That year, when I was 18 years old, I declared my goal to open a restaurant after college. But my parents thought that I would have more financial security and an easier career if I became a doctor or an engineer. As a compromise, I entered the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia to study economics and business. Because Penn was only an hour and a half away, I would rush home on the weekends to visit my friends at what we called the Fromage. But eventually I realized that I didn’t have to go home to be in a restaurant. I got a job at the Conversation Cafe, a dingy basement cafe in Houston Hall. Business was slow, and when the owner asked if I had any ideas, I suggested serving desserts in addition to pastries. The next thing I knew, I was making them in my dorm room in a toaster oven.

Yet even my efforts could not save the cafe from closing. Next I found a job as a server at the only French restaurant near campus, La Terrasse. Immediately life seemed exciting again. La Terrasse served simple, traditional French cuisine with an Asian twist. That summer, I stayed in Philadelphia instead of going home. In less than a year, I had formed new restaurant friends (many of whom are still my closest friends) and met many customers, some of whom now come to Fork.

In my junior year, one of my classes required students to form teams to come up with plans for a new business. A bartender at La Terrasse named Wain Ballard [W’86] and I put together a business plan for the Harmony Cafe. Interestingly enough, the proposed cafe was located in Old City at the corner of Third and Arch streets, a block away from Fork.

Although I learned a lot through this effort, the project gave me a glimpse of a harsh reality: my dreams needed capital to fuel them. Without any angel investors or my own money, I had to put my ambitions on hold and settle for looking for a “real” job after graduation.

Over the next five years, I held various jobs in advertising and fundraising, but I couldn’t stay at any one for more than a year. However excited I was at the beginning of each job, I quickly became bored. At least I was narrowing down my options! Finally I decided to return to school to try once again to figure out “what to do with my life.” Two years later, I graduated with an MBA in health care administration from Wharton and began my job search again.

At that point, I had lived in Philadelphia for almost 10 years, and the city had already begun to change for the better. It was even selected as one of the best U.S. cities in which to live. I had formed even more friendships by then and really didn’t see how any out-of-town job could entice me to give that up. Also I was learning a lot about planning and developing a business at my new job at a health care consulting firm. Yet even after I became an independent consultant, I continued to dream about opening a restaurant. I craved the creativity that had been missing in all of my other jobs. I loved food, entertaining and serving people, and I devoured any books or magazines I came across that were related to restaurants, food reviews, or cooking.

I still remember the moment when I decided to try to make my dream a reality. I was 31. While sitting in a bookstore, I picked up a copy of Food & Wine and realized that almost every featured restaurateur was between the ages of 25 and 45. If they could do it, why couldn’t I?

NEXT: Interview with Ellen Yin

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From “Introduction: In Search of American Cuisine” as it appears in Forklore: Recipes and Tales From an American Bistro by Ellen Yin W’87 WG’93. Copyright ©2007 by Ellen Yin. Used by permission of Temple University Press.