By day she’s a world-renowned neuroscientist. By night she’s the Godmother of the Philly dining scene.

It was a cold Wednesday night, and Sharon Thompson-Schill was between drinks at Bloomsday and a pop-up dinner at Little Fish, taking a quick shot of amaro with friends at a third restaurant, Kampar, that has not yet officially opened.

“Yam seng!” the group said, clinking glasses. “Cheers!”

The five-course, 3.5-hour meal to follow at Little Fish, cooked by rising star Jacob Trinh, would be a once-a-year highlight for many. But for Thompson-Schill, a neuroscience professor at Penn and perhaps the most enthusiastic diner in Philadelphia, it was simply the latest in a string of extraordinary meals she eats 365 days a year.

The same week, Thompson-Schill had dinner at “The Kitchen Table” at Ambra, the 16-seat tasting room; a rare lunch at Pietramala, the vegan hotspot that typically opens at 5; casual dinners at Pub & Kitchen and Royal Tavern; a special four-course tasting menu at Le Virtú; and not one but two separate meals at Her Place Supper Club, one of the most difficult-to-get reservations in the city. She attended nine Feasts of the Seven Fishes in December.

Though she posts all of her meals to Instagram and carries a portable light to better illuminate her photos, Thompson-Schill is not a traditional influencer. She only has 1,000 followers.

Instead, she’s more like the “Godmother” of the Philly dining scene, in both the “fairy” and also the “mafia” sense, according to Liz Grothe, the chef behind the popular supper club Couch Cafe.

She knows what’s opening and who’s leaving, the up-and-coming chefs and the most interesting food events. She’s loyal and she likes to matchmake.

“I’m really passionate about the people,” said Thompson-Schill.

Fast talking and intensely curious, she’s also just as high-energy at the end of a long night as at the beginning of one. (“I’m going to interrupt myself to tell a funny story,” she said in a recent conversation).

Since meeting Grothe, Thompson-Schill has attended nearly every one of her pop-up events, a feat that even Grothe’s best friends and parents have not achieved. She recently connected Grothe with the general manager and wine buyer at Bloomsday, D’Onna Stubblefield, and the two are now collaborating on wines for Grothe’s BYOB dinners.

“She is so involved in the careers of so many young chefs as a true friend and supporter,” Grothe said, adding that unlike hired consultants, Thompson-Schill shows up because she just genuinely enjoys the people and the food. “If she stopped coming to dinners tomorrow I would know that I had gravely [messed] up.”

At the end of 2021, Thompson-Schill left a 16-year relationship, partly because her partner would not get vaccinated. Her three children were grown and she moved into an apartment by herself. She had always been the opposite of a homebody, but she was thrilled by the chance to eat out, and by all the new pop-ups and events in the city. She was finally able to visit restaurants that were not open to her unvaccinated boyfriend.

”I was newly free,” she said. That’s when she became a dining world fixture.

At Little Fish, Thompson-Schill hugged Chef Trinh and ordered the prix fixe, plus everything on the menu that was not included in the prix fixe. She estimates that she spends about $1,000 a week dining out. (She was delighted when she recently learned Louis C.K.’s term “bang bang,” for eating two full meals in a row.)

She sometimes eats alone, but she also relishes bringing as many people as possible, to maximize dish-sharing. At Little Fish, she ordered for her best friend Anna Jenkins, a fellow neuroscientist at Penn; Ange Branca, the chef of Kampar; and Nathan Winkler-Rhoades, co-owner of Pitruco Pizza.

Branca said they met when Thompson-Schill visited her old restaurant Sate Kampar “at least twelve times.” That restaurant, which Craig LaBan named one of the best in Philadelphia, closed in May 2020 after a proposed rent hike during the pandemic. Since then the two have become friends; Thompson-Schill helped organize Branca’s Kickstarter campaign to launch the new Kampar.

Jenkins is her most frequent dining companion, and the person who most closely understands her passion for food. To celebrate Thompson-Schill’s 53rd birthday, Jenkins organized a way for her to eat the one animal part she hadn’t previously consumed, a pig uterus.

“I knew she never had it, I knew it was highly desirable,” Jenkins explained.

“It was really great,” Thompson-Schill said. (She left vegetarianism for good about 10 years ago, after attending a transformative live goat slaughter in rural Pennsylvania).

“I love feeding her,” said Branca, who cooked the pig uterus. “She literally eats everything.”

Thompson-Schill grew up the daughter of a working mom, not knowing much about fresh food or fancy restaurants. When she moved to Philadelphia in the ’90s, her first discovery was the farmer’s market.

“I would harass the people at the stands. I’m like, ‘What is this?’ And they’re like, ‘it’s a radish,’” she recalled.

She began to experiment at home, cooking for her kids. In 1999, she joined the Penn faculty and her career took off. She traveled the world to share her research, and found herself getting wined and dined at high-end restaurants. She started learning about food, with the rigor of a scientist.

These days, she doesn’t go to places where the menu doesn’t change on a regular basis; she tends to skip Stephen Starr and Michael Schulson operations in favor of smaller chefs. She often brings Tupperware to dinner, and cooks elaborate breakfasts with the leftovers, tagging all the local farmers, butchers, and cheesemongers involved on her Instagram.

Among her favorite current places are Heavy Metal Sausage Co., which she rented out for her birthday, and Mawn, both in South Philly. She typically has an easy time getting reservations, sometimes direct-messaging friends in the industry to assist, but she did struggle at the end of last year with Royal Sushi Omakase, the tiny eatery that is notoriously difficult to get into because it allows regulars to book their next reservation at the end of a meal. She even enlisted the personal concierge that comes with her American Express card — to no avail.

Then a friend on Instagram gave Thompson-Schill her own reservation.

“For these hard-to-get reservations, it takes a village,” she said, laughing.

Always eager to make connections, Thompson-Schill introduced Trinh to Winkler-Rhoades at the end of the meal at Little Fish. It was 11 p.m. and she had the energy of someone ready to attend another five-course meal.

“You have to try his pizza! He’s Pitruco!” she said. “You should do staff meal!”