"I’m not really Italian," Hawaiian-born chef Lisa Nakamura says with a smile; "I don’t know if you noticed." No matter, though, say the droves pouring into her recently opened Capitol Hill Gnocchi Bar—the only gnocchi-devoted restaurant in the world, as far as she is aware (though London has a gnocchi truck).
Nakamura learned gnocchi from Thomas Keller in the late nineties while cooking at the French Laundry, but never made the dish there: "I was afraid to screw it up," she says. Fast forward 15 years and she’s got it down, gluten-free options and all. "I love the fact that every single one is hand made," she says. "I could buy a machine, but I prefer to be the machine." Eater caught up with the chef to learn how the magic unfolds; check out her basic gnocchi method, then her process for cooking her curry-carrot-filled potato gnocchi, slide by slide in the photos above.