Lineage has been open in Coolidge Corner for about six months. On a sultry Friday night, a summer evening when many food lovers are stuck three miles from the Bourne Bridge, Sewall’s place is two-deep at the bar, with a waiting list of walk-ups who hope for a last-minute table. Four of us order drinks and dinner — a scallop dish, a moist salmon teetering on a bed of heirloom cherry tomatoes, a perfect steak. It is a stupendous meal. The prices are right, too: our bill with tip is under $200. Sewall makes this neighborhood-bistro thing look easy.

“Opening your own restaurant is all about finding your voice on the plate, and recognizing that there’s no one to run to for cover,” Sewall says. “At the end of the day, it’s all about you.” After a high-profile career in Northern California — and most recently as the executive chef at Great Bay — Sewall is as seasoned for ownership as a first-timer can be. Still, he’s barely had a day off since opening Lineage’s doors in March, and even with all his culinary accolades, Sewall is humbled by the challenges of chef/ownership. “All the guilt, the blame, and all the glory is on your shoulders,” he says, though on the plus side, “it’s fantastic that you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission.”

Still, Sewall misses the collaborative aspect of cooking in a kitchen owned by someone else. He sits by himself more now, coming up with new menus and staff changes without the benefit of bouncing things off the owner or team of owners. (Sewall’s wife, Lisa, is a chef and partner too, but the couple have two small children, and these days she’s spending more time tending to them.) Sewall finds himself juggling multiple roles constantly; on his drive in to the restaurant, he alternates between obsessing about the halibut and the payroll.

For Sewall, food is his comfort. “Cooking is the one thing I am really good at,” he says. “If I could just sit there and cook every night for 20 people, it would be a snap, but it wouldn’t be a business. My favorite thing is working with my staff in our small kitchen, grinding it out every night — but I have to carve out time to run the business.” He figures that each week, he spends as much time on the cooking line as he does on financial and administrative tasks. That’s typical for a chef/owner, especially one who has borrowed most of the money for the restaurant from the bank. “Your house is on the line, the car, the kid’s education,” he says. “Either you are on top of the money, or it is on top of you.”

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But the rigors of running a business have been good for Sewall. He’s learned to think hard about staffing — who produces and who doesn’t — and he’s made sensible midstream corrections, like choosing to close for lunch and stay open on Mondays. The biggest lesson he’s learned is to love the locals. “I can get all sorts of good press,” he says, “but without the people who walk in for dinner at the bar once or twice a week, and maybe bring mom in for dinner when she’s in town, I’d be dead.”

Across the river in Cambridge, Dante de Magistris, formerly of Blu, has also learned quite a bit in the five months since he opened Dante in the Royal Sonesta with his two brothers. “Every decision passes by me at least once,” he says. He’s had to tinker with his menu, making it a little less “playful” than he’d originally planned; when he opened, there was a large list of small plates, things he assumed diners would want to share. That concept didn’t fly as well as he’d hoped, so he’s “grown” many of his small plates and his customers are happier. Another surprise: de Magistris assumed that a large portion of his diners would be hotel guests. “I tried to play a little safe with the menu, making sure we had comfort food that travelers would want to eat when they check into an unfamiliar place.” As it turns out, the restaurant has become more of a local destination, with less than five percent of its revenue coming from hotel guests. So de Magistris felt secure enough to take more risks with the menu, adding dishes like cuttlefish and burrata. Still, there are some financial wake-up calls. Under the terms of his lease with the hotel, de Magistris is responsible for serving dinner seven nights, plus brunch, breakfast, and lunch. “It’s a stretch some days,” he admits.

At home, Jeff Fournier, former chef at Sophia’s and the Metropolitan Club, is plotting the course of his first solo venture. He’s close to signing a deal for a “small, highly creative, eclectic bistro somewhere in the ’burbs.” Like most young chefs, Fournier is very excited about the prospect of running his own show after years of tutelage by the best, including Lydia Shire and Jacky Robert. He’s garnered lots of accolades and awards and opened six restaurants for other people. But today, he’s a little worried about the economy. “It’s not that robust at the moment,” Fournier says. “Will people think twice about going out to eat when the price of gas goes up?” Welcome to the real world of chef/ownership, where the price of gas matters almost as much as skill with a sauce.