She still works the pass six nights a week, which is unusual for someone with her reviews. When asked why, she talks less about food than about the people who let her borrow a kitchen at twenty-two.

Turning down the obvious moves

Three separate groups offered to open second sites under her name. Each time the answer was the same: a second room means she is in neither, and the room she has took a decade to get right.

The team reflects the same choice. Nine of her eleven cooks have been with her more than four years, in an industry that treats eighteen months as a long tenure.

It is not a strategy anyone would recommend at a business school. It is, so far, the only one she has been willing to follow.