Isabella (Penelope Cruz) is a popular chef in Bahia, Brazil, where she lives with her husband Toninho (Murilo Benicio). They run a restaurant that features her popular dishes spiced with chili peppers. Plagued since she was a child with motion sickness, Isabella has to compensate by always being the one in control. This means she must drive the car she's in, take the lead on the dance floor, and be on top when making love. Her machismo husband goes along for three years but succumbs to an evening of sex with a neighbor who lets him be on top. Isabella walks in on them, decides to leave him, and flees to San Francisco to stay with her friend Monica Jones (Harold Perrineau, Jr.), a transvestite.
While her husband curses the goddess of the sea for his plight, Isabella asks this mythological creature to take away all the love she still has for Toninho. The spell works. She gets a job teaching at a cooking school. Cliff (Mark Feuerstein), a TV producer, gets a whiff of her cooking, sees her beauty, and decides she's perfect to host a new show called "Passion Food Live!" Meanwhile, the beleaguered Toninho shows up in San Francisco desperate to win back her love.
Fina Torres directs this romantic comedy that bubbles and sizzles with its mixture of food, love, and Brazilian music. Spanish actress Penelope Cruz emanates just the right mixture of charm and effervescence as Isabella, who is a wizard in the kitchen and a seductress on the television screen. The zippy screenplay by Vera Blasi incorporates some of the same magical and mystical elements that made Like Water for Chocolate such a hit.