FEMALE CHEFS HEAT UP THE SCREEN
Film focuses on women who have risen through ranks of male-dominated industry
There’s something radical about the new documentary The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution. There are no male chefs in it. “That shouldn’t be radical,” Toronto filmmaker Maya Gallus says about her latest project. “But it is.”
The film, which focuses on female chefs who have risen through the ranks of a male-dominated industry, opens this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which runs from Thursday to May 6.
“I really wanted to illuminate an aspect of the culinary world that I felt wasn’t being highlighted: the role of women chefs,” Gallus says.
She spent hours watching culinary documentaries and shows while doing her research and was stunned that all the chefs featured were men.
The Heat takes viewers into the kitchens of acclaimed chefs and Michelin star recipients, including Anne-Sophie Pic in Valence, France; Angela Hartnett in London; and Anita Lo in New York City. It also introduces a younger generation of chefs, such as New York City’s Victoria Blamey and Amanda Cohen, and Toronto’s Suzanne Barr and Charlotte Langley. Toronto writer and former line cook Ivy Knight also shares experiences working in Toronto kitchens.
Gallus looks at kitchen culture — a pressure-cooker environment of long hours and flared tempers — and how the influx of women into top positions is changing it.
She spoke with the Star about why women need more financial backing to open big restaurants, why bad-boy chefs are still glorified and how being a nice chef, who’s kind to her staff, doesn’t make for a sexy read. The following has been edited and condensed.
The Heat is a companion piece to your earlier documentary Dish: Women, Waitressing & the Art of Service. Why did you want to explore women’s roles in the back of the house?
In my research for Dish, articles started to come up about the lack of representation and reportage around women chefs and that intrigued me. But the timing was not right to make the film, so I set it aside. I circled back a couple of years ago, after the Kate Burnham incident, which made me very interested in how the experience of being a woman working in a restaurant kitchen might be different than that of a male chef. (A 2015 Star story about Burnham, a Toronto pastry chef who alleged in an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal application that she was sexually harassed by three bosses in a high-profile kitchen, sparked a nation-wide discussion about kitchen harassment. The matter was resolved through mediation and Burnham agreed to a confidential settlement.)
The restaurant business appears to be a boys’ club, with men routinely getting top culinary awards and heralded as the great chefs. Why is this and what’s the greatest challenge faced by female chefs?
Women, traditionally, don’t get funding for big restaurants, and it’s the big restaurants that tend to be written about, not the chefs running smaller operations. That’s the problem across many industries: We don’t give as much money to women as we do to men. And the whole culture of the restaurant industry became very macho — the scars, tattoos, bullying and yelling. Anthony Bourdain wrote about it in Kitchen Confi
dential and that was considered very sexy. Whereas Amanda Cohen (a Canadian at the helm of the vegetarian New York City restaurant Dirt Candy) says being a nice girl, who treats her employees well and sends staff home early, isn’t sexy. No one is going to write about that. They want to hear about the drugs, rock and roll and bad behaviour — that tends to be glorified.
As more women move up the ranks, do you think this culture will change?
Absolutely. It already is. It’s inevitable that if there are more women at the top, who have experienced bullying and harassment, many are going to make sure their kitchens are not like that. It’s not to suggest that women, inherently, run a better kitchen. Male chefs have spoken out, including René Redzepi and David Chang, saying ‘I used to be a bullying, yelling chef. I see now that’s not working.’ Why? Because they have more women in their kitchens and younger people who aren’t willing to accept it.
When I asked the women in The Heat, some said having a woman at the top makes a difference. But some, like Angela Hartnett (Gordon Ramsay’s protégé and head of Murano), weren’t sure if more women was making a difference or if women behave differently.
Observing these women, I saw a huge difference — their kitchens tended to be very quiet. The best example was AnneSophie Pic (head of Maison Pic). I’ve shot in high-end kitchens in France before with loud male chefs yelling out orders; whereas Anne-Sophie’s kitchen was very quiet.
I said, ‘I notice you don’t yell out the orders.’ She said, ‘No, I used to do that. I’m interested in running a co-operative kitchen.’
Was there a difference between what veteran chefs said compared with younger ones?
Veterans didn’t want to speak as much about the challenges and obstacles. I think that is because they were pioneers, they broke the glass ceiling, and in order to do that they had to keep their head down and do the work excellently. To do that you can’t focus on obstacles or challenges, you have to keep moving forward.
What message do you want the audience to take away?
The film is a metaphor for what is happening in society, in terms of #MeToo and Times Up. My intention with this film is that The Heat really does speak to our times, whether it’s women in maledominated kitchens, women in the film, women in engineering, women in tech ... And that people look at this and see how systemic some of these problems are, but also be inspired to be part of the change in their own industries. Screenings of The Heat: Thursday, 9:30 p.m., at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Saturday, 1:15 p.m., at TIFF Bell Lightbox, followed by a talk with Maya Gallus and Anita Lo at Ricarda’s restaurant, 134 Peter St.; and May 6, 3:30 p.m., at Isabel Bader Theatre. The theatrical run starts May 11 at Hot Docs Ted Rogers. It will air this fall on TVO.