In 2012, Christine Ha beat out seventeen other amateur chefs to win season three of
MasterChef. Her attention to detail and inspiring story—Ha is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees and the TV show’s first blind contestant—made her a fan favorite. Her winnings included a cookbook deal and a check for $250,000. Ha felt compelled to strike while the iron was hot, but as she began scouting locations for her first restaurant in her hometown of Houston, reality set in.
“I won a quarter of a million dollars but a lot went to taxes, and when we looked at spaces around town and the numbers, it was going to cost around a million dollars to do the build-out,” Ha says. “I didn’t feel ready to take that on when I was still very new to the food industry.”