[1][3] In 1991, at the age of 31, she opened her restaurant Elka in the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco's Japantown, serving a blend of Asian and French cuisine.
[2][5] The New York Times Magazine described the restaurant's dishes as "light and memorable" with "deep and husky flavors"; it called Gilmore "the enfant terrible of the modern California kitchen" and "an iconoclastic cook.
[1] She was later hired by the Omni Berkshire Place Hotel in New York to open and run Kokachin, a seafood restaurant.
[1][2][8] Reviewing Oodles, Mark Bittman of The New York Times wrote that "[d]espite the angular, not-especially-attractive interior, the restaurant is comfortable and inviting, and the brazen nature of the food gives a meal here a true sense of excitement.
[1][11] She died on July 6, 2019, in San Francisco, of cardiac arrest due to a series of ongoing medical issues.