Her culinary talent is by now a given, but Barbara Lynch seems also to have a talent for success. How else did the hard-working girl from Southie create one of Boston’s most highly anticipated restaurants – in the city’s most affluent neighborhood?

Lynch’s professional biography just might be the ultimate Boston success story, right up there with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Raised in the projects of South Boston, she is now perched at the top of Beacon Hill as proprietress of No. 9 Park, perhaps the toniest of the city’s dining establishments.

Introduced to cooking in a high school home economics class, Lynch took jobs in restaurants all over Boston, working her way into some of the city’s best kitchens and alongside two premier chefs – Todd English of Olives and Michaela Larson of Rialto.

Such empowering practical experience translated to personal enrichment, as she sojourned to the kitchens of Italy and Southern France, further honing her European approach to cooking.

Upon her return to Boston, Lynch became Executive Chef at Galleria Italiana, turning the unknown, offbeat eatery into one of the city’s best and acquiring numerous accolades on both the local and national levels. Her name on the map, she began to focus on a restaurant of her own.

No. 9 Park opened to instant success and a tidal wave of critical applause. Its celebrated location across from the Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House lends the restaurant an air of historic venerability, as though it has been there for years. The same can be said for Barbara Lynch. Having since opened B&G Oysters, The Butcher Shop, Drink and Sportello, she’s a chef who is already an institution and a woman who knows the city from both sides of the tracks.