"Soul Kitchen" is Zinos Kazantsakis's humdrum restaurant in a working-class neighborhood of Hamburg. The food is mostly frozen, unceremoniously zapped in the microwave, or thrown into a vat of bubbling grease. He loves his restaurant and his girlfriend Nadine, even after she leaves him for an assignment in China. Wanting to liven up the restaurant, Zinos hires an out-of-work three-star chef, lets his ex-con brother Ilias spin records, and seeks out new clientele. Soon Soul Kitchen is reborn as Hamburg's newest hot spot. On a whim, Zinos flies to China to rekindle his relationship with Nadine leaving his brother in charge. There is also a slipped disc, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking waitress, a scheming real-estate developer, a Turkish "physio-healer," and a high stakes poker game in the mix. But the film is not about food or love; it's about family, life and human relationships, with a lingering nostalgia for a time when eating out implied getting dead drunk, stuffing one's face with cholesterol and kissing across the table.