Bel Air, California, 2010: I was the perfect surgeon’s wife. You’d never suspect our daughter had died and grief had frozen the marriage – I was too busy raising our son and keeping a smile on my face. You’d never have known about my bout with cancer, or my confusing fight with agoraphobia. But 17 years in, something big snapped. Out of my mouth flew four forbidden words: I want a divorce.

Harlem, 2015: Yes, Harlem. Gritty, colorful, noisy. After the divorce, my first love (from when we were 25-years-old) found me on Facebook. His name is Raphael Sbarge, a working actor. We rekindle, move to New York, and nestle into his apartment in Hamilton Heights, Harlem, eager to start over.

I volunteer at the neighborhood garden (combating my fear of leaving the house). There, I meet Anney, a Black, gay, chef who was simply born cool. Opposites attract. Anney pulls me under her wing: Never trust the cops; Snitches get stitches; and most importantly… Wear only Nike’s. Pulling weeds and laughing hysterically about my nerdy Sketchers, just like that, we become friends.

Anney dreams of opening a hip café and asks me to be her partner. I boldly say yes, even though my nest egg is on the line. We find a crappy, filthy, 6,000-square-foot space and I sign a long lease for $10,300 a month. Yes, $10,300 a month, bold.

Fate takes a dark turn, twice: Raphael gets cast in a TV show that films in Canada and will be gone for a year.

Next, the gut punch: Thirty days before we are supposed to open, my friend and chef, Anney, disappears. Gone.

So there I am, with zero restaurant experience, facing bankruptcy if I fail - forced to button on Anney’s chef’s coat and open Hamilton’s Café – an enormous eatery in an urban badland with nothing to guide me but a couple of Anney’s recipes, memories of all those Bel Air dinners I threw, and my own wits. Can I do it? And at what cost?

I panic and hire a 24-year-old murderer straight out of Rikers, put a knife in his hand and teach him to chop chicken. I hire gang members, rappers, crack dealers, a dishwasher with HIV, a sexy Puerto Rican barista, and a hilarious bi-polar cook with a penchant for crystal meth. Dangerous as they are, this colorful, unreliable, and uniformly wild clan cheat, scheme, fight, tease and laugh until we cry serving over 400 meals a day. Along the way, of course, we become family. And that’s just the start…

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