Emma Hearst, Author: Emma Hearst started cooking at the age of five, and from the beginning, the love and support of her parents allowed her to pursue her dream. That included not only eating what she served them from the time she was a kid but also taking her to the best restaurants in the world, whether they accepted children or not. When Emma was thirteen, she got a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Albany, New York, where the family lived. After high school, she went to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and completed her externship at Manhattan’s Union Square Café. She was at the end of her time at the CIA when she met Sarah Krathen, whom she did not like at first. Fortunately, Emma got over that, and they were soon the best of friends. Together, they made Emma’s dream of owning a restaurant in New York City a reality with the 2008 opening of Sorella, with Emma as executive chef.Sarah Krathen fell in love with restaurant work at the age of fifteen. She started as a barker for a restaurant on Duval Street in Key West, which meant her job was to get tourists to come in off the street and eat there. The owner of Fogarty’s, a much bigger, newer, and better restaurant, saw her at work and hired her as a hostess. At Fogarty’s, she went from hostess to server to expo (the intermediary between the kitchen and the customers) and then decided to attend culinary school. She enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America, received an associate degree in culinary arts, and then completed a fellowship under her mentor, John Storm, in the on-campus Ristorante Caterina de’ Medici. It was during that fellowship that she met Emma Hearst, a meeting that she describes as the most important of her life. The pair became best friends, roommates, and eventually business partners. Sorella opened on New York’s Lower East Side in 2008, with Sarah managing the front of the house and beverage program.