Anna's head reels with plans to escape life behind the counter of the family chip shop on a run-down Nottingham council estate. Her mother Tina wants nothing but the best for Anna: a lavish wedding and a fully furnished four-bedroom house with a BMW in the driveway. She thinks that Anna should forget going to college, learn to cook and find herself a suitable husband. Mother and daughter are at loggerheads and neither will give way.

Her grandmother, Yiayia Annoulla, is Anna's ally, telling her stories about the family's turbulent past in Cyprus, the island home they were forced to abandon. Yiayia practises kitchen magic, predicts the future from coffee grains and fills the house with a mouth-watering array of Greek-Cypriot delicacies.

Anna longs for the freedom enjoyed by her brother Andy but spends time appeasing her parents, dodging insults from drunken customers or going on ill-fated forays with her petulant cousin -- the beautiful Athena. It is only when family fortunes begin to sour that Anna starts to take control of her own destiny...