complex appetizer, entrée, or dessert by smell and a single taste. However, with Walter’s passing, Carrie now feels that she can also sit at the CEO’s desk and begins to feed Paul new recipes, offering suggestions to change the corporate menu, and stepping into places where her husband refuses to relinquish command. Paul’s control over all the food in their lives soon leaves the confines of Carmichael’s Steakhouse. It appears for the first time as a heated skirmish between the two food aficionados in an Italian restaurant where he and Carrie are having dinner. The ensuing battle between husband and wife over ingredients brings a simmering undercurrent of hidden feelings, now released as so much greasy steam, to the surface. Along with eating, Paul’s need for extravagant toys becomes another wedge in their love; his new black Jaguar a hammer blow to their marriage. And then a long denied lesbian passion will finally split the log. Once the pieces have fallen, it then becomes easy for him to throw the affair in Carrie’s face in order to end all arguments even though she denies its existence. Despite an extended cross-country business trip together, where the conflicts seem to have reached a calm plateau, a series of tragic auto accidents sends Carrie home and in need of professional care. Sex, one of the main supports of their marriage ends, but it’s due to his physical health issues and not her mental turmoil. Their nine-year age difference, which was never a problem before, and his failed attempt at an extra-marital affair eventually lead to divorce and Carrie moving to Alaska to be with her lover. Paul’s interest in the business drowns; his desire for living is dampened. But there’s a glimmer of hope in the end when he makes plans to go north and find the woman he’s loved for thirty years, realizing that he needs an equal, both inside the kitchen and out.