Nina is a talented home cook and local food columnist living in a Rochester suburb in 1977. Trapped in a passionless marriage, she channels her energy into domestic order and elaborate meals like beef Wellington to express care. Beneath her composed exterior, she feels deeply dissatisfied with her conventional life and yearns for authenticity. Her repressed desires begin to surface after reading a provocative book and visiting an art museum, pushing her to seek an escape.

Clara is Nina and Sam's fiercely independent 17-year-old daughter. She shares her mother's culinary talents and uses cooking as a means to assert control over her environment. Confident and self-aware, Clara manages the typical complexities of adolescence while nurturing a hidden romantic interest in the boy across the street.

Finn is the 52-year-old president of his family's grocery store chain, Finnegan's Grocer. Following a near-fatal heart attack while shoveling snow, he develops an intense fear of wasting his life in an unfulfilling marriage. Charismatic and pragmatic, he becomes determined to build a new life driven by passion rather than duty.

Bridie is Nina and Sam's younger daughter. Characterized by deep empathy and sensitivity, she is acutely aware of the fragility of her parents' relationship. She lives with constant anxiety about her family dissolving and often acts as a peacemaker, deeply invested in maintaining harmony within her home.

Dune is Finn and Honey's teenage son, who has recently grown into a handsome young man. Kind but burdened by the expectations placed upon him as the heir to the family grocery business, he handles the typical pressures of high school while participating in the school musical and engaging in a secret romance.

Sam is a successful, intelligent marketing executive at Xerox in Rochester. Despite his professional achievements and respectable suburban life, he lives in quiet desperation. He meticulously maintains a conventional domestic facade to conceal a deeply held secret about his identity from his family and corporate colleagues.

Honey is Finn's wife, a devout Weight Watchers meeting leader obsessed with physical appearances and social conventions. Driven by unaddressed trauma from her youth, she maintains rigid control over her household and heavily scrutinizes her daughter's body image. She uses strict adherence to conservative rules as a shield against true intimacy.

Fern is Finn and Honey's adolescent daughter. Burdened by a severe stutter and her mother's constant criticism of her weight, she experiences intense insecurity. She frequently seeks unhealthy coping mechanisms, including illicit diet drops, to earn her mother's approval while silently observing the growing dysfunction in her neighborhood.

Bess is a recently divorced high school nurse living on Cambridge Road. Outspoken and thoroughly uninterested in maintaining conservative suburban pretenses, she actively challenges the complacency of her local women's group by pushing them to confront their unexamined desires.

Garret is a handsome young colleague of Sam's who works on the development side at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. He represents a freer, more authentic way of living that starkly contrasts with the rigid, corporate conformity of the Rochester executives.

Helen is an ambitious and capable manager who serves as Finn's second-in-command at his grocery chain. She handles corporate crises and the internal politics of the family business when Finn's attention is drawn elsewhere.

Dennis is Finn's uncle, a former executive at Finnegan's Grocer whom Finn previously forced into retirement. Resentful of his ousting, he looks for vulnerabilities in Finn's leadership to manipulate corporate optics and reassert his own authority over the family business.