Olga, Nicoletta's mother, abandoned her when she was a child and fled to Rome to remarry. She arrives to Rome 15 years later, as a young lady, with the purpose of wrecking her mother's life. She follows Olga to a restaurant named Casetta dell'Orso, but everything changes the moment Nicoletta walks through the door. It's a strange business staffed solely by senior males wearing spectacles, and she, like their customers, is powerless against their wise grins and loving voices. Nicoletta's intentions for vengeance begin to disappear before her eyes, and she is carried up in the wonderful romanticism of daily Italian life.