What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Being Female in a Kitchen

I’ve been having a great conversation with a female chef on one of my other cooking entries, so I hope she’ll know this is for her only. 😉

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The problem is not that Alice Waters is less respected than Gordon Ramsey. The problem is that it’s where energy is focused. All our energy is being put toward being able to call ourselves line cooks and chefs, not female line cooks and chefs.

Meanwhile, we work with these guys. We’re in the trenches. We get close because we’re under heat and pressure. Different people create different reactions. Some people fold into themselves, some get aggressive. You cannot underestimate either extreme, because the one who holds everything in will quit without saying anything to anyone, and the one who gets aggressive will lord it over the entire kitchen. But it doesn’t happen when chef is actually there. It’s when chef isn’t there that a problem arises.

I had a coworker I was really close to. We’d call each other on the weekends occasionally, trade shifts often. He told me at first that I’d be running my own kitchen in six months.

I know within myself that was bullshit without being demeaning to me. I know what I’ve got. It’s not technique. But I will rock your face off.

I am not a chef, and I never will be. This cook’s belief was inspiring and made me better. There was a marked difference in my performance now, mostly because I’d actually learned something. I really was part of the A-team then.

I think I believed him a little bit more because he’d been to culinary school, but that came more from reverence of CIA than anything else (yes, the cooking one). I thought I’d found a genuine friend. We all think that right up until we don’t.

For me, it was things like being asked to bend over when I did dishes, or saying inappropriate things on the phone…. just anything that would make me feel slightly off before every shift. This didn’t go on long. A few weeks, maybe. But it was enough to make me afraid of going to work. For the first time in my life fucking ever, I went to the chef.

One of the finest men I’ve ever known, because I was here to talk about being sexually harassed and you could see it in his face…. “what if this was my daughter?” He rearranged the schedule so that we were no longer working together- submarined his A-team just because I was in trouble- and then when the business was done, he took his beaded bracelet off his wrist. He said “this is very special to me. I need to go out of town, but I’ll be back on Tuesday. Wear it when you feel panicked and I’ve got my cell.” Those are not the words of someone who isn’t listening.

Chef gave me a slap bracelet after the fire.

Because the bracelet was special to him, I gave it back. But I still remember the feel of it, the walking around the kitchen doing my thing and I’d get startled by nothing and clutch my wrist.

This is by far the tamest story of sexual harassment in the kitchen you’ll ever hear in your entire life. It all goes downhill from here, people.

I had a chef willing to stand up for me, and most women do not.

And we don’t talk about it.