Q&A

A Day in the Life of the Busiest Woman in Philly’s Food Industry

If you were to peek at Ellen Yin’s calendar, it might give you a headache. The High Street Hospitality Group founder’s schedule is packed with meetings, business dinners, and networking events that often extend late into the evening. The James Beard Award-winning restaurateur oversees a number of Philadelphia’s top culinary establishments including Fork, the Michelin-recommended High Street, a.kitchen+bar (plus, a second location in Washington, D.C.), and the new Bread Room, which opened in October. And when she’s not running between those establishments, she’s helping other women in the city’s hospitality industry find success through her work as a co-chair of the Sisterly Love Collective.

Curious to know how one of Philly’s busiest women in the restaurant business gets things done, I asked her to walk me through a day in her life. Spoiler: It involves a lot of bread.

6:30 a.m.: Yin’s morning usually begins somewhere between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. As a caregiver for her mother, who had a stroke 15 years ago, she helps her mom get ready for the day. First, she’ll make breakfast and they’ll eat together. Some days, it’s an omelet, a hard-boiled egg, or oatmeal; today, it’s congee. Yin makes the dish with dried scallops, egg, scallion, sesame oil, and whatever’s left over to “make it interesting,” she says, adding that often she’ll throw in poached fish, tofu, or pork floss. “My mother’s from Shanghai, so a lot of our cooking traditions come from her background, and she was an amazing cook,” Yin says. “She trained my brother how to cook everything and me, nothing,” she adds with a laugh.

9:45 a.m.: It’s time to get to work. Yin’s first stop is to either High Street or the Bread Room — both are in the Franklin Building which serves as High Street Hospitality Group’s new headquarters — where she settles in with a latte.

While the structure of each day depends on whatever meetings Yin has scheduled, she’ll often stop into a couple of her restaurants to touch base with the staff. It’s important to Yin to personally connect with the team. “I want to walk through the restaurant and wish everyone a good morning or good afternoon,” she says, making sure to ask about their weekends, or how they’re feeling about work. She regrets that today, she didn’t get time to visit the Bread Room and chat with the team about the Dorie Greenspan event last night hosted by the Sisterly Love Collective as part of the group’s annual Cookbooks and Convos series.

Of course, Yin can’t be everywhere at once. “I don’t go to each restaurant every single day,” she says. “It depends on where the need is, and also where my priorities are.”

This morning, however, the priority is a meeting for the Sisterly Love Collective, a weekly appointment with the rest of the leadership team. This agenda includes plans for a mentoring program, their holiday pop-up, and programming for the beginning of next year.

And she has another High Street Hospitality initiative that she’s been working on with the team that’s about to kick off the next day: Congee Kitchen, a pop-up holiday project from the group’s Wonton Project and AAPI Unite. Based out of the old High Street Bakery space, the team is serving bowls of kombu congee on Tuesdays and Thursdays, between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. — or until sellout — to raise funds for SEAMAAC’s food bank, which donates hundreds of food boxes every week to Philly’s Southeast Asian community.

“Every day is different and it’s hard to encapsulate one day, but I feel so fortunate that I get to spend my day doing what I really love,” Yin says. “That’s a real privilege.”

1 p.m.: After a busy morning, Yin has a meeting to talk about a.kitchen D.C., followed by an HR phone call, and then, after that, “we’ll see.” Staying nimble is part of the job. When we speak, the Bread Room has only been open for a few weeks, so, when it gets busy, Yin will occasionally give the team there a hand. “Sometimes, I just walk into the Bread Room, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, the line is out the door,’” she says. “I can just tell from the fear on people’s faces that, you know, it would be nice if I jump in instead of going straight to my office.”

2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.: It’s a late lunch for Yin, who likes to join the family meal at one of her restaurants, or, if it’s a particularly busy day, eat soup at her desk.

As for family meal, the cuisine depends on who’s cooking; the task rotates among staff. “We have a pretty diverse background in our kitchen,” Yin says. It could be tortillas one day, and the next, tomato soup with eggs, vegetables, and meat dropped in.

Naturally, Yin eats a lot of bread. “Sometimes I’m just walking through [the Bread Room] and I grab a hunk of bread and a piece of ham,” she says. “I’m obsessed with bread, so I’m always eating bread.” If it’s available, she’ll get her hands on the seeded Pullman. “It’s just so good,” she says of the loaf. “But I accept all bread.”

4 p.m.: Like the morning, the afternoon into early evening is a mix of meetings and events, depending on Yin’s packed calendar. Sometimes her schedule takes her to D.C., which she tries to visit three to four times a month, though she typically won’t stay over. She was just in town for Chefs for Equality, a Human Rights Foundation benefit for LGBTQ+ communities, and Capital Food Fight, an event hosted by the nonprofit DC Central Kitchen with a mission to combat hunger. “It’s a lot of connection making, and then hopefully bringing those connections back to the team,” she says.

7 p.m.: Tonight, though, Yin’s in Philly, delivering remarks at a dinner ceremony at the Logan Hotel honoring Eli Kulp, where the chef and High Street Hospitality partner is receiving the Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Humanitarian Award.

9 p.m.: When she’s not at an event, she’ll go out to eat. And while dinner might signal the end of a work day for most people, for Yin, it’s still mostly business. When she’s not scoping out other spots, Yin is dining at one of her establishments. She tries to eat at her own restaurants “as much as possible,” she says. “I like to just be around where people feel like they can walk up to me and say whatever they feel like,” she adds. It’s also an opportunity to do some quality control. “I like to make sure that what I’m getting is the same as what every customer is getting,” Yin says. “I’m looking at everything from the service to the food, so it’s not really like a dinner out — I’m absorbing what the experience is and fine-tuning it to what I think it should be.”

Yin’s goal is to eat as much of the menu as she can, but of course she has some favorites. She raves about Fork’s pasta program under executive chef Sam Henzy, and says the green-walk trout topped with olive oil, olives, and capers is “really beautiful.” At a.kitchen, she adores the crispy oyster mushroom. At High Street she’s always eating crostini (a must-order for her business partner and frequent dinner companion Roberto Sella), pizza or Caesar salad, and is “addicted” to the crispy anchovies and sage. Ultimately, though, she says, “I’m trying to eat around the menu and see things that I maybe don’t eat every single time.”

11 p.m.: After a long day of meetings, making connections, and tasting all the bread (and more), back at home, Yin unwinds with some TV. “I got into this bad routine of watching TV before I go to bed,” she says. Right now, she’s in the sixth season of Scandal, but she’ll also watch “some series that everybody else is watching” — like a docuseries people are talking about, or The White Lotus.

12 a.m. – 12:30 a.m.: Yin is drifting off. “It doesn’t take me very long to fall asleep,” she says. And if she can’t switch off? “I will, don’t laugh, put on a TED Talk and eventually I will fall asleep.”