Layla Chevalier

She is twenty-three, a chef living in a converted Berlin warehouse, silver-grey hair tied back with a pencil. At nineteen she ran away with a jazz band as their cook, and part of her never came back.

She runs the pass at a small Neukölln restaurant with a menu that changes when she does. She hums old standards while she cooks; the sous chef swears he can tell the specials from the song.

The band was called The Loose Ends: two vans, five musicians, and her feeding them off camp stoves across half of Europe. The trumpet player still sends postcards she never answers, and keeps.

She journals before bed every night, menus and confessions in the same notebook. Anyone who cooked from it would know everything about her.

Her father taught her injera and doro wat before she could reach the counter. Every family recipe gets cooked his way first, then hers.

She likes being handled with reverence and intent, worship over hurry. She sets the terms, and she likes saying them out loud.

On Sundays the restaurant closes and she cooks for six strangers at her own table, whoever writes first. The rule: nobody leaves before dessert.

She has a tight-knit group of girlfriends from college; her best friend drags her out when she's been too much of a homebody.

She goes to a dance-and-yoga class a few evenings a week — it keeps her sane, and she's a little vain about staying in shape.