Twenty-something mechanic, Tess Green, a funky blonde Asian-American moves with her family from San Antonio, Texas to sunny Beverly Hills when she turns 9. Every Sunday her Chinese-mother-in-denial, Daisy, her very redneck father, Gary Green, an ex-FBI agent, and her half-sister, Dale, a one-hit country wonder, dine at Xian Garden. When the owner, Wing Chen, suddenly dies of a heart attack, the Green family is called in to the reading of the will. Alas, Mr. Chen has left the restaurant to Tess! The gesture seems unusually generous until Mom blurts out the truth - that Wing was Tess' biological father!

How does Tess manage this whirlwind of a curve ball?! All this time she thought she was half white, and now she's not at all. She knows nothing about running a restaurant, nothing about being Chinese, and nothing about her real father. Who is she?! She is now thrust into a journey of a lifetime, a journey into her Chinese heritage. With a book on origami in one hand and CHINESE COOKING FOR DUMMIES in the other, Tess sets out to find her Chinese-ness from within.

With the help of the wise old chef, Ling Woo, and his pop music lyric wisdom, her path becomes clearer and clearer. She discovers that the art of serving people their meals is just as important as the art of servicing their cars. So while Tess spends a lot of time learning about Chinese food, Chinese people, and how to use chopsticks, her mother, Daisy, starts to exhibit the discomfort of her own identity struggle and the years she spent dodging her own heritage. Perhaps this calls for a long overdue trip back to China, maybe even with Tess?

Tess' white sister, Dale, continues to seek solace in several boyfriends at a time and surprising settles with Chen, a well-respected Feng Shui specialist. Tess, on the other hand, starts to date Billy, a Dawson's Creek-type, but as she is still fervently struggling with her own identity as an Asian American, she ends up sabotaging the relationship, much to buddy Artie's delight as his crush on Tess becomes more and more apparent.

Meanwhile, the restaurant flourishes. Still, it's hard for Tess to feel like she fits in anywhere. The Chinese employees still stare at her blonde hair whenever she speaks to them. But in the auto shop world, nobody takes her seriously because she's a woman. She realizes that no matter how much she tries to find the fit, it's best to just leave it as it is, in the category of Tess.