Aisha Ibrahim, the award-winning chef who ran the kitchen at Canlis for four years, is officially gone as of this week. So who’s going to take over the menu at Seattle’s most famous restaurant, and when?

Unlike most of Seattle’s other big-deal restaurants, Canlis isn’t owned by a chef who also oversees the food. Since its opening in 1950 it’s been operated by the Canlis family, and for the past 18 years, run by brothers Mark and Brian Canlis. They’ve hired three executive chefs — Jason Franey, Brady Williams (who now owns Tomo), and Ibrahim — all of whom have been recognized by the James Beard Awards. The job is both an opportunity to leave a mark on a fine dining institution and a stepping stone to even greater heights (Ibrahim is planning to open her own restaurant with wife Samantha Beaird, probably in a big market with a Michelin Guide, according to the New York Times). It’s the kind of job that can transform a career, the kind of job that an ambitious chef would uproot their life for.

“One of the things I underestimated this time around was the amount of interest in the job,” says Mark Canlis, who took sole ownership of the family restaurant earlier this year after Brian Canlis left to pursue other opportunities. He’s now leading the search for the new executive chef. “In the old days, you’d get two or three people who are really legitimate, and you fly them all out, and you do tastings, and you choose,” he says. “This has just been a bigger process than normal.”

According to Mark, there are 65 chefs who “are actively in our system” as legitimate candidates. These applicants have gone through a hiring process that sounds, Canlis-style, to be a little playful and quirky: One interview question asks the chef to submit a 60-second video of “yourself doing something wholeheartedly — like putting your whole heart into something — that you very clearly are not any good at,” says Mark.

Obviously, the executive chef at Canlis has to be exceptionally knowledgeable about food and cooking. But that’s not the primary quality Mark is looking for. “At this level, sure, you need to have a vision for what to do with food. But anyone knows that’s not the most important thing,” he says. “So the number one thing I’m looking for is this person, who are they and who are they hoping to become? What is their character? I want to know about the keel underneath the water. I don’t want to know about the sails.” Mark adds that the ideal candidate will “understand the spirit of hospitality,” which “at its core is an exchange of one person’s power, privilege, authority, opportunity, for another person’s vulnerability, weakness, or just humanity.”

Right now, the initial pool of 65 candidates has been whittled down to “just under a dozen,” Mark says. This includes some chefs that Canlis proactively reached out to and at least one candidate who has come totally out of left field. “There’s this guy on the other side of the world, literally, off the coast of Madagascar” who has been “crushing” the process, Mark says. “I finally was able to line up some time with him yesterday, and we just had the best Zoom call for an hour and a half or something. I didn’t know this guy existed. There are so many talented people.”

Mark wouldn’t name any chef in the running except for James Huffman, who is currently the executive sous chef at Canlis. Huffman will be overseeing the kitchen until the role is filled, which Mark expects to be the late spring or early summer. The menu will remain essentially the same until a new executive chef is found.

Whoever gets the job will have the opportunity of a lifetime, but also face what Mark admits is a pretty tall order. They’ll have to “unite a kitchen team of 35 people to do one of the most difficult tasks on the planet, to run a fine dining restaurant that is trying to become the most respected restaurant the world.” says Mark. “[Canlis] has a mission statement that says, ‘Let’s inspire people to turn toward one another.’ That’s insane. Those are hard things to do.”