The story of Béla Váraljai takes place just before the changes, in the late 1980s. How does a talented and unscrupulous restaurateur make a career in Hungary? How much work and energy does it take to achieve your goal? Béla Váraljai proves that it is possible, if you believe.

In the second half of the 1800s, the daughter of a Debrecen family marries a landowner, Kálmán Jablonczay. The couple move to the husband's castle. The marriage starts off happily but the new wife, Mária Rickl, soon finds herself at odds with the gentry lifestyle, her husband and her father-in-law...