Missy Robbins Will Leave A Voce Missy Robbins, who came to New York from Chicago about five years ago to be the executive chef at A Voce Madison, and then added A Voce Time Warner to her résumé, is leaving both restaurants Saturday. "I made the decision a while ago," she said. But I have no definite plans. Nobody believes me and I do have lots of ideas but I'm not in a rush. I want to travel, and work on a book. She said that working at A Voce "changed my focus and my career." She came to back to New York, where she had trained, after serving as an executive chef at Spiaggia, an acclaimed restaurant in Chicago that was a favorite of Barack Obama's, according to Frank Bruni, a former Times restaurant critic. At Spiagga, in spite of her title, she worked under the direction of Tony Mantuano, the chef and a partner. At A Voce, she replaced one of New York City's top Italian chefs, Andrew Carmellini, and she said it was her first job that allowed her to be completely in charge. Here, she said, she learned how to run big restaurants successfully. It also put her name on the map. She said that Marlon Abela, whose London-based company, Marc Restaurants, owns A Voce, has known that she was leaving. "There's no drama, he has been very supportive," she said. A replacement for Ms. Robbins has not been identified. Here's Sam Sifton writing about Ms. Robbins in 2009: Ms. Robbins is a cool character. She cooks rustic Italian food and sends it out of the kitchen looking like modernist plate paintings, little sculptures, edible art. She sautés a perfect rectangle of branzino, places it atop a foundation of thin-sliced warm heirloom tomatoes, then plants a lawn of caper pesto on top. The colors delight, and the flavors redouble the feeling: salt against acid against the sweet meat. Ms. Robbins is an excellent chef. She didn't come here to mess around.