Elka Gilmore made her debut in the culinary world at age eleven, washing dishes at a French restaurant in Austin, Texas, in an attempt to earn enough money to run away from a family she describes as "basically dysfunctional." "I really loved doing the dishes," Gilmore recalls, "I had to stand on a milk crate to reach, but I was really into it."

Having tasted the culinary world, Gilmore knew she would never give it up. After saving enough money for the trip, Gilmore left her native Texas behind at the age of 15 to live with her grandparents in Wisconsin. She enrolled in an accelerated studies program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Although her stated major was Chemistry, Gilmore spent most of her time studying the chemistry of food, and working in the cafeteria as the cook's assistant, and then later as a prep cook at L'Etoile, a celebrated French restaurant in Madison. Gilmore's big break came at age 16, when L'Etoile's chef walked out in a huff, and the precocious teenager was asked to take over.

After four years at L'Etoile, Gilmore felt the need to broaden her experience, and so the young Texan left Madison for Europe, where she served a six month internship at Lou Callen Inn in the South of France. There she learned first hand about the French passion for pristine ingredients, a passion she later found repeated in Japanese cuisine. Several years later, Gilmore also travelled all over Asia, eating foods and learning techniques that she would eventually meld with the French influences of her training.

At Gilmore's first restaurant, Camelions in Los Angeles, she made a name for herself cooking flavorful but rather classic French and Northern Italian food. Next, she joint-ventured at a Beverly Hills eatery named Tumbleweeds, where she juxtaposed Texas-style barbecue with authentic Mexican seafood dishes. But it was at her namesake restaurant, Elka, in San Francisco's Japantown that Gilmore began to experiment with what would become her trademark style of cooking: Franco-Asian fusion. When she opened the restaurant, the menu featured classical French food; she gave an Asian accent to only a few dishes as an homage to the restaurant's Japanese setting. But when those dishes proved her most popular, Gilmore's menu slowly moved away from French influences to predominantly Asian ones. This cuisine, a blend of Asian and Mediterranean flavors , is the one she has brought with her to the new restaurant Kokachin, located in the recreated Omni-Berkshire Hotel on Madison Avenue. At Kokachin, Gilmore graces diners with such combinations as salt-roasted foie gras and scallops with green papaya salad, steak with tamarind glaze, and kasu-marinated sturgeon with pickled plums and enoki mushrooms.

Gilmore, a woman in a profession that is still dominated largely by men, is a strong advocate of supporting and nurturing the careers of women food-service professionals. She was instrumental in forming the International Association of Women Chefs and Restauranteurs, which promotes the advancement of women in the industry -- an industry with enough room for Gilmore to climb from the top of a milk crate to the head of her profession.