Female chefs lift the lid on French sexism in the kitchen
Campaign follows allegations of misogyny and assaults at some of nation’s top restaurants
A GROUP of female French chefs is fighting back against what they say is a culture of misogyny, sexism and even sexual assault in the kitchens of some of the country’s top restaurants.
The issue hit the headlines in September when Japanese chef Taku Sekine, at the helm of two high-profile restaurants in Paris, committed suicide after being accused of sexual assault. His family denied the allegations, saying that he had “never been prosecuted or the object of a complaint”. They blamed social and news media, saying that it had pushed him into depression.
However, since then several female chefs have spoken out about harassment, sexual abuse and a culture of impunity in the French culinary world.
One of them, Marion Goettlé, 26, told The Daily Telegraph that the Sekine affair acted as a catalyst.
“Lots of girls testified against this chef without citing him by name,” she said. He was later named by Atabula, a French website dedicated to food.
“I feel sorry for him but you can’t hold it against those who gave his name in order to end the law of silence,” said Ms Goettlé, who said she had suffered misogyny and harassment as an intern at a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower. She now runs the Café Mirabelle in Paris with an all-female staff.
The movement started last year, she said, with an Instagram account called
“Jedisnonchef ” (I say no, chef ), which gathered more than 30,000 statements from women who said they had suffered sexism or abuse in the kitchen. Two national newspapers, Libération and Le Monde, have just published in-depth investigations into the phenomenon.
Laëtitia Visse, 30, a female chef who has just opened her own restaurant in Marseille, told Le Monde: “A chef told me one day, apprenticeship in the kitchen is like being raped.”
She recounted how she was cornered on the second day of an internship at a restaurant in Paris by the sous-chef in the cold room. “He looked me in the eyes and said: “You’re my apprentice. I can do with you whatever I like’. I was 17. I slept with him to keep the peace.”
She has just brought out a book called Balls: Ten Ways of Preparing Them on how to cook the male genitalia of a string of animals.
Florence Châtelet Sanchez, who runs a fine food business, accused Guy Martin, of the Michelin-starred Paris restaurant Le Grand Véfour, of raping her in 2015 in Atabula. He categorically denies the allegations. She told Libération she intended to file a legal complaint at a later date, but was “keeping quiet” for now in the wake of the Sekine suicide.
Atabula chief Franck Pinay-rabaroust told The Telegraph he had no regrets naming both chefs. “People didn’t speak out, but now it’s starting to snowball.”
Ms Goettlé said: “I’m less angry against individual chefs than a system that has long considered such behaviour as normal. We must stop thinking and making people believe that sexism is a rite of passage.”
She expressed optimism that a new generation of chefs would “break the cycle” of misogyny through education.