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I continued to work crazy hours but earned less money and felt no joy in running the restaurant. After a year of this, I approached the brothers and asked them to buy me out—it just wasn’t working for me. Buying into that restaurant turned out to be a terrible decision.

After a legal battle, the brothers offered me Café Angelica in trade for my 25 percent share of Central Square Café. It seemed like a great opportunity. What I didn’t know was that in the year since I left Café Angelica to run Central Square Café, Café Angelica had taken a nosedive—and now it was mine, all mine. I had the seven-year note to prove it.

I could not afford to operate this restaurant on my own. Anna’s father, my future father-in-law, bought in as a partner. By this time, all thoughts I had had of going to law school in California were a faint memory. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I had found my calling. Not only did I want to be in the restaurant business, but also this was what I knew I was meant to do.

I proposed to Anna on the first night I took over Café Angelica. Anna did the books for the restaurant and was the hostess, and I was the manager. But still the restaurant was losing money.

I had a good chef, Cary, and I did every possible thing I could think of to get Café Angelica into the black. In the morning I’d go in and chop vegetables, then I’d change into a waiter’s uniform to work lunch. I did the same for dinner, and as before I was always first in and last out.

Five months into my ownership of Café Angelica, Cary told me that he was totally burned out and needed some time away. He gave me unlimited notice to find a new chef, but still I was overwhelmed with the added burden of having to replace him.

I hired a chef, Maureen, and she hired a sous-chef named John. Maureen fell while on the job and went on disability. John, however, turned out to be a talented young chef and he slid into her position seamlessly. Because of our financial situation, I couldn’t afford to get him a sous-chef, but John rose to the occasion. He became like family to me, and I embraced him with open arms and an open heart.

The restaurant became something of a functional three-ring circus. John worked six days. On those days, I was the manager, bartender, and waiter. On John’s day off, Anna was the manager and I became the chef, cooking the six pasta dishes I now knew how to make.

One day, I arrived at the restaurant and found the three cooks standing outside. No John. I started calling around and no one seemed to know where he was. This was so unlike him that I started to get frantic. Finally, one of the cooks pulled me aside and told me that he thought John had left for good. He had overheard John talking about opening his own restaurant. John never told me and never returned. We were down to the cooks and me.

It was a very dark time for me and, while I didn’t recognize it then, this disaster put me on the path to my destiny. I told Anna that I had had enough: I was never going to be at the mercy of a chef again—I was going to be the chef of my restaurant. Anna, of course, thought I had lost my mind. After all, what did I know about being a chef? But what had I known about being a waiter, manager, or owner—and I had done that. I told Anna that I would learn. She would run the front of the house and I would cook. We would do this thing together.

As the new chef of my restaurant, the first thing I did was go to the bookstore and stock up on cookbooks. I bought more than a dozen and studied them as if I were cramming for the exam of my life. It was then that I started to fall into my mother’s cooking—her food, her flavors. We were still an Italian restaurant, but I was learning, so essentially everything I cooked was an experiment.

My schedule continued to be chaotic, with me prepping and making fresh pasta before changing my clothes to wait tables for lunch and dinner. Anna continued to be hostess and bookkeeper and, on Friday and Saturday nights,