Women complain that World’s Best Female Chef award is sexist
Cooking is not like sport, say objectors – but Clare Smyth, first British winner, defends the honour
A FEMALE chef of the year award is sexist, chefs have complained, as they said that cooking “is not like sport”.
The World’s Best Female Chef accolade, won this year by British chef Clare Smyth, is awarded by The World’s Best 50 Restaurants, but there is no equivalent prize given out to male chefs.
Pip Lacey, former head chef at Murano, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Mayfair, described the women-only award as “odd”.
Ms Lacey, who is opening her own restaurant in London this summer, said: “I don’t get why we have to segregate the award – it’s a bit odd. I don’t see why you can’t compete with men, why there’s not just one category.
“It’s not like how in sport you are competing at a different physical level, I don’t think cooking is like that.”
The chef added that although “any award is nice to win”, treating female chefs as a curiosity is “going backwards a bit”. She added: “It’s like we weren’t considered in the years before. Now it seems to be going backwards.
“Every female young chef is being asked about females in the kitchen and it’s getting boring. We never think of it like that. We never think ‘there’s loads of men in this profession’.”
Chefs from across the world have agreed with Ms Lacey. In response to a tweet asking “I am sitting here wondering who will be the first to tweet that there shouldn’t be a world’s best female chef award”, Andrew Fairlie, the Michelin-starred Scottish chef, posted. “Probably most female chefs.”
Aditi Dugar and Prateek Sadhu of Masque in Mumbai, which has won the award for best restaurant in India multiple times, told The Telegraph: “Cooking is based on skill, and not physical strength. This category is unnecessary.”
Dominique Crenn, a San Franciscobased chef who won the award in 2016, also criticised the prize, telling The Washington Post: “If you give a chef a female award, you’re going to alienate that gender to the other gender. We are not a sport. They’re treating us as if we are a sport.”
The World’s Best Female Chef Award has been running since 2011 and has been won mainly by chefs from mainland Europe. It was started by the prestigious World’s 50 Best Restaurants award body which developed from a trade magazine in 2002.
Anthony Bourdain, the US chef, was one of the first to criticise the award, tweeting in 2013: “Why at this point in history do we need a ‘Best Female Chef’ special designation? As if they are curiosities?”
This is the first year that a British chef has won the award, and speaking to Bloomberg, Clare Smyth defended the prize. Commenting that women are under-represented on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, she said: “There is no right and wrong way to address this, but things won’t change if we do nothing. When we see women represented in numbers in lists like these, then we will have changed the industry for the better and these awards will no longer be needed.”
Ana Ros, a Slovenian chef, also spoke out in support of the award when she was announced as last year’s winner.
“It is very clear that for a woman in a male world, it’s always going to be difficult. The best chefs in this world – look at Massimo Bottura, look at Rene Redzepi – they have great wives. They are 100 per cent on their work because it’s taken care of, their children, it’s taken care of their private life.
“They come home, probably somebody even cooks for them and has time to chat to them. Do you think that happens to a woman? You can never compare these two different worlds,” she told Bloomberg.