The Cooking Show

Mario is a retired teacher who has become a 'famous' chef on the food network (Mario’s Marvelous Meals) but his wife Betty can't stand his cooking or the other things he has started to do since retiring. Mario learns that his health is failing so takes Betty on a frantic journey to the home of fine food, France, where he secretly hopes to join with famous French chefs in their kitchens.

The couple start their trip with a visit to the oldest inn in France,- the one where Julia Child first experienced the joy of French cooking many years earlier. Mario ignites a confrontation, complaining about how his fish has been seasoned and ends up being tossed out on his ear, leaving the couple tired and hungry for the long drive to their hotel in Paris. Betty just wants to settle down for the night with room service but Mario has to leave for a pre-arranged liaison in the Latin Quarter with his sexy sous-chef, Jessica, who had blackmailed him into secretly bringing her along.

Mario returns to his hotel room in the early hours of the morning and wakes his sleeping and very unhappy spouse, whom he inflames even more with accusations that she was at fault for his philandering. Betty comforts him to sleep with a specially concocted hot chocolate and he goes down for a very long sleep. Betty leaves Mario’s body in Paris and flies back to Toronto to take up his show, which she renames Betty’s Bread Basket.
“Mario was a victim of his own cooking. You should be arresting Mr. Sifto Salt,” she tells the officer who calls her in for questioning. This delightfully funny one-act play ends with a high note as Betty is wheeled off and her own sexy sous-chef, Randy, is scrambling to figure what to do without his mentor.