I can just imagine the looks if I was busy breast-feeding while directing the kitchen
Posted in General on 06. Sep, 2010
I can just imagine the looks if I was busy breast-feeding while directing the kitchen.Until the long-hours culture changes in kitchens, it is going to be hard for women to get to the top and stay there But I’d like to prove that it can be done. I certainly don’t see having children as something to do only when I’m ready to give up being a head chef.There are precedents. In London Sally Clarke, one of my favourite chefs, has run a successful restaurant for 20 years in Kensington and combined it with having a small child. And so have Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray in Hammersmith.And in Italy, some of the women chefs I most admire have managed to set themselves up so that the divide between a career in the kitchen and domestic life is not so complete. Another of my heroes, Nadia Santini at Dal Pescatore in Cannetto Sull’Oglio, has three Michelin stars but works in the kitchen with her mother-in-law and son, while her husband does front of house.The challenge of finding a way to combine career and motherhood isn’t unique to chefs. It is the same for women politicians, lawyers, and journalists. It is part of a wider social change that we need to make.Encouragingly, I have seen more young women coming into kitchens over the past five years or so.
When I was working at Aubergine in Chelsea under Gordon Ramsay, I was one woman among 10 men. Today in my kitchen at the Connaught, I have five women out of 30. I’d like the ratio to be better, but I’m not in favour of positive discrimination. I used to think that my reputation as a rare woman head chef might attract more female applicants for vacancies here, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.I hope my kitchen is a different place from the male-run kitchens where I trained. They were often testosterone-driven environments where no one could admit that they were knackered. I haven’t got much time for the argument that says you need physical stamina to be a top chef and women don’t have it I’ve got just as much as the men. It’s simply that I can admit when I’m done in, while they feel they can’t.
One colleague, who’s still a good friend, used to take pride in telling us after an 18-hour shift that he was still as strong as an ox when we could all see that he was falling asleep on his feet. It was macho nonsense.In my kitchen, it’s fine to say “I’m knackered” after a long day I have tried to make it a more relaxed working environment Some male kitchens can be relaxed. I remember working at the Blue Boar in Cambridge where we were so laid back we’d be drinking B52s at 11 in the morning But that was the exception. In other kitchens there have been plenty of men kicking and screaming and flexing their muscles like rock stars.I don’t believe you bring out the best in people by intimidating them.