Quantcast

BABES IN BOY-LAND

BABES IN
The Brooklyn Papers / Greg Mango

There were a couple of comments that I
didn’t want to hear when I set out to write about women chefs
and their restaurant kitchens.



One was, "We cook to nurture," and the other was, "A
woman’s kitchen is calmer and more supportive."



I believe those statements. I know that preparing meals for one’s
family is nurturing, and the kitchen has long been considered
the heart of the home, but what about restaurant kitchens where
testosterone levels run high? Wouldn’t a "nurturer"
get crushed in that environment?



Didn’t a woman need chops – so to speak – to rise to the top
of the restaurant food chain?



The woman I envisioned leading a kitchen crew made Anthony Bourdain
(the bad-boy chef and author of "Kitchen Confidential")
look like Fanny Farmer in a frilly apron. She could out-drink
the guys at night then sharpen her knife and butcher the 300-pound
cow in the meat locker. I was sure my alpha she-chef existed
in Brooklyn. But the harder I looked the more elusive she became.
In fact, finding female executive chefs of any temperament working
in local restaurants proved difficult.



It seemed ironic: women in their own homes have always been the
lunch box stuffers, birthday cake bakers and dinner makers. (And,
yes, I’m aware of stay-at-home dads, and men who make tacos or
grill a steak once a week, but how many are we talking about?
One in 50?) But it seems that in Brooklyn, and in many American
cities, a woman’s place is anywhere but the top tiers of the
restaurant kitchen.



Pat Bartholomew, a professor in the hospitality management program
of New York City College of Technology in Downtown Brooklyn,
and a former chef, said, "Restaurants in America were based
on European kitchens, where young men in their teens were apprenticed
to older chefs and did all the grunt work."



While Bartholomew acknowledges that in the late ’60s and early
’70s feminism allowed women access into commercial kitchens,
and that in today’s kitchens "entry level positions are
available for everyone," she adds ruefully, "it’s still
pretty much an old-boys’ network."



The kitchens some of the women made their culinary rites of passage
through sound like wild frat parties.



"Men’s kitchens were always really competitive," said
Rebecca Peters, 32, the soft-spoken executive chef of Cocotte
in Park Slope. "I worked in places where chefs burned one
another when they made mistakes. They threw things. They’d put
wasabi powder in someone’s drink and say it was limeade.



"In a man’s kitchen," said Peters, "everyone has
to tell their war stories about the toughest kitchens they’ve
lived through. You tell your story and if it measures up, then
the guys are like, ’Well, OK, you’re in the group, circle up."




Although long-held, chauvinist attitudes toward women in the
restaurant kitchen have kept many women back, blaming the kitchen
hierarchy on women’s slow rise to the top is too simple. As Park
Sloper Rozanne Gold, a former chef of The Rainbow Room, entertainment
editor for Bon Appetit magazine and author of the James Beard
Award-winning "1-2-3" cookbooks put it, "Women
have to make different choices than men. Early in their careers
they have to decide between their passion for cooking and starting
a family."



Bartholomew gives women five to 10 years before they "start
disappearing from restaurant kitchens. They have life decisions
to make – relationships and children." Choices that male
chefs – who can participate in family life as long as their significant
others are free to care for children – never have to face. Women
who opt for relationships outside their kitchen families find
themselves in a balancing act between home and work where, more
often than not, the kitchen wins out.



Peters, who worked behind the stove at the Zagat-beloved Grocery
on Smith Street, City Hall in Manhattan and Charlie Trotter’s
in Chicago, describes her schedule as "12- to 14-hour days,
six days a week." The petite redhead recalled a story of
a well-known woman chef whose first marriage dissolved after
her calls home went from, "Yeah, I’ll be right there,"
to "Give me an hour or two," and finally, "I’ll
be there when I’m there."



"Working in a kitchen is just so intense," said Peters,
who is engaged to be married. "In addition to long hours,
most holidays and weekends are spent at work. Women do it because
they’re passionate about food."



The word "passion" came up over and over in my research.



"It’s an incredibly hard industry," said Peters, "and
when you think about all the machismo guys, the toughness, and
how difficult it is to prove yourself, if you don’t love it,
then it’s crazy to be there."



Chef-owner Laura Taylor, 43, of Superfine in DUMBO heads up a
team of woman chefs in key positions.



"It takes a certain kind of crazy person to handle the stress
of a restaurant kitchen," said Taylor. "The women I’ve
met in other restaurant kitchens and the women who work here
are just passionate about what they do."



Taylor’s menu at Superfine changes every night because she enjoys
creating dishes with seasonal greenmarket produce. Taylor worked
in Santa Fe’s famous Café Pasquel before arriving in Brooklyn.
Superfine existed inside the Between the Bridges pub, also in
DUMBO, prior to moving two years ago to its current, expansive
space on Front Street between Jay and Pearl streets.



"In a woman’s kitchen, the joy is out there," she said.
"If I run in and say, ’I’ve just been to the farmers market’
and we all go ’oooh,’ and we talk about food and get excited,
I run to my stove and I do my thing, and we’ll shout about things
and talk about family.



"In a male kitchen, you don’t talk about personal things.
You wouldn’t approach a male chef and say, ’I haven’t seen my
mother and I need to see her.’ It would be shameful – like you’re
weak. Female kitchens are just different. The feeling is different."



Bill Snell, a chef who owns both Cocotte and Loulou in Fort Greene
with his wife, Christine, agrees. He describes a restaurant kitchen
as "a bunch of macho men grinding out the food in 140-degree
heat. It’s exhausting, laborious work. People get burnt-out and
work for a paycheck."



Many of the women he’s encountered, and Peters in particular,
he said, succeed to the executive level because they’re "extremely
talented and good organizers. Better than the guys in that respect.
They’re perfectionists and they create a nicer kitchen."




The women made it clear that while their demeanor may be nice
and nurturing, they need and demand respect in the kitchen if
they want their vision upheld.



"Even calm people like me have to take control," said
Peters. "You have to be willing to accept that responsibility
and feel comfortable with it. There are times during a rush when
someone on the line just loses it, and the head chef has to save
them. You have to be the one they can count on when things go
haywire."



And there’s no screaming at 7 or 8 pm when the dinner plates
have to fly out of the kitchen?



"It’s like going to battle every night," said Peters.
"It’s tense. Add a 60-hour workweek and hot, humid conditions
– and it’s hard. So how do you respond to that? With temper?
Screaming? I say, ’Listen to my calls and call back.’ I’ll call
and ask if something is finished, the chef will call back. It
keeps the kitchen focused. There’s more control that way."




What about my big swinging-whisk she-chef?



"I’ve heard of women like that," said Peters, "but
I’ve never really worked with one."

 

Superfine is located at 126 Front St.
between Jay and Pearl streets in DUMBO. For information, call
(718) 243-9005.



Cocotte is located at 337 Fifth Ave. at Fourth Street in Park
Slope. For more information, call (718) 832-6848.