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phenomenally lucky that I get this opportunity to try this great experi- ment with humans and happiness and beauty," she says. "It provides me a tremendous amount of freedom but also a tremendous amount of burden. "It's embarrassing to say that I really think we can change the world through Lynn's." t he day after my happiness-mapping session, I'm walking over to Winter's loft when my phone rings. It's her. "Can you be my chauffeur for the day?" Her white Lexus SUV is low on gas. Plus, she's got that damn boot on her right foot again. Our first stop: A conference room with greenish carpet in the bow- Winter had told me many times that she hates to-do lists and now 5IF SFMVDUBOU QIPUP TVCKFDU mOBMMZ DPOTFOUFE CVU POMZ GSPN B EJTUBODF MBUF at night, with distracting props in place. els of the restaurant, which has been located here, in the site of a for- mer grocery store, since 1994. Winter sits at the head of a long table. It's the Tursday before the St. James Art Show, and Winter has high expectations. Public-school kids are out Friday and Monday. "We want to have the largest weekend we've ever had in the history of Lynn's," she says. "Te volume I'm trying to do, nobody has ever seen." (In the end, it won't be the biggest ever — that would be last Derby — but the kitchen workers still crack 5,364 eggs by hand.) Winter asks for a pen, and one of the managers she has been talking to exits the room and returns with four of those Paper Mate Flairs. I start taking notes with one. Te ink doesn't smear. But it bleeds through the page, and I write on the front and back. So: Shitty pen. it's easy to see why they get her down. She has to worry about outdoor heaters, umbrellas, preventing wet seat cushions, a coffee rep who may lose his account with the restaurant after 22 years, headsets for all employees, oven timers, is it OK to start swearing? "It is a great sym- phony," Winter says. "If one person messes up it can all fall apart. One person can make a $1,000 or $2,000 difference in this." Later, when I talk to general manager DeWayne Hughes, he says, "Sometimes you don't see it the way she sees it. But you realize she knows what she's talking about." From day one, it was easy for me to see that Winter must be in control. "Command," she says, is one of her strengths. According to Now, Discover Your Strengths, the book she reads during happiness-mapping sessions, that means, "Unlike some people, you feel no discomfort with imposing your views on others….You may even intimidate them." (For example: She threatens to nix the pho- to shoot for this story if we don't do things her way, which, judging by the examples she texts to me, would be running something blurry. She claims she never does journalistic photos, which isn't true because this magazine has run those types of images of her. Over the phone, she says, "I want to maintain my anonymity." I tell Winter we're after a spe- cific mood, not seeing her up close. She says, "Promise me you won't print a photo that I hate." At first, Schnatter — the political aide to Winter's politician — tells me Winter will not be in a photo at all. "Lynn's not going to do what she doesn't want to do," she says. Instead, Winter asks a bunch of employees to stay after closing to sit in booths for our photographer. I try to explain to Winter that this says absolutely nothing. Eventually, the photographer grabs a pair of rabbit ears from the gift shop. Winter says, "I (expletive) knew this was going to (expletive) happen!" She complains for the 15 or so minutes it takes to get the shot; she's so uncomfortable she hides behind her MacBook's screen. Afterward, she shouts to a bartender, "Bring me a wine. White. A big one." By the end of the evening, at almost 1 a.m., she's laughing and having all of us hoist our glasses.) From the restaurant conference room we head to a meeting at Sysco, the food distribu- tor, so Winter can discuss with some reps possible menu changes, particularly with ap- petizers. We enter a room off a test kitchen. Tere are four men and Winter briefly interviews all of them, later determining none would last a minute in her hectic kitchen. "Is it OK if I cuss?" she asks. "I'm ready to push my menu way (expletive) beyond anything I've ever seen." At one point she says she'll go to Gordon Food Service, Sysco's competitor. "Tat was a threat," she says, and it's not clear if she's joking. She also says: "I could make breakfast out of condiments and you'd be happy"; "We make it from scratch like a fine-dining restaurant and our ingredients are equally expensive, but they're making double be- cause they're putting it on pasta instead of eggs"; her biggest competi- tors are chains that look like an "owner-operator," like Mimi's Cafe; "I Continued on page 150 11.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [63]