Big cheese in cafe hit, surprisingly (9)
I believe the answer is:
chieftain
'big cheese' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'in cafe hit surprisingly' is the wordplay.
'surprisingly' indicates anagramming the letters (a surprising ordering of the letters).
'in'+'cafe'+'hit'='incafehit'
'incafehit' is an anagram of 'CHIEFTAIN'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for chieftain that I've seen before include "Clan leader" , "Head of tribe" , "Head of a clan" , "Tribal leader" , "Tribe's leader" .)