{"id":245,"date":"2018-04-18T22:53:09","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T22:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/?p=245"},"modified":"2018-04-18T22:53:09","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T22:53:09","slug":"the-girl-in-the-kitchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/18\/the-girl-in-the-kitchen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Girl in the Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"crab<\/a>

Crab cakes on the flat top<\/p><\/div>\n

Our industry has changed a lot in the last twenty years.\u00a0 With the popularity of chefs increasing and the public\u2019s demand for better food growing as a result of the advent of primetime food television, restaurants and other foodservice providers have been require to step up our game.\u00a0 But while the number of women in the kitchen is on the rise, we are still, in many cases, considered \u201cthat girl\u201d, rather than as a member of the team.\u00a0 Now I am the first to say I am not a traditional feminist, and I don\u2019t want any sort of special treatment or consideration based on my gender.\u00a0 I do, however, want to be on the team, rather than just some sort of mascot relegated to the sidelines.<\/p>\n

I started cooking professionally (for money) when I was still in high school.\u00a0 My mother owned a diner in a small northern California town, and the entire family, with the exception of my five-year-old baby sister, worked in the business.\u00a0 My middle sister loved working the counter and the dining room, visiting with the customers, while I preferred the kitchen.\u00a0 I started in the back room, on early morning prep, and quickly moved to the grill\/griddle.\u00a0 My parents were liberal Californians, and so I was raised to believe that gender didn\u2019t matter, as long as you could do the job as expected.\u00a0 I spent my weekends and evenings after school cranking out burgers, sandwiches and a weekly special family dinner menu.\u00a0 Dancing between the big flat top and the deep fryer, I developed a love of the adrenaline high of a busy service, allowing my mother to manager the all-important cash register.<\/p>\n

When I went off to college, it was understood that I would pursue an academic degree, and get a \u201creal\u201d job, but I knew the best way to earn extra money was to work in a restaurant.\u00a0 I was just seventeen, and hit my first \u201cwall\u201d.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026I\u2019m sorry honey, we can\u2019t have you in the kitchen until after you are eighteen\u2026wouldn\u2019t you rather be a waitress?\u201d\u00a0 This was especially frustrating since I saw boys my age doing vegetable prep and in the dish room.\u00a0 I waited impatiently until my eighteenth birthday, and much to my surprise, it made little difference.\u00a0 I was still lectured on how the kitchen was a hot and dangerous place, and girls were too delicate for the work.\u00a0 I finally managed to talk the manager of a local sandwich shop into hiring me for morning prep, since no one else seemed to be interested in that job, preferring the more visible sandwich maker positions.\u00a0 I showed up every morning at 6:00AM, cranked up the stove and the stereo and settled into six hours of slicing meats and vegetables, preparing the chili, steaming the roast beef and pastrami and setting up the twelve sandwich stations for the lunch shift.\u00a0 Afternoons, I went to classes, pursuing a degree in Business.\u00a0 I\u2019d board the bus at 1:00P to ride downtown to campus, reeking of pastrami and clutching my free sandwich, which would become my dinner between afternoon and night classes.\u00a0 I worked that job for two years, until one day, I came in to find that they had hired a \u201cchef\u201d that would take over the prep duties.\u00a0 Of course he was a guy, barely older than I was, but wore a white cotton floppy hat and a dirty white chef coat, instead of my red cotton apron and baseball cap.\u00a0 After that, I stayed out of the kitchen, instead working as a waitress and eventually cocktail waitress as I tried to finish school.\u00a0 The money was better, and I was working nights and weekends instead of weekday mornings, so my social life improved greatly, but I still missed the kitchen.<\/p>\n

I returned to the kitchen many years later, after twenty years of working as a sales and marketing manager in the high tech industry.\u00a0 I was burned out on the high stress world of being on call 24\/7, when your beeper (and later your cell phone) would ring at 4:00AM with that all important call from a client in Asia.\u00a0 I started working for a catering company, first as a sales manager, then as operations manager.\u00a0 Part of our training was to work in all of the departments of the company, and I found myself clocking in at 4:00AM with the baker to work my first shift of my kitchen training.\u00a0 I fell right back into it like I had never left.\u00a0 I eventually opened my own catering company, and decided to pursue some traditional culinary education at a local community college and eventually at the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley.<\/p>\n

