scorecard47. Gabrielle Hamilton — American chef and author
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  5. 47. Gabrielle Hamilton — American chef and author

47. Gabrielle Hamilton — American chef and author

Four-time James Beard award winner Gabrielle Hamilton is chef and owner of wildly-successful 30-seat New York City bistro Prune alongside her wife, Ashley Merriman.

When she opened Prune in 1999, she had no formal culinary training, and no experience either as a restaurant chef or of running a business.

Somehow, it still worked — after winning the James Beard Best Chef in New York City award in 2011 and 2012, she took home Outstanding Chef by the foundation last year.

Hamilton is also a talented writer and is the author of memoir "Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef," which Anthony Bourdain once described Hamilton's book as "simply the best memoir by a chef. Ever."

Perhaps more interesting, though, are the five rules Hamilton and Merriman swear by at Prune — and how they think they relate to the outside world. "Be thorough and excellent in everything that you do," they say, "be smart and funny," "be disarmingly honest," "work without division of any kind," and have a belief in "servant leadership," or the idea that "to serve is to lead."

"I think there's not a single problem in the building or in the world that can't be fixed with these five instruments," Hamilton told Quartz.

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