Girls on fire
The restaurant game – once notorious for its boys’ club antics – is shifting, influenced by greater diversity and improvements in work-life balance driven by a new wave of creative collaborations. As part of our #girlsonfire initiative, Shannon Harley spe
We investigate the food industry’s changing gender dynamics.
WHEN DOMINIQUE CRENN – the eloquent French-born chef behind San Francisco’s Atelier Crenn – won the World’s 50 Best ‘Best Female Chef’ in 2016, she considered rejecting the accolade. In the end, she accepted it, but declared: “I hope the award won’t exist in two years.”
Two years on and, despite statistics from Parabere Forum, a platform devoted to women’s voices on major food issues, that only 18 per cent of head chef positions worldwide are held by women, the dialogue about the changing landscape of the industry has reached a crescendo as the need for gender equality, a positive energy shift and better work-life balance for all involved boil out of the pot and onto the table for open discussion.
“I strongly believe it’s very positive that the conversation about achieving gender equality within a typically male-dominated profession is happening,” says Australian chef Kylie Kwong, who cut her teeth with Neil Perry at Rockpool more than 20 years ago before opening her iconic Cantonese eating house, Billy Kwong.
Christine Manfield, who ran Universal in Sydney’s Surry Hills, says she has never come up against discrimination despite gender
diversity being a pertinent issue for the industry. “I was very lucky I worked with really cool people who had great politics and understood what equality meant. At the time I started working as a chef in the mid ’80s, there were a lot of women leading the field who were great role models and nurtured so many. However, for the past 25 years, women’s voices have not been as prominent as they could be, given the number in the industry.” Manfield believes that promoting gender equality isn’t about hiring women for the sake of it, but rather celebrating the fact that men and women contribute different skills and qualities to a business.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the collaborations between male and female chefs and front-of-house teams in some of our top eateries. For instance, Guillaume Brahimi and gun pastry chef Kirsty Solomon at Sydney’s Bistro Guillaume, Rodney Dunn and Ali Currey-Voumard at Tasmania’s Agrarian Kitchen, and ArChan Chan, who was head-hunted by Andrew McConnell to lead the 17-strong brigade – “a good mix of men and women” – at his latest Melbourne venture, Ricky & Pinky. That’s a play Chan puts down to her leadership style that’s “tough, but positive and caring”, a philosophy seeded by her mentor, McConnell Group development chef John Paul Twomey.
Nomad head chef Jacqui Challinor makes the point that there isn’t necessarily an increased female presence in hospitality, there just seems to be more of a spotlight on it at present: “We have always been here; people just seem more interested in the fact that we are here now!” That long-standing presence isn’t the
case, however, for related industries such as winemaking, bars and butchery, where workforces are significantly evolving thanks to a new era of female participation and collaboration.
“I have noticed an increasing female presence in our maledominated industry,” says Anthony Puharich, who believes the dynamic women bring to his high-end butcheries is a “massive benefit” to work culture. “We have female butchers in both of our retail businesses who are genuine star performers. There’s Luci Kingston at Victor Churchill and Frenchy Bore at Vic’s Meat Market, and 30 per cent of our production floor is female. This is a huge leap forward when you consider that as recently as six years ago it was pretty much an all-male industry.”
Sydney-based chef Matt Moran owns top-rated eateries around the nation, is host of TV’s The Great Australian Bake Off, and is the co-owner of burgeoning hospitality empire Solotel Group, but behind Matt is a team who make the whole production possible. Among them is Laura Baratto, who has been a part of the Solotel Group for the past 10 years and is executive chef at Opera Bar in Sydney. “[Matt] has always been a mentor and huge support to my career as a chef,” she says. “He has given me the opportunity to work in several different kitchens at different levels.”
It appears that it’s not the guys per se, but the very nature of the industry, where antisocial conditions and poor wages obstruct a work-life balance. Thus a new, more sustainable approach for men and women is needed. “In Australia, we’re coming to a realisation that we need a better balance in the kitchen,” says Neil Perry. The Rockpool Dining Group chef-restaurateur believes the new horizon is one where you can still be committed to cooking without giving up your life. “Sustainability is about more than just the environment. If we can’t sustain our young people to stick in the industry, we lose a precious resource. There is no longer any place for European bootcamp-style kitchens.”
And of that ‘Best Female Chef’ title… Perry says that in the 21st century, he would prefer that we weren’t calling out individuals based on gender. Conversely, however, he can sense a gender imbalance in a restaurant, so acknowledging those places that manage equilibrium is still important. “I can tell when a venue is male-dominated. The detail isn’t looked after. Women are great at nurturing, spotting small things and sweating the details” – exactly the reason he pushes for his workforce to be 50/50 (which it is). For Puharich, too, it’s an acute attention to detail that drew him to female butchers. “In my experience – and I may wake up to a horse head in my bed tomorrow for saying this! – I’ve noticed that the mentality of many male butchers is ‘close enough is good enough’, whereas female butchers won’t put anything out unless it’s 100 per cent. This is a massive benefit for our business.”
The C-word has to come up in any discussion of gender equality in the workforce, so who better to deal with the delicate topic of children than father-of-two Colin Fassnidge? “For me, at 44, I’m too old for kitchen life. It’s not an issue of gender, it’s an issue of age. There comes a time when you need to use your head more than your heart and step back from the pans.” Fassnidge says it’s a natural progression for chefs to become restaurateurs, and there needs to be structural change in the industry to allow for that passage for both sexes. Analiese Gregory, who trained with Peter Gilmore at Quay before taking the lead at Sydney’s Bar Brose and most recently Franklin in Hobart, says she’d like the industry to find a way to support women who want to have a family and keep on cooking, “as opposed to feeling like we have to choose”.
For Danielle Alvarez, who helms delicious. 100 NSW Restaurant of the Year Fred’s, we may have come a long way from Marco Pierre White throwing knives at apprentices and Anthony Bourdain’s kitchen machismo as glorified in Kitchen Confidential (an era he now says he looks back on with “real remorse”), but there remains plenty of room for improvements to kitchen culture. The acceptance of four-day working weeks and flexible hours is upping levels of “respect for people” in the business, which Alvarez says is a beacon for women.
As with the perfect recipe, balance is key, and the successful kitchen of today embodies this. “We are completely on the same page about food,” says Automata’s Clayton Wells of head chef Sarah Knights. “She understands and appreciates balance and simplicity. I love that we can bounce ideas off each other and it inspires me to consider things in a different way.” Knights adds that Wells is understanding and nurturing, but her gender is irrelevant. “I know what he wants in terms of the food and how he wants the kitchen run. It’s a great partnership.”
Lou Dowling, the 31-year-old bartender who recently opened P&V Wine and Liquor Merchants in Sydney with delicious. drinks writer Mike Bennie, thanks a supportive work environment, where collaboration of the sexes is key, for giving her the confidence to open her own business in the male-heavy realm of booze: “The support from the male community gives you courage and opportunity. Breaking down the patriarchy comes from within, not from the matriarchy,” says Dowling, highlighting that the future of the industry is very much a joint effort.