In almost every one of my classes, I was one of two or three women.\u00a0 My age and gender meant that most of the young men, who were line cooks and junior sous chefs decided that I was a \u201chousewife\u201d and did not belong in the class.\u00a0 Either that or I should be what they called a \u201cpastry bunny\u201d, a derisive term for the pony-tailed female pastry program students on the other side of the huge kitchen hall.\u00a0 I remember going to my Skills II instructor, well-known chef instructor that trained in the Swiss and German hotel system.\u00a0 I lamented that my kitchen lab partner treated me like his personal prep cook, relegating me to slicing vegetables while he worked the hot line.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to be the complainer, just wanting to be treated as a team member and peer, but I was paying good money to learn, and I refused to be denied the opportunity to cook.\u00a0 Chef Dieter advised me to ignore what my partner was doing and choose which recipes I wanted to prepare; to come to class with my prep lists written, showing up before breakfast so as to get a head start and be deep in my work by the time my so-called partner showed up to class.\u00a0 I did, and on the last day of the class, when my partner ended up in the weeds, I stepped in and finished his saute work while he struggled to plate his dishes in time for service.<\/p>\n

Even online, we seem to be the butt of all the jokes.\u00a0 In one forum recently, I disagreed with a male chef\u2019s viewpoint on a situation, and found myself berated in a most graphic manner in a rant that went on to discuss bodily fluids and my relative value as a breeding sow.\u00a0 Thankfully, the group administrators (all men, by the way) stepped up and booted the troll out of the group.\u00a0 I am grateful for the level playing field of many of the online groups that I am a member of, as the sharing of inspiration and our work is a valuable tool in developing as a chef and culinary professional.\u00a0 Give us a chance to contribute, and the experience is richer for everyone.<\/p>\n

It seems like every kitchen I show up to work in, the first assumption is that I should really be on pastry, or on the salad line.\u00a0 \u201cGirls\u201d aren\u2019t strong enough, aren\u2019t tough enough, take teasing too seriously, won\u2019t stand up to the rigors of working the line.\u00a0 \u201cGirls\u201d aren\u2019t fast enough, can\u2019t take a joke, get their feelings hurt or will let you down.\u00a0 Let me tell you something, \u201cboys\u201d, girls are tougher than you think.\u00a0 \u201cGirls\u201d don\u2019t quit, show up when we are expected to, aren\u2019t afraid to ask questions, tell dirtier jokes than some of you do.\u00a0 Hell, many of us even understand and speak Spanish.\u00a0 It\u2019s always a moment when I am working away, listening to the chatter around me, and inadvertently laugh at the punch line of some particularly vile joke, without even realizing everyone is speaking\u00a0 Spanish.\u00a0 The first time it happened, everyone just stopped dead in their tracks, the kitchen was silent, and every eye was on the \u201cgirl\u201d.\u00a0 I have to admit, I loved the shock value.\u00a0 I also loved beating the guys at their own game.<\/p>\n

Women in the kitchen don\u2019t have to make themselves into men in order to fit in.\u00a0 I am not saying that the image of the tough \u201cgrill bitch\u201d female chef is wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that like male chefs, female chefs come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions.\u00a0 As an executive chef today, with a largely female kitchen, I run a tough shift, but yet there is little shouting, and little or no abuse commonly found in male dominated kitchens.\u00a0 We crank out some amazing food under challenging circumstances, as many of our kitchens are in the field, literally in a field.\u00a0 There is still nothing like the rush of a challenging service, a plate up of multiple courses for 100+ guests, and when we are done, there is still a lot of butt-slapping, high-fiving, and a few well deserved \u201cf\u2019 yes\u2019s!\u201d\u00a0 As more women rise up the ranks, the dynamic of the kitchens will shift.\u00a0 No, we won\u2019t make everyone stop swearing, we won\u2019t make all of you wear pink aprons.\u00a0 Instead, we will hold the entire team equally accountable to the success or failure of service, just like our male peers.\u00a0 Like I said earlier, we don\u2019t want to be special, we just want to be on the team, to suit up, show up, and kill it at service every time.\u00a0 So next time you are tempted to segregate the \u201cgirl\u201d in your kitchen to the back room, give her a chance to show you what she\u2019s made of.\u00a0 I suspect you\u2019ll be pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our industry has changed a lot in the last twenty years.\u00a0 With the popularity of chefs increasing and the public\u2019s demand for better food growing as a result of the advent of primetime food television, restaurants and other foodservice providers have been require to step up our game.\u00a0 But while the number of women in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,8,15],"tags":[31,34,33,32],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assaggiare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}