Chase Guidry is a novelist who never got a break. Broke and miserable, he is forced to move in with his estranged sister and her quietly desperate fiancé. When Chase finally gets the chance to launch his career, it comes in an unlikely form, as a food critic. But his meteoric rise is stopped short when a freak accident leaves him without a sense of taste or smell. This setback proves no match for his power-obsessed agent who assembles a team of super "smellers' and tasters to help Chase fake his reviews. Chase soon becomes NYC's top food critic, unseating Bennett Brulee, the former king-of-the-hill. Riding his lie for as long as it will carry him, Chase is bound for an epic collapse.