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Until only the last few decades, the professional
restaurant kitchen was an exclusively male domain, particularly in
sophisticated establishments with elegant cuisine. The culture and
attitudes that kept women out of restaurant kitchens were mostly no
different than those regarding women in any workplace. Specifically,
however, it was commonly accepted that professional kitchens were too hot
and the heavy lifting and intense pressure too much for the fragile
feminine physique. Actually, there was probably a degree of truth in
that. Even with today’s modern ventilation systems and air
conditioning, restaurant kitchens are hot; before such comforts they were
hellish infernos. In the days when women wore corsets, long skirts, and
multiple petticoats, even the strongest woman would have been hard pressed
to cope with the heat and physical demands. Restaurant kitchens are sometimes referred to as war
zones, and there’s some historical basis for that as well. Chef Ann
Cooper, whose book A Woman’s Place is in
the Kitchen traces the origin of the
brigade (a precursor to the organizational “line” system used
in almost all restaurant kitchens) to military institutions. The book, for
which Cooper interviewed 200 female chefs and surveyed more than 1,000
female chefs and cooks, is the first book written exclusively about women
chefs and restaurateurs. Things are changing, albeit slowly. In 1972, just 5
percent of the student body at the Culinary Institute of America, often
referred to as the Harvard of culinary schools, was female; today, women
account for 25 percent of the enrollment. Still, relatively few top chefs
are women, and none of the biggest “celebrity” chefs is female.
(TV personalities such as Rachael Ray, with no culinary training,
background, or experience, can’t be considered chefs.) The iconic
Julia Child, probably the best-known and most influential female food
professional in the United States, wasn’t a professional chef,
either, although she, unlike Ray, was professionally trained (at
Paris’ Cordon Bleu cooking school), and her books and teachings are
still regarded as classics and referred to by professionals and amateurs
alike. Of the 2,134 certified executive chefs in the nation today, only 92
(4.3 percent) are women. It takes a certain kind of person — male or
female — to survive and thrive in the take-no-prisoners, do-or-die
pressure-cooker atmosphere of a busy restaurant kitchen. As former chef and
restaurant reviewer Bill Knotts puts it: “Women often say that
it’s not the work they can’t hack; it’s the constant
harassment, jokes in dubious taste, pin-ups, and sexist abuse they find
harder to stomach. Many end up in the pastry section, often (but not
always) a quieter backwater demanding more precise skills: Most male chefs
wouldn’t be caught dead weighing out anything, let alone making
biscuits” Food writer Tracey MacLeod says that another factor is
“. . . the difficulty in combining cheffing with any kind of normal
life. The length of a typical shift makes childcare almost impossible, as
does a culture that frowns on taking a day off with Legionnaire’s
disease, never mind a baby with a temperature.”
Many women in the restaurant business are literally
married to their jobs. A typical scenario has been the husband in the
kitchen with the wife running the front of the house. Such was the case
with Rick Bayless and his wife, Deanna Groen Bayless, in the early days
when they started their world-renowned Mexican restaurants, Frontera Grill
and Topolobampo, in Chicago. Today, however, the situation is sometimes
reversed, as is the case at Chicago’s delightful West Town Tavern,
owned by chef Susan Gross and her manager husband, Drew. It’s also
common for a husband to be chef and the wife the pastry chef. Many of the best-known women chefs own their own
restaurants. As MacLeod puts it, these establishments tend to have
“less rigid hierarchies and staff are treated as people rather than
cooking machines.”
Still, most women chefs find themselves in what
remains a man’s world. They can be a welcome addition. As chef and
bestselling author Anthony Bourdain puts it in his exposé of the
“culinary underbelly,” Kitchen
Confidential: “Women line cooks,
however rare they might be in the testosterone-heavy, male-dominated world
of restaurant kitchens, are a particular delight. To have a tough-as-nails
female line cook on your team can be a true joy — and a civilizing
factor.”
Such a woman is the Sangamo Club’s Joann
Kambitch, who spent years at a state job before leaving in 1995 to open Man
That’s Hot, a small restaurant featuring spicy dishes. A few years
later she began working at the Sangamo Club. Kambitch fills many roles in
the Sangamo Club kitchen, from prep cook to kitchen manager, writing menus
and taking inventory. She’s also the first woman to work the line at
night. That’s no easy task, particularly on evenings when the dining
room is full and several private parties and a banquet for 300 are going
on. Kambitch is more than up to the task: “I’ve always been
independent,” she says, “Of course, sometimes I just have to
let loose.” Much as she enjoys “girl talk” with female
prep cooks, she has no trouble relating to her male co-workers: “The
guys I work with — they’re really a good bunch.” she says
with a chuckle. Kambitch definitely has the right stuff.
Send questions and
comments to Julianne Glatz at realcuisine@insightbb.com.
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2007.
