If you follow major restaurant openings, you’ve probably heard of New York’s Le Coucou. Maybe you know of Daniel Rose, its much-fêted 40-year-old executive chef, who was born outside Chicago and proved his talents with three restaurants in Paris. And it’s possible you’re familiar with Stephen Starr, the megawatt Philadelphia-based restaurateur who co-owns Le Coucou. But the name Nana Araba Wilmot? It won’t ring a bell.

Yet on any given night, chances are Wilmot will be in the kitchen in her tall white toque, long black braids hanging down her back. When you order the tender sole, set in a shallow pool of vermouth-butter sauce and dotted with precisely peeled grapes, it’s Wilmot who will have made it. And the powder-white fish cakes and the monkfish bathed in shellfish broth: Those are hers too. Hours later, when you’ve had your last sip of Bordeaux, paid your check, and left the golden-lit dining room, Wilmot will still be there, cleaning her station and sharpening her knives. She’s just one of 1.6 million line cooks in the United States, trying to build a life out of 11-hour shifts. Without cooks like her, those restaurants you obsess over, those dishes you snap photos of, wouldn’t exist. So wouldn’t you like to know what it’s like to be her for a day?

On her way to work, Wilmot listens to Solange and Ghanaian hip-hop. Photo by Jimmy Fontaine

12:00 p.m.

To get a glimpse into Wilmot’s world, I spent a day with her last December, trailing her through the end of her long shift.

We meet in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, in the three-bedroom apartment she shares with a Columbia University adjunct instructor and a guy who does something in HR—she’s not totally sure. Usually they’re gone when she gets up and asleep when she gets home. We take a seat at a table across from a small L-shape kitchen. “I never cook here,” Wilmot says sheepishly. She isn’t chatty, but she listens carefully, then talks in long, thoughtful paragraphs. She’s someone you want to draw out and get to know